Lotus Engineering has won a contract to develop two low-carbon vehicles – a large luxury hybrid executive saloon called Limo-Green and a zero-emission London Taxi – as part of a £52m raft of green projects initiated by the government’s Technology Strategy Board.
Lotus will team up with Caparo Vehicle Technologies and automotive research giant MIRA to develop what it calls ‘a large luxury hybrid executive saloon’. The Limo-Green project will be based on Jaguar architecture – believed to be the lightweight aluminium underpinnings of a Jaguar XJ rather than the heavier but newer steel-based XF – and will utilise an advanced drive motor, small battery pack and a compact auxiliary power unit for low-emission high speed sustained cruising.
The goal is to develop what Lotus calls ‘a large, prestigious executive saloon with less than 120 g/km emissions’. As well as providing technical support for installation into the vehicle, Lotus will design and build a number of prototype auxiliary power units with ultra-high thermal efficiency and high power outputs. Lotus has yet to release details on when the project will go live.
In its second project, Lotus will work with LTI (builder of the current black cab) and a number of other consortia to develop a commercial fleets of zero-emission fuel-cell hybrid taxis. The cabs will go into service by 2012, and will then be rolled across other major cities by 2014. Handy for the Olympics, then.
Lotus will focus on integrating the fuel-cell engine with the cab’s electric drive train and hydrogen storage system. The Norfolk-based group will initially bench test the system, before integrating it back into a test mule and then packaging the componentry into two taxis for full vehicle evaluation.