Image: Flickr user SbastienRondet

When Jaguar showed their visionary C-X75 Concept at last year’s Paris Auto Show, I’ll admit that I had a hard time taking the car seriously. Sure, it was a stunner, but it was also shown as a non-functional turbine-electric hybrid, and history has not been kind to turbine powered automobiles. Remember the 1963 Chrysler Turbine Car? How about the GM Firebird Concept from 1953? Gas turbine engines may be ideal for vehicles like helicopters, but their complexity, power delivery and heat output make them less than ideal for road-going vehicles. I guessed that the C-X75 would never see production, but it turns out I was only half right.

Jaguar tells us that the C-X75 Concept will indeed see production, but in a more practical form. It will still have four electric motors rated at 195 horsepower each (for 780 combined horsepower), but those motors will get power from a generator driven by a more conventional internal-combustion engine. Onboard lithium ion batteries will give the car an estimated battery-only range of 31 miles, but with limited performance. If you want the full grunt when you drop the hammer, the car’s internal combustion engine will be required to provide maximum current to the electric motors. From an engineering perspective, you can think of the C-X75 as a Chevy Volt with three more motors and a lot more thrust.

As for performance, Jaguar says the production version will be good for a sub 3-second sprint to 60 MPH, on the way to a top speed of 200 miles per hour. You can feel good about rolling up to your Earth First! chapter meeting in a C-X75 as well, since the car will only produce 99 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer; just make sure the other members know that before they attack your car with sledgehammers. If you guessed that performance, technology and environmental consciousness comes at a price, you’d be right: Jaguar expects the C-X75 to sell for at least $1.2 million, and they’re only building 250 copies.

As for the gas turbine idea, Jaguar isn’t abandoning that just yet. You won’t see it in the production version of the C-X75, but you just might see microturbines powering a generator in future Jaguar models.

Source: Left Lane News

Looking back on this year’s Paris Auto Show, Lotus stood out as the manufacturer “most likely to throw away all their working capital building concept cars”. Worse, these concepts took the boutique automaker into some stratospheric pricing and seemed to ignore the basic premise of Colin Chapman’s genius. Instead of “adding lightness”, the five cars shown by Lotus in Paris seemed to add luxury and gadgetry, at the expense of lightness and performance. Even the styling of the concept cars was controversial, taking Lotus in an entirely new, Lamborghini influenced direction.

Autoblog is reporting that Lotus may not be working on all five concepts after all. Instead, they quote Autocar’s sources at Lotus, who say the Esprit is the only Paris concept actually undergoing engineering work at the moment. The rebirth of Lotus’ halo car is penciled in for its reappearance in 2013, which doesn’t give the boys from Hethel a whole lot of time to design and build a car from the ground up.

As spec’d at Paris, the next Lotus Esprit will make 550 horsepower from a supercharged V8 motor and should weigh in at around 3,300 pounds. That’s not exactly what I’d call light, but you can’t get around modern requirements for safety structures and systems, and even extensive use of carbon fiber or aluminum can only save so much weight. Lotus’ goal is to increase sales from less than 3,000 units per year to around 7,000 units per year, and the Esprit is seen as critical to achieving that goal. I’m not sure I agree with them, as the projected price for the new Esprit is around $175,000. Sure, it gives them a range topping sports car, but I don’t know too many buyers who can write a check for that amount of money. It makes me wonder if the days of affordable Lotus automobiles will once again be behind us.

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/11/01/report-esprit-only-new-lotus-under-development/

Bicycles are human powered. They don’t have motors. And they certainly don’t have on-board computer systems. They are the perfect amalgam of man and machine. So you, engineer at Peugeot, and you, SolidWorks whiz at ebike: Stop. Peugeot’s electric-assist bicycle reared its bull-horn-shaped grips at the Paris Auto Show, sporting a hub-less wheel. Electric scooter manufacturers smart also unveiled its ebike, which has an iPhone dock. Seriously. Enough is enough. Few things rival the simple joy of riding a bicycle. Don’t make it any more complicated than it has to be. Hit the jump for more photos.

smart ebike, complete with iPhone dock

The French Exagon Furtive eGT electric hybrid looks like the bastard offspring of the Nissan GT-R and the Opel Insiginia. The new car debuted at the Paris Auto Show a few weeks ago, joining the ranks of high-performance extended-range hybrids that are storming the automotive world. The Exagon boasts a claimed 500-mile range and a 155 mile-per-hour top speed. It can also hit 60 mph in less than 3.5 seconds. It’s driven by two Siemens 168 hp motors for a total of 336 hp. Information on the car’s petrol engine is nonexistent, but one can guess it’s French in origin. French President Nicholas Sarkozy got an exclusive peek at the car during the Paris Auto Show, but he’s not talking.

Source: Autoblog

Everyone was so excited about Lotus unveiling its line of portly new cars at the Paris Auto Show that they missed the Mastretta MXT, a truly lightweight sports car that lives up to Colin Chapman’s credo of “Add Lightness.” The Mastretta MXT is a 1,980-pound powerhouse, a mid-engine coupe with a 240-horsepower turbocharged 2.0 liter inline four. The lightweight sports car will be the first car designed, engineered, and manufactured in Mexico. According to Mastretta, the first production units should roll off the assembly line in 2011. It’s one hot little number and hopefully it’ll perform as well as we expect.

