Lotus Puts Forth Its Design For Hybrid Engines

General News — By Ricky on September 23, 2009 at 5:02 am

In the automotive world, ideas, concepts and designs flourish almost by the hour, but when Lotus has a something or even a raw unfinished daft idea, everybody’s listening, because, their ideas are never daft or even close to it, they are incredible. Now, since the whole world has gone in to a frenzy and making bee-lines for switching towards hybrid power, because of the shortage of fuel, Lotus felt it was high time, it put out its concept Hybrid engine.

This new design makes a bold statement, it says, make the engine function as a power generator and thus increase the efficiency. This means that the car will run purely on electric energy. Upcoming cars like the Chevrolet Volt, have electric motors dedicated to power each wheel, while being sourced from a battery pack and a generator. With current technology, cars like the Volt will have a range of 100 miles before it runs dry. Lotus says that, all you have to do is retune the engine for electricity generation for the series hybrid cars. To make their point clear, Lotus built an engine from scratch. They say that building this engine from the cylinder heads , exhaust and the engine block were was not very difficult because certain parts proved unnecessary like the head gasket . The specification of the engine lotus built was released as a 1.2 liter , three cylinder, and two valves per cylinder engine . This is actuated by a belt driven overhead camshaft. A generator is mounted serially with the engine and it has two operating modes , 15kwatts and 35kwatts. At this stage, asking the fuel consumption of the engine is pointless, until it is mounted in a car.