Lotus awarded UK government funding for new EV platform

Lotus is getting ready to push its LEVA, a new platform for battery-electric vehicles.

The British sports car manufacturer has received support from the UK government to develop the LEVA platform, which stands for Lightweight Electric Vehicle Architecture.

The company will work with supplier Sarginsons Industries and academics from Brunel University in London to bring it to production.

Said Matt Windle, Lotus engineering director, “Following the launch of the Lotus Evija, our all-electric hypercar, this project is a key building block in our vision to deliver a full range of electrified Lotus performance cars.”

Lotus hasn’t confirmed what electric vehicles it’ll introduce beyond the already revealed Evija hypercar, of which just 130 examples will be built.

The next vehicle introduction after the Evija is expected to be the last Lotus that’ll be powered by an internal-combustion engine, while corporate parent Geely has said it’ll deploy its open-source Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) across all its global brands.

Under CEO Phil Popham’s ambitious Vision 80 program, the company wants to increase annual sales to 10,000 units by 2029. Though it’s prioritising new sports cars, Popham has refused to rule out an SUV or sports sedan.

The development money for LEVA was awarded via the Advanced Propulsion Centre’s Advanced Route to Market Demonstrator (ARMD) competition, funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

The ARMD program was launched in June to support manufacturers in the UK with R&D in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Companies that entered needed to demonstrate how they could turn a government grant into a production low-emissions vehicle.