Yes, yes. The Evora isn’t for sale yet. But if Forbes could award the Lotus-based Tesla Roadster its 2006 “New car that best lived up to the Hype” award before a single lithium-ion-powered sports car was in production (they are in production, right?), well why not give the prospective Lotus Evora a gong for its aluminum construction? [NB: we were going to go to the International World Trade Fair ‘Aluminium 2008’ at Messe Essen in Germany, but just couldn’t get the hang of saying “Al Lou Minny-Um.”] And if I read this press release correctly, the Evora deserves the shiny statuette– at least in theory. “The Lotus Evora employs a composite roof as a stressed structural member to give an exceptional vehicle stiffness of 26,000 Nm per degree, thanks in part to the seatbelt anchorage frame’s secondary function as a roll over structure, and partly because the high-tech composite body panels are stressed items… To deliver this high performance structure, bonded and riveted high grade aluminium extrusions and simple, elegant folded sheet elements are used in the lower structure, which complements the stressed composite roof upper structure. Attached to the high strength central tub are sacrificial energy absorbing subframes of extruded aluminium at the front and lightweight welded steel at the rear.” And that’s how you add lightness. I think.
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You just masturbated my engineering mind.
More.
A hot looking car, with that kind of engineering… Why I haven’t applied to work with that people. Ummm…
The Corvette Z is in production and has an aluminum sub-frame.
I put the Corvette sub frame closer on the scale of brilliance to the budweiser can than to the Lotus.
That’s not so much an indictment of the Vette as it is a compliment to Lotus. Those guys do awesome stuff. The Vette is a good value, but Lotus is building cars that are lighter than compacts and can laugh off a hit from my Landcuiser.
Who cares about bumper height when the bigger vehicles can harmlessly roll over the smaller ones?
Wikipedia on aluminium is pretty interesting. The Washington mounument was capped with a pyramid of solid aluminium when aluminium cost much more than gold. We call it aluminum because of a telegraph error.
Landcrusher
It is the entire Z-06 frame that is aluminum, not just subframes, and many of the features on this Lotus, such as the “composite roof upper structure” and “high strength central tub” are stolen from the Z-06 aluminum frame.
No small aluminum car will laugh off a Landcruiser impact. The Elise does well in crash tests, but that is only because crash tests simulate the effect the tested car hitting another car of similar weight.
Even Lotus cannot defy physics:
http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2007/05/disintegrated-lotus-elise.html
Landcrusher :
I’m not so sure an Elise or Exige would laugh off a hit from a Rav-4 never mind a Landcruiser.
Isn’t it extremely hard to repair an Elise or Exige because of the aluminum subframe? I remember reading that repair costs for those cars are exorbitant because of the way the car is constructed, as well as something about aluminum not being as resilient to repeated impacts as steel (I think the argument was that steel can absorb any impact below a certain level and return to its original strength, while aluminum gets permanently weaker with each impact, even if that impact is below the critical level). Maybe somebody with more knowledge can elaborate
thetopdog
A Rav-4 vs. an Elise would be ugly.
Aluminum is almost as overrated as carbon fiber reinforced plastic. Steel is an incredibly good material to make a car out of.
For less than half the price of an Elise the Toyota MR2 Spyder offered a convertible roof that went up in 10 seconds (one of the most amusing autocross events is watching Elise owners try to put on their targa roofs), much easier ingress and egress (watching people try to get in and out of Elises is the second most funny autocross event), and much better (although still limited) storage.
Much of the better interior room and storage in the MR2 came from the MR2’s 6 inch longer wheelbase.
Still, the larger, more comfortable high strength steel MR2 only weighed 211 pounds more than the glued together aluminum Elise.
If Toyota put the engine that it sells to Lotus for the Elise into the MR2 there would be no point to the Elise.
Man, I’d hate to pay the insurance premium on that thing if anything larger than a BMX bike hits it.
no_slushbox : It is the entire Z-06 frame that is aluminum, not just subframes, and many of the features on this Lotus, such as the “composite roof upper structure” and “high strength central tub” are stolen from the Z-06 aluminum frame.
Let’s go back further, when the C5 (guilt by association for the C6) Vette stole the center tunnel structure and balsa wood reinforced floors of the 1970s Lotus Europa. See the Europa’s cutaway and the similarities are stunning.
And its much like the Lotus designed LT-5 V8 shortblock (ZR-1) and the LS-series V8s of today.
I was of course using hyperbole, but not as much as you guys seem to think.
Also, using a 112 mph crash as an example isn’t necessarily constructive.
The only physics we are really limited by for crash protection are those limits on how much force the body can take.
Lotus HAS been doing some really great work in making light weight, incredibly strong vehicles. If you can make one strong enough, you can increase safety and durability. The idea that these structures are somehow overly expensive or unable to be repaired is just silly. Durability adds lots of value because the whole business model of replacing cars when the engine, interior, or paint wear out is just stupid. We would be better off with disposable engines than disposable cars.
Anything that will total a Lotus will total a Camry. There are going to be instances where the Lotus may cost more to repair, but there will also be the opposite case. I watched general aviation go through this whole argument. Dismiss the anecdotal evidence as it comes in, or you will likely find out you are dead wrong (like some aviation insurance companies did).
topdog,
No, an elise certainly will not laugh off an accident, but there are parts that will perform much better than some twice the weight (the side door beam design is awesome.)
I would not be surprised to see this new hardtop act as a wedge allowing a much larger car to go over it while protecting the occupants. Another likely result would be the lotus bouncing off. I saw a civic do this once. The SUV actually got the worse end of the deal. Neither passenger was harmed, but the Civic ended the accident a couple car lengths away from the truck.
Sajeev Mehta
I was secretly thinking of the original Elan’s backbone structure, along with the more recent Elan’s backbone structure, when I typed that. Damn you and your truth about cars.
Nice.
Truth is, there’s not much in production (or near production) vehicles that hasn’t been thought of elsewhere years/decades ago. I was part of a team making a hybrid Saturn SL2 in a College of engineering years before the first Prius hit the street.
No biggie. :)
no_slushbox,
Telegraph error? That’s the first I’ve heard that one. The Wikipedia page you reference itself describes the history pretty succinctly: Humphrey Davy (who first isolated Al) named it first “alumium”, then changed it to “aluminum” himself; it was only after his death that the Commonwealth started calling it “aluminium” to match up with some other element names (though not others), but by then the US spelling had solidified in usage here.