- Lotus presents trio of DC fast-charging hardware solutions for commercial customers, including a 450-kW fast-charger, a liquid-cooled power cabinet, and a liquid-cooled charging stall for four EVs.
- The automaker has already rolled out these charging stations in China and plans to bring them to Europe and other markets starting in the first half of 2024.
- Lotus’ lineup is rapidly becoming electric, with the Emeya set to join the Eletre SUV in the coming months.
Having recently revealed the Emeya, Lotus is on its way to becoming an EV-only automaker by 2028. But electric vehicles aren’t the only products the Geely-owned company has in mind.
Lotus has just taken the wraps off its own EV chargers, promising blazing fast charging of up to 450 kW. The company says these charging rates would permit the Lotus Eletre R to gain 88.5 miles of range in just five minutes, while achieving a 10% to 80% state of charge in just 20 minutes.
Lotus also plans to offer a liquid-cooled power cabinet aimed at highway service stations, offering output capabilities of up to 480 kW, as well as a liquid-cooled charging unit that can juice up four vehicles at once.
Of course, there aren’t even that many EVs on the market at the moment that can take advantage of charging rates this fast—an 800-volt architecture certainly helps in this regard. All three of these products are aimed at commercial charging stations rather than an empty corner in your garage, so plenty of underground grid connection infrastructure will also be required.
“Over the past six years, Lotus has been investing in the technology and infrastructure to accelerate the transition to electrification,” said Mike Johnstone, Chief Commercial Officer at Lotus Group.
All of this charging hardware will begin arriving in Europe and the Middle East in the second quarter of 2024, having already been rolled out in China.
For the moment, Lotus hasn’t mentioned North America as one of the markets where it plans to offers its commercial charging solutions, but charging of up to 450 kW are perhaps a bit of overkill at the moment for most EV owners. And for most, it’s difficult enough to find a 350-kW charging stall that can actually serve up that charging speed all of the time.
Lotus’ debut of DC fast-chargers should not come as a surprise, as the automaker has had a strong engineering division that worked on outside products for decades. With the automaker’s goal of becoming an electric-only global luxury technology brand, it’s only logical that it would move into charging hardware.
“We want to make it easier than ever to own an electric vehicle and with our latest offerings, Lotus is able to provide customers with the confidence to access easy, fast, and efficient charging,” Johnstone added.
Will Lotus find a new and wider audience with its electric sedan and SUV duo in the coming years, or is the brand still firmly associated with small, internal-combustion sports cars? Let us know what you think.
Jay Ramey grew up around very strange European cars, and instead of seeking out something reliable and comfortable for his own personal use he has been drawn to the more adventurous side of the dependability spectrum. Despite being followed around by French cars for the past decade, he has somehow been able to avoid Citroën ownership, judging them too commonplace, and is currently looking at cars from the former Czechoslovakia. Jay has been with Autoweek since 2013.
