Lotus imagines new electric Le Mans endurance racer for 2030 season

British racing car maker Lotus Cars has unveiled the E-R9, a “design study for a next-generation pure electric endurance racer” the company predicts could be on the starting grids of endurance circuits by the end of the decade.

Designed by the Lotus Design team, led by Russell Carr – who is also responsible for designing the Lotus Evija hypercar – the E-R9 represents a nod back to Lotus’ endurance racing history as well as the company’s electric future.

“E-R” stands for endurance racer while the “9” harkens back to the Lotus Mark IX, which accompanied the debut of the Lotus racing team at the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hours endurance race.

The E-R9 is being billed by Lotus as “a technology showcase” and brings to the table a number of technical innovations, including shape shifting, “morphing” body panels able to change their shape and attitude to the air flow so as to deliver minimum drag on the straights and maximum down forces in the corners.

The E-R9 is being developed by Lotus Engineering, led by the engineering team of Richard Hill, who serves as Lotus’ chief aerodynamicist, and Louis Kerr, principal platform engineer on the Lotus Evija pure electric hypercar as well as technical director, GT, Geely Group Motorsports International.

“What we’ve tried to do is to push the boundaries of where we are technically today and extrapolate into the future,” said Richard Hill.

“The Lotus E-R9 incorporates technologies which we fully expect to develop and be practical. Lotus has an amazing history of developing unique solutions, and we’ve done it many times in motorsport and with our road cars.”

The E-R9’s morphing body panels are located across the delta-wing profile and can be controlled either by the push of a button by the driver or automatically according to performance sensor inputs.

Additionally, vertical control surfaces at the rear of the vehicle would generate aerodynamic forces so as to help the vehicle alter direction without the limitations of grip at the tyre contact patch.

Though the E-R9 likely seems to currently be only a CAD dream, Lotus nevertheless believes that all the technological innovations it has incorporated would mean the vehicle is partly driven like a car and partly flown like a fighter jet.

Featuring an advanced electric drivetrain which is able to power each wheel independently, and enhanced with torque-vectoring, the E-R9 builds on technology already integrated into the Lotus Evija pure electric hypercar but would allow the driver to make modifications on the move.

“Battery energy density and power density are developing significantly year on year,” said Louis Kerr. “Before 2030, we’ll have mixed cell chemistry batteries that give the best of both worlds, as well as the ability to ‘hot-swap’ batteries during pitstops.”

Lotus began initial construction of the Evija hypercar back in late-2019 – of which there will reportedly only be 130 ever made – and in mid-2020 the company announced plans to ditch petrol drivetrains, skip right over hybrid drivetrains, and jump straight to all-electric drivetrains.