Now China's auto market, very popular "category thinking" the word, to put it bluntly is to put the past car large and complete attributes, in the in-depth insight into customer needs, to the specialized and refined label evolution.
For example, a car may only want to be sold to girls, or off-road explorers, or young esports family.
Balanced products are no longer popular, because balance equals no personality, equals a lack of emotional expression. The longboard effect is dominating the market, and you only need to have one long item, and it is a very long one, in order to find the die-hard fans who love you in a highly segmented and vertical market.
But to stick to it is necessary to give up, focusing on a certain category or a certain technology will lead to the prejudice of "doomed to be niche" and "not comprehensive" - Lotus, which has played through category thinking and turned aerodynamics into a brand endorsement as early as 74 years ago, is obviously a model that has experienced too much criticism.
When it comes to Lotus, there must be such doubts: Lotus, which cannot produce its own engine, is a sports car brand without a soul.
Indeed, the Lotus Evora 410 on sale uses Toyota's V6, and the engine of the last fuel car, the Emiira, is powered by AMG. But the person who raised this question obviously did not know much about the history of Lotus and the underlying logic of why Lotus was sought after by car fans.
In the view of Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus, who was a royal air force pilot, capturing the charm of the wind is what a sports car should do, and the use of aerodynamics has naturally become the core pursuit of Lotus for 74 years.
From the 1954 Mark 8 pioneeringly covering the rear wheels and adopting a fully wrapped body, to the Lotus Type 49B in 1968 taking the lead in adopting the rear wing design to avoid the influence of the front car vortex during the race, to colin Chapman's introduction of the "ground effect" to the F1 arena in 1977, monopolizing F1's 12 pole positions and 7 championships...
Yes, starting with the Lotus Type 78, through the application of the Venturi effect, F1 racing cars gradually became popular in installing side skirts at the bottom of the side compartment to let the air flow quickly, so as to generate greater downforce, obtain faster cornering speed, and also ensure that the rear car will not lose a lot of downforce due to the turbulence at the rear of the front car - if there is no ground effect, the rear car will lose about 45% of the downforce when it is two spaces away from the front car.
In other words, the ground effect developed by Chapman has given the racers more opportunities to fight and overtake, and has also made the sport of F1 full of more challenges and possibilities.
Humans always have two options in the pursuit of speed, increasing engine displacement and horsepower, or reducing air resistance – Chapman's achievements have little to do with high-horsepower engines, but Lotus's soul is aerodynamics and "a unique design guided by the wind".
More critically, in the age of electric power, lotus's proud aerodynamic performance is becoming even more important.
How important is aerodynamics?
Studies have shown that when a car is moving at a speed of 80 km/h, 60% of the fuel consumption is used to overcome wind resistance; for every 10% reduction in air resistance, the vehicle's fuel consumption can be reduced by about 7%. For electric vehicles, for every 0.01 reduction in the wind resistance coefficient, the cruising range can be increased by 15-20 kilometers compared with the original.
But if it is only to achieve the best aerodynamic performance, the car is designed as a water droplet on the line - the difficulty is how to achieve the brand's unique design style under the premise of ensuring the strong appeal of the wind resistance coefficient.
In order to emphasize the difference in their design, many people will impose a lot of exaggerated decorations, which will inevitably produce an exaggerated visual sense of over-design and language confusion.
Elevating the aerodynamic priority to Lotus, the lines and surfaces of the product have clear directions and associations, without superfluous decoration and extra bulges – only the shape of the wind. Whether it is the air duct opening under the front face or the tail, or the deep concave shape and undulating line surface on the side, the underlying logic of these shapes is more conducive to the flow of air.
Another interesting design is that the front wheel bags of all Lotus models are a little higher than the hood, which in addition to being more aerodynamic, allows the driver to more accurately determine the position of the wheels – which is crucial on the track.
This design, which Lotus calls Becker point, reflects Lotus's attitude of not engaging in fancy gimmicks, not doing excessive decoration, and using design to present the technology itself in the process of continuously improving the wind resistance coefficient.
That's why I say lotus is soulful not only of good aerodynamics, but also of honest aerodynamic design.
In 2004, Tesla's first CEO, Martin Eberhard, chose to partner with Lotus to create the first product, Roadster, based on Elise, not because of how advanced Lotus's technology in the field of electrification is, but precisely because Lotus, which has an absolute advantage in body design, has been recognized by the new era earlier than the competition.
The consensus in the industry is that a large part of the factors that affect aerodynamic performance are the small but prominent body accessories such as door handles and exterior mirrors. With the electric intelligent era of vehicles will be equipped with more and more radar, sensors and other intelligent hardware, who has stronger aerodynamic design capabilities, who has the capital to control the rapidly changing body form has been controlled within a reasonable drag coefficient, and has the opportunity to solve the problem of mileage anxiety earlier.
The pure electric supercar Evija released in 2019 has made a good start for Lotus, achieving a downforce of 1.8 tons through the ultimate design without the limitations of the internal combustion engine, far exceeding the downforce of 100-300kg of ordinary sports cars and comparable to the F1 of 100km/h.
The Emira, which later followed the Evija design, became the only model in its class capable of generating passive downforce at any speed.
The new Pure Electric SUV Type 132, which will be unveiled at the end of the month, makes all Lotus fans full of more expectations.
After all, this is an SUV model that Lotus has never been involved in, how to achieve 110kg of front end downforce and 80kg of tail downforce in the case of tall body and overhead lidar, with sports car-like handling stability and aerodynamic performance, becoming the first mass-produced SUV in the luxury brand to accelerate into 3 seconds - Lotus fully embraces electrification, obviously using further aerodynamic design, with the same category thinking to solve different era problems.
Just as nokia was not Motorola but Apple, what ultimately eliminated the internal combustion engine was not the electric motor, but the aerodynamic design that met people's needs in another dimension – to be sure, when cars start to fly in the air, no matter what kind of power source they carry, the ability to resolve wind resistance is not important.
Born from the hands of air force pilots, Lotus is in the process of frankly communicating with this friend of the wind, transforming into his most familiar appearance.
I believe that the future of flying cars all over the world belongs more to Lotus, a friend of the wind.
A few days ago, Lotus exclusively named the wing racing team of my alma mater, Tongji University. Intograms is currently the world's highest-ranked Chinese university team, and the brand that wants to sponsor Ichi is naturally not only Lotus. Listening to the team's students, the reason why Lotus was chosen is also because the team's friends have a special love for its 74 years of insistence on aerodynamic performance.
A brand that once did not have a wide customer base, but more than any mainstream manufacturer has spared no effort to promote the development of pneumatic technology, this pioneering and romantic spirit, also infected the few viewers, there is no commercial bonus, but has been pursuing faster lap of the wing after the wave.
It's all about a love, so that more people love it.
Expecting that the winged back waves can be like the front wave Lotus, who has always ignored prejudices, has always insisted, and has always been the most loyal friend of the wind.
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