Initial customer deliveries of the Lotus Evija have finally commenced, nearly four years after deliveries were originally scheduled to begin, reported Autocar.
Having first made its debut in 2019, the Evija was originally set to have deliveries start from the end of 2020, which was then pushed back to 2021 due to development delays due to the pandemic.
The British marque’s halo model “is now in handover mode”, Lotus Cars Europe CEO Dan Balmer told Autocar. “At a critical point in the project delivery, we hit Covid, and that effectively stopped any global testing on that car, and a lot of our supply base and technology partners in that car were affected by it as well, so that was critical,” Balmer told the publication.
The order book for the halo model also opened for buyers in Malaysia in 2021, and it was estimated at the time to be priced at RM16 million. Big numbers abound for the Evija as the top product in the brand’s range – a quad-motor electric powertrain outputs 2,000 PS and 1,700 Nm of torque, and the car has been found to be capable of over 2,027 PS as Lotus continued with its development.
Each motor drives a single-speed helical gear ground planetary gearbox, drawing power from a 70 kWh lithium-ion battery pack. 0-100 km/h is elapsed in under three seconds, 100-200 km/h in the same amount of time and 200-300 km/h in under four seconds.
Lotus was not alone in being hampered for hypercar development during the pandemic. “When you’re breaking the boundaries of technology, you’re pushing the envelope as far as possible all the time, and when you’re doing that, there will be some unforeseen [factors] around the development of those vehicles,” Balmer said.
“Other hypercar launches have had a similar timeframe. I was involved in one in 2016, and it’s only now coming to market eight years later,” Balmer said alluding to the development programme for the Aston Martin Valkyrie, which began when he was director of global marketing at Aston Martin, Autocar wrote.
“Other well-resourced brands out there have had a challenging time in breaking the boundaries of what they’re trying to do as well. The good news for our customers is that they’re able to enjoy those cars from now,” Balmer said.
GALLERY: Lotus Evija
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