In recent years it seemed like the only new products from Lotus were special-edition cars, but next year we can apparently expect something much more exciting. According to Autocar, Lotus and parent company Geely will launch an all-electric hypercar "early in the next decade."
Autocar offers up few details, but says a concept of the new model -- apparently codenamed Omega -- will be revealed in 2019. Development work is reportedly already underway, with the Lotus electric car set to use an in-house-developed powertrain. The price of the car could be as high as £2 million, or about $2.6 million.
With that kind of pricing, the Lotus EV would look to compete with traditional hypercars from manufacturers such as Ferrari and McLaren. Perhaps its closest competition, however, would be the Nio EP9, an all-electric supercar that set a Nürburgring lap time of just 7 minutes, 5 seconds.
The hypercar would be the first all-electric Lotus, although the company did build a concept Evora hybrid, and the Elise platform was used for the original Tesla Roadster.
Geely, which has a 51-percent stake in Lotus and also owns Swedish automaker Volvo, has been rumored to spend as much as $2 billion to reinvent Lotus over the coming years. While today Lotus' three road cars are quite old -- the Elise, the Exige and the Evora -- the company has ambitious plans for the future. Former Lotus CEO Jean-Marc Gales said in early 2018 that the company would launch two new sports cars and an SUV over the coming four years.
