The Lotus APX (standing for ''Aluminium Performance Crossover'') is a

concept car A concept car (also known as a concept vehicle or show vehicle) is a car made to showcase new styling or new technology. Concept cars are often exhibited at motor shows to gauge customer reaction to new and radical designs which may or may not ...

created by the British sports car

marque A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...

, Lotus. It was first introduced at the 2006 Geneva Motor Show, and was also displayed as the Proton MSX. It is the first complete vehicle built on the new

Versatile Vehicle Architecture Lotus Group (also known as Lotus Cars) is a British multinational automotive manufacturer of luxury sports cars and electric vehicles. Lotus Group is composed of three primary entities. Lotus Cars, a high-performance sports car company, is ba ...

(VVA). This vehicle is also a first for Lotus, as it is the first

crossover SUV A crossover, crossover SUV, or crossover utility vehicle (CUV) is a type of automobile with an increased ride height that is built on unibody chassis construction shared with passenger cars, as opposed to traditional sport utility vehicles ( ...

they have ever built. It was to have entered production as the

Youngman Youngman (officially China Youngman Automobile Group Co., Ltd.) () was a Chinese manufacturer of buses and trucks located in Jinhua, Zhejiang province. The company was founded in 2001 by Pang Qingnian and also used to manufacture automobiles. H ...

Lotus T5, but was cancelled.

Engine

The APX uses a 3.0 litre

supercharged In an internal combustion engine, a supercharger compresses the intake gas, forcing more air into the engine in order to produce more power for a given displacement. It is a form of forced induction that is mechanically powered (usually by ...

V6 engine, designed and developed by Lotus. The power output of this engine is 300 hp (224 kW) at 6250 rpm with a torque of at 4500 rpm. It can go from 0–60 mph (97 km/h) in 5 seconds. The APX's top speed is 152 mph (245 km/h). The suspension of the APX makes it perfect for

off-road Off-roading is the act of driving or riding in a vehicle on unpaved surfaces such as sand, dirt, gravel, riverbeds, mud, snow, rocks, or other natural terrain. Off-roading ranges from casual drives with regular vehicles to competitive events w ...

use (another first for the Lotus brand) with its permanent

four wheel drive The Four Wheel Drive Auto Company, more often known as Four Wheel Drive (FWD), was a pioneering American company that developed and produced all-wheel drive vehicles. It was founded in 1909 in Clintonville, Wisconsin, as the Badger Four-Wheel Dr ...

. The combined fuel consumption is estimated to be around . Also shown at the NADA 2007 show was an all-electric version of the APX, also four wheel drive, with a 0–60 mph acceleration time of 4.8 seconds. The licensing distributor, ZAP, states it has a capacity of up to 324 wheel horsepower, up to range, recharge in as little as 10 minutes, and a top speed of up to . They claim up to 9,000 recharge cycles and 1 penny per mile recharge costs.

Design

The APX exterior is all-aluminium. The interior features digital screens, futuristic gadgets and many buttons.

References

Lotus APX Info from ConceptCarz.comLotus APX Demonstrator from Zapworld.com
{{Lotus

APX In computational complexity theory, the class APX (an abbreviation of "approximable") is the set of NP optimization problems that allow polynomial-time approximation algorithms with approximation ratio bounded by a constant (or constant-factor a ...

Concept cars Cars introduced in 2006