Lotus Cracking a Greener Engine
Lotus headquarters at Hethel, a small village in Norfolk, England is secretly conspiring on building the future engine. Teaming up with Jaguar and with scientists from the Queen’s University Belfast, Lotus is seeking to make cars that run on biofuels even more efficiently than before. The engineering team at Norfolk is steadfast in building cars out of fossil fuels and in boosting the miles per gallon for biofuel-driven cars.
The project is being sponsored by the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) centers. A whopping 281000 pounds have been allocated for the same to back the designing and for supporting the “flex-fuel” engine which will ensure that running of the car on biofuel and petrol.
Ford and Saab are the only car makers which seem to have models with flex-fuel engines till date. One major pitfall for cars running on biofuel is that they cannot achieve the number of miles per gallon as fossil fuels can.
What is the engine plan?
Lotus is aiming at developing the “Omnivore” concept by which a single-cylinder engine will be built to maximize fuel efficiency when the car is run on renewable fuels. The single-cylinder is expected to be completely built by January 2009.
It is also opined that cars running in bio-alcohol for instance, can lead to lower release of carbon dioxide gas into the environment because of the fuel’s superior combustion quality.
The Omnivore concept complements the Lotus Exige 270E Tri-fuel sports car which was recently unveiled. Lotus’ endeavor is to understand the combustion process that is involved for cars running in gasoline and mixtures of alcohol fuels.
Dr Robert Kenny from the Queen’s University opines that the current effort is to pave the way for future cars to be built with single-cylinder engines that will run on greener biofuels and those which will do lesser harm to both the cycle of food production and rainforests.
Defra spokesmen believe that the constant development of biofuels has not only given an opportunity for car makers and sponsors to benefit from the existing biofuels but has also opened the market to 2nd and 3rd generation biofuels.
