Lotus announced that they will move forward with their city car concept (debuted at the 2010 Paris Motor Show) and it will hit the market by late 2013 for the 2014 model year. Initially announced as a hybrid vehicle, Lotus might consider going down the all-electric route. Production for this car won’t be cheap as it has an estimated price of US$45,000. That would place it in the price range of a 5-series.
Now, who would want to pay that kind of money for a very small hybrid or all-electric car, which probably can only sit two small sized human beings? Is Lotus going to give the same reason as Aston Martin? Or are they going to play the ‘Green’ card, since it is going to be either a hybrid or an all-electric car?
The Aston Martin Cygnet is offered with a lot of expensive looking options, interior and exterior wise and it has a petrol engine (although its performance is nothing to shout about). For Lotus to come up with a hybrid or all-electric city car, they better come up with something that can justify the US $45,000 price tag so that any potential customers won’t feel like they have been short-changed and they might look somewhere else instead.
As for me, both Lotus and Aston Martin are not known to produce cars like this and it feels a little weird. And paying that US$45,000 price tag, is just like paying for the R&D that Lotus is going to develop. And there is a high chance that they are going to get that technology from other manufacturers, just like most of their engines, which they get from Toyota.
Photo credit : Leftlanenews
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