The mooted electric successor to Lexus’s iconic LFA V10 supercar hasn’t made it past the concept stage, but it’s clear the company has something in the works.
The company announced this week that its Lexus Electrified Sport EV supercar concept – revealed by Akio Toyoda last December – will soon make its first appearance outside Japan.
Location? The Goodwood Festival of Speed, confirmed Lexus Europe, and what better place to get the enthusiasts chatting. It will feature in a special display in the Festival’s ‘Electric Avenue’, an area dedicated to electrified vehicles.
Lexus itself calls the Electrified Sport concept its “vision for a future all-electric high-performance sports car – seen by many as a potential successor to the legendary Lexus LFA”.
Those are its words, not ours.
The wild-looking coupe was a highlight among 16 BEVs revealed by Mr Toyoda late last year.
Lexus has form when it comes to producing high-effort halo vehicles when it wants to change perceptions: look no further than the 1989 LS or said iconic LFA, that did precisely this.
Lexus also has a habit of making concepts that reveal the road versions, as seen by comparing the LF-Z Electrified concept and the road-going RX450e EV crossover, which certainly takes cues.
The company wants to “extract the full potential of its vehicles through electrification, strengthening the fundamentals of linear acceleration/deceleration, brake feeling and exhilarating handling to deliver an even more enjoyable driving experience”.
‘The Electrified Sport car will see the Lexus Driving Signature taken to the next stage,” it adds.
Lexus suggests the acceleration time to 100km/h is expected to be in the low two-second range and that the car will have a driving range of more than 700km.
“It is possible that a production model may use new solid-state battery technology to achieve authentic high performance,” Lexus adds – clearly the best way to pay down development costs for new holy grail technologies is to roll them out on hyper-expensive, hyper-cars.
“Lexus will develop a next generation battery EV sports car that inherits the driving taste, or the ‘secret sauce,’ of the performance cultivated by the development of the LFA,” it finished.
Lexus LFA
The 2011-2013 Lexus LFA has gone down as an icon, as much for what it was as what it said about the brand as a whole. Its screaming Yamaha-co-developed V10 was frankly a masterpiece.
If we seek a timeline of when we might expect to see a road-going Lexus Electrified Sport EV supercar, we can again look to the LFA template. The LFA was a decade in development, appeared as a concept in early 2005, and was revealed officially revealed in Tokyo in late 2009.
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