HETHEL, England — Lotus is jumping on the eco-friendly bandwagon with the debut of the Exige 270E Tri-Fuel. The car may be able to run on three different fuels, it may be easy on the environment, but it still has the Lotus magic.
The three different fuels — gasoline, ethanol and methanol — all feed into the 270-horsepower engine and help the Exige get from zero to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds. It's a sequel to and an improvement on 2006's 265E, which ran on E85 ethanol.
Lotus has done a great deal of research into carbon-neutral synthetic methanol. The company has invented a process that uses electric power to make atmospheric CO2 react with hydrogen to create methanol. This addresses the missing link to making liquid methanol a feasible alt-fuel solution: the difficulty of distributing it. The Lotus tri-fuel technology could be ready in five years or less, but it could be two decades before a workable methanol infrastructure could be in place.
What this means to you: Lotus is throwing its hat into the alt-fuel ring, which in itself bodes well for more fuel choices in the future. — Paul Tassi, Correspondent
The three different fuels — gasoline, ethanol and methanol — all feed into the 270-horsepower engine and help the Exige get from zero to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds. It's a sequel to and an improvement on 2006's 265E, which ran on E85 ethanol.
Lotus has done a great deal of research into carbon-neutral synthetic methanol. The company has invented a process that uses electric power to make atmospheric CO2 react with hydrogen to create methanol. This addresses the missing link to making liquid methanol a feasible alt-fuel solution: the difficulty of distributing it. The Lotus tri-fuel technology could be ready in five years or less, but it could be two decades before a workable methanol infrastructure could be in place.
What this means to you: Lotus is throwing its hat into the alt-fuel ring, which in itself bodes well for more fuel choices in the future. — Paul Tassi, Correspondent
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