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Lotus Eletre specs, pricing and more detailed for European launch

Lotus revealed the Eletre in full last year, and while details were plentiful back then, the British sports car company has a lot more for us today in the realm of specs and pricing. Unfortunately, we don’t have a full layout of U.S. specs and pricing yet, but we can get a good idea of what to expect by looking at the European-market model. Three different versions will hit the market at launch: Eletre, Eletre S and Eletre R. Performance is the same between the Eletre and Eletre S (the S simply adds more luxury equipment), but the R is a unique, high-performance variant. For starters, the base model and S will have an electric motor on the front and rear axles good for a combined 603 horsepower and 524 pound-feet of torque. Lotus says that will be enough for a 4.5-second 0-62 mph time and a 160-mph top speed. Driving range on the WLTP cycle is estimated to be 373 miles for these versions, but expect that number to be down when EPA estimates come out.  The Eletre R notches performance up by a wide margin. Its pair of electric motors produce a combined 905 horsepower and 726 pound-feet of torque, but thereÂ’s a little more than just more powerful motors going on here. Unlike the single-speed transmission the base models use, the Eletre R uses a two-speed transmission for the rear electric motor and a single-speed transmission on the front axle. Lotus says this allows them to optimize the car for ideal launch performance and to improve range at higher speeds. The shifts themselves are automatic. Lotus says the R is capable of doing the 0-62 mph sprint in just 2.95 seconds, and it has a slightly higher top speed of 165 mph. Despite the two-speed transmission, range still takes a sizable hit down to just 304 miles on the optimistic WLTP cycle. We also learn today that the Eletre will house a 112 kWh lithium-ion battery pack in all versions of the SUV. Lotus says it features a maximum charge speed of 350 kW on a capable DC fast charger, which is quick enough to bring you from 10-80% in just 20 minutes. AC charging maxes out at 22 kW, which would allow you to go from 0-100% on your home charger in just six hours. The last big spec Lotus shared today is curb weight. If you opt for the base model with no options, the Eletre can weigh as little as 5,489 pounds. And yeah, thatÂ’s obviously a wild amount of weight for anything with a Lotus badge on it, but the Eletre R is even heavier at 5,820 pounds.

Why all of this year's F1 noses are so ugly [w/video]

If you're a serious fan of Formula One, you already know all about The Great Nosecone Conundrum of 2014. Those given to parsing each year's F1 regulations predicted the strong possibility of the so-called "anteater" noses as far back as early December 2013. Highly suggestive visual evidence first came after Caterham's crash test in early January, with further proof coming as soon as Williams showed a rendering of the FW36 challenger for this year's championship. That car earned a name that wasn't nearly so kind as "anteater."
Casual followers of the sport - or anyone who gets the feed from this site - probably don't know what's happening, except to wonder why the current year's F1 cars are led by appendages that would make Cyrano de Bergerac feel a whole lot better about himself.
The short answer to the question of ugsome F1 noses is "FIA regulations and safety." The reason there are various kinds of ugsome noses is simpler: engineers. The same boffins who have given us advances including carbon fiber monocoques, six-wheeled cars, double diffusers and Drag Reduction Systems are bred to do everything in their power to exploit every possible freedom in the regulations to make the cars they're building go faster - the caveat being that those advances have to work within the overall philosophy of the whole car.

Lotus F1 apologizes for tweeting support for LGBT Olympians

The Lotus Formula One Team is apologizing after its official Twitter account posted this image of two men kissing in connection to the opening of the Winter Olympics on Friday, February 7. It claims that the original tweet was "unauthorized."
The tweet, which Lotus deleted later that day, can be viewed to the right and was promptly replaced an apology that said, "We would like to sincerely apologise for an unauthorized message posted on our Twitter account today & will ensure this cannot happen again." Responses to the kerfuffle on its Twitter page have mostly focused on confusion as to what the original tweet was and why it was removed.
While the Sochi Olympics have been controversial among LBGT groups because of Russia's laws banning so-called "gay propaganda," the country has a growing importance in F1. In fact, the first Russian Grand Prix is scheduled to run later this season on a circuit around the Sochi Olympic Park. Genii Capital, the team's owner, has business interests in Russia, and according to the BBC, the Lotus F1 team is working on a deal to with Russian mobile phone company Yotaphone to sell it 10 percent of the team.