WheelTronix

Italians will now have the facility to hire a Lotus Elise SC from their home Hertz hire car center. This facility will be starting from next week.

This leasing out of the Lotus Elise SC by Hertz hire car center is due to an agreement entered into between the hire car giant and the British sports car manufacturer.

Giuseppe Caminiti who is the boss of Hertz Italiana stated that: “We launched the Hertz Fun Collection last year to give our customers the possibility to drive the cars they have always dreamt of driving.”

‘The Lotus Elise SC is in reality one of the dream cars of each and every one. This has led it to be included in the Hertz’s Fun Collection. It has resulted in the customers of Hertz hire car center to get a chance to drive a genuine sports car.

Lotus has declared the price for its Evora coupe which will be on sale in May. The price starts from £47,500 in ’2+0′ two-seater, plus £950 on-the-road charges, and £49,875 as a 2+2.

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Lotus Engineering has produced the Omnivore research engine, which can be run on sustainable resource that is biofuels and predicts maximum fuel ratio from these.

One cylinder with a two-stroke operating cycle, along with direct injection and a variable compression ratio makes the engine. This helps it to easily adapt to different alcohol-based fuel types with diverse thermal properties, and it is also extremely thermal-efficient.

It is a one-piece ‘monoblock’ cylinder head and engine block and because of its structure it does not need either a head gasket nor ‘poppet’ valves. The discharge flow can be altered in any ratio, and the density achieved in the cylinder’s compression chamber can be adapted based on demands in the engine.
Lotus Engineering’s head of Power train, Geraint Castleton-White, says “This two-stroke engine could solve these practical difficulties and simultaneously permits a much larger range of compression ratio adjustment, with the potential to perform at a much higher efficiency when running on renewable fuels.”

Engine noise in hybrid and electric vehicles are to be recreated with a new technology that is developed by Lotus Engineering.

This safe & sound technology is presently being proved in a Toyota Prius, which normally runs without much sound at low speed and also when it is in complete electric mode. This vehicle is welcomed by the blind and also those who are partially-sighted.
The synch makes use of a road speed sensor and a speaker mounted on the radiator and utters a noise at a representative pitch and frequency to procreate the noise of an engine decelerating down or accelerating up.

This allows a pedestrian to easily know how close the car is, and also its speed. The synthesizer repeatedly kicks in when the car moves into its total-electric mode, and turns off when the engine resumes.
‘Blind and partially-sighted people use the noise of oncoming traffic as a cue for when it is safe to cross the road’ and this engine noise will help them a lot.

In the summer of 2009, Lotus will be releasing their newest beauty. The Lotus Evora.

Click on the image for a bigger view!

As you can see above, this is the newest Lotus. The Evora. The engine is a 3.5 Liter DOHC V6 VVT-i with 280ps @ 6.400rpm and 342Nm @ 4.700rpm. 0-60mph Sub 5 seconds.
The wheels are 18″ alloys in the front (225/40 ZR18) and 19″ alloys at the rear (255/35 ZR19).
Below a couple of images of this ride… click on them for a bigger view.

We all hope, that people that gonna ride a car like this will have a good insurance for their car, because the price of this ride is not available yet,.. but we bet this car will cost a lot

Another sad thing is, that we didn’t heard about a some sort of economy engine. Running on hydrogen or something. Because the most manufactures are looking for alternative fuels like hydrogen or compressed natural gas. But maybe who knows…