Jaguar revealed this sexy futuristic feline at the Paris Auto Show in honor of its 75th birthday. The C-X75 extended-range electric is powered by four electric motors good for 780 horsepower and has a lithium-ion battery pack. It also rocks two biodiesel-compatible micro gas turbine engines that kick in to generate power once the batteries go dead, giving the car 500 mile of additional range. Performance? It hits 62 mph in 3.4 seconds and slaughters the quarter mile in 10.3. And it’s absolutely stunning. The car’s shape is reminiscent of the 1966 XJ13 Le Mans prototype, one of the most gorgeous cats ever designed by the British company. Inside the thing is decked out in all kinds of aluminum and fine-grain leather. Its Bowers & Wilkins audio system uses a honeycomb array of transducers instead of speakers to pipe classical music throughout the cabin and help cancel out the roar of the two micro turbines. Other fun cat facts: The micro turbines move 25,000 liters of air per minute while spinning and their forceful exhaust is used to generate downforce. Rowr.

I’ve always been a fan of Mini, and my wife has been threatening to buy a Cooper S as her next car for about five years now. I’ve always wished they were just a bit bigger and had an AWD option for even better handling. It looks like I’m running out of excuses to buy one, since Mini just unveiled the Cooper S Countryman with available AWD at last week’s Paris Auto Show.

The Countryman is a longer (by 5.5 inches), wider and taller version of the Mini, built to target the SUV market (though calling it an SUV, in my option, is a bit of a stretch). The Countryman features four doors and a large tailgate, which makes it equally adept at hauling passengers (an optional rear bench seat will hold 3 adults), dogs or cargo. The S version comes with a turbocharged 1.6 liter four, good for 181 horsepower, and offers Mini’s ALL4 AWD system as an option. As you’d expect from Mini, both manual and automatic transmissions are available.

Mini claims that the Countryman’s suspension has been reworked to enhance the car’s off-road capability. Based on the images I’ve seen, the Countryman’s ground clearance will limit it to dirt roads (even fire roads are a bit ambitious), but that’s fine with me since I’ve got a 4wd truck for the off road stuff. I can’t wait to test the Cooper S Countryman, and I promise you a full review after I drive it.

Hard to believe, but Audi’s quattro all-wheel-drive system has been with us for thirty years. I remember lusting after the first generation of Audi Coupe quattro, and thinking that I’d someday park one in my garage. When I finally did have enough money to buy one (before the U.S. economy went into meltdown), Audi’s styling just didn’t do it for me. Gone were the sleek and edgy (for the time, at least) lines of the original Coupe quattro, replaced by a boring but competent sedan. If only, I thought, Audi would go back and build a modern interpretation of the original Ur-quattro.

Ask and ye shall receive, as Audi has done just that to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the quattro all wheel drive system. Shown at this week’s Paris Auto Show, the Q30 concept sports a turbocharged five cylinder motor, good for a claimed 408 horsepower. The body uses aluminum panels to reduce weight, so the entire car tips the scales at just under 2,900 pounds. Audi claims a 0 to 100 kph time of just 3.9 seconds, and the Q30 uses carbon ceramic discs with six piston calipers to provide tear-your-glasses-off-your-face stopping power.

Like my bank account these days, the Q30 remains just an intangible concept, a tribute to better days that may yet come around again. I certainly hope so, since this is one Audi that I wouldn’t mind parking in the garage. Build it, I say, and the quattro loyalists will come.

Lotus is on a bender these days, showing five new models at this week’s Paris Auto Show. Not to diminish the significance of the Elite GT, the Eterne sedan, the Elan, the City Car concept or the redesigned Elise, but the new Lotus Esprit flagship is a mouth-watering testament that the supercar is indeed alive and well. How does 611 horsepower sound, in a 3,190 pound car? Is a zero to 100 kph time of 3.4 seconds fast enough for you? How about a top speed of 205 miles per hour?

The shape is eye catching but controversial; in fact, the new Esprit looks more like a Lamborghini than it does a Lotus. The importance of pushing the design envelope while remaining true to your heritage was addressed by Lotus CEO Danny Bahar, and Carscoop quotes Bahar as saying, “One has to be very careful when taking on the challenge of reinventing such an iconic classic as the Esprit – everyone has an opinion. There’s a fine balance between acknowledging the greatness of the past whilst at the same time rapidly leaping forward to the future and ensuring that this car not only does the name Esprit justice but also the Lotus brand. I think we’ve managed to find the balance and in doing so created a new icon, a car people will find hard to resist.”

Whether or not they’ve maintained that balance is for Lotus fans to stress over. I agree that they’ve created a new icon, and I think the Esprit redesign is a flagship worthy of the Lotus name. A partial hybrid version, featuring a Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) similar to that developed for use in F1 racing, will also be offered. As you’d expect, the 2013 Lotus Esprit won’t be inexpensive: pricing will start at around $175,000 when the car goes on sale in Spring 2013.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t bicycles invented as a human powered mode of transportation with the added benefit of keeping your fat ass in shape? Over the past year I’ve been seeing battery powered bicycles buzzing all over NYC and for the life of me I can’t understand why. Ok fine, for the Chinese Food delivery guys I can see the applications, but for everyone else who owns one I’m just taking it to mean that they’re just flippin’ lazy. Apparently Smart, maker of the crappy ForTwo micro car has now decided to jump on the electric bike bandwagon as well by developing their own electric two wheeler dubbