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Lotus drops Renault for Mercedes F1 engines

With only three manufacturers supplying engines in Formula One this season, the teams have been fairly evenly split: Ferrari, Sauber and Marussia use Ferrari engines; Mercedes, McLaren, Williams and Force India run on Mercedes power; Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Lotus and Caterham employ Renault power units. But one important team is reportedly preparing to ditch Renault and switch to Mercedes for next year.
That team is Lotus, an outfit which has fallen off its pace the past few seasons but which has still been a vital partner for Renault. That's because until a few seasons ago, the team based in Enstone, UK, was owned by Renault and bore the company's name. The operation was founded in 1981 as Toleman, was rechristened Benetton in 1986, bought by Renault 2000, taking the company's name in 2002, sold to its current owners Genii Capital 2009 and adopting the black and gold Lotus livery in 2011. As Benetton, it ran Ford engines until switching to Renault in 1995, sticking with the French outfit ever since, but that decades-long partnership - which meandered through Renault ownership and back out again - is now apparently drawing to a close.
The departure of Lotus as a customer team ought to allow Renault to focus instead on its increasing ties with Red Bull, which has taken the Enstone team's place as Renault's principal team. It could prove a smart move for the Lotus team as well, as the Mercedes engines have been outperforming the Renault units this season by an order of magnitude: not only is Mercedes far outpacing Red Bull at the top of the standings, but each of Mercedes' customer teams is performing better than Renault's clients.

Lotus Evora roadster to follow 400 coupe to US market

Lotus is in the midst of resurgence, and that includes a renewed assault on the US market. The new Evora 400 is coming to America, and though the new 3-Eleven won't be certified to drive on American roads, the company has confirmed that it will be offered here for use on track. But that's not all. According to Automotive News, Lotus is preparing to follow up on the aforementioned Evora 400 coupe with an additional roadster variant. Instead of a folding roof mechanism, the open-top Evora will incorporate two carbon-fiber roof panels able to stow behind the front seats. Otherwise it's expected to be mechanically identical to the coupe, with a 3.5-liter supercharged V6 packing 400 horsepower and a series of other enhancements over the preceding Evora S. Lotus was forced to withdraw the Evora – the last model it offered in the US – from the American market last year after it no longer complied with federal regulations. Bringing the new Evora 400, and its upcoming roadster variant, to the US will necessitate fitting it with a new smart airbag – something which Lotus confirmed to Autoblog it is preparing to do. According to spokesman Alastair Florance, "the Evora 400 will arrive in the market as a 17MY and will be fully compliant with FMVSS 208, including the smart air bag element." The coupe is expected to arrive here in December, with the yet-to-be-unveiled roadster to follow six months later. The news confirms what we heard earlier about the company's future plans. Those also include a new SUV being designed principally for the Chinese market, and an even more radical 4-Eleven to follow at some point in the future. Related Video:

See the Lotus Evija in detail in this 23-minute video

Henry Catchpole splits his time as a contributor to Evo magazine with on-camera work for Carfection. The ever-gracious Englishmen took to the studio again recently to pore over the brand new Lotus Evija — and his first gift to us is the electric coupe's proper pronunciation: ee-VYE-yah. For a full 23 minutes, Catchpole tours the coming Lotus hypercar with Lotus' head designer Russell Carr. The two men sweep over the car from front to rear, Carr explaining the origins and details of the many shiny bits that attract Catchpole's eye. The spec sheet alone is attention-getting. A 70-kWh battery fuels a powertrain rated at 2,000 horsepower and 1,254 pound-feet of torque. All-wheel drive and torque vectoring are made possible by electric motors motors front and rear, but the setup is novel. A single drive unit on each axle combines a motor and inverter, but we're told each wheel gets its own gearbox. The package is a little shorter and wider than a Porsche 911, but sits seven inches lower than the roof of the German. Scales bend to the weight of 3,700 pounds in spite of magnesium center-lock wheels, that grandeur managed in part by six Multimatic spool-valve dampers, three on each axle. Just 130 Evijas will be produced, starting next year, each one starting at around $2.1 million. Lotus has filled the coupe with visual flourishes. The Lotus badge on the front is metal inlaid into the carbon fiber bodywork. Carr said he wasn't sure the engineers would be able to finalize that for production, but the designers are hoping. Fans inside the headlights keep the lumens cool, while movable DRLs and turn signals angled like the winglets on an airliner make the lumens look cool. Another neat lighting trick: The "T" in the word "Lotus" on the rear fascia acts as the reversing light. Two features we haven't yet seen on the latest batch of hypercars are adjustable seats, and a strip of metal in the headrests that can be etched the slogan of a customer's choice. And in spite of all the firsts for Lotus in this car, there's one holdover from the Hethel carmaker's other compact sports cars: A dearth of luggage space. The only cubbies are polygonal-shaped holes in the rear of the door sills. It doesn't sound so bad when Catchpole explains it, though, so check out the video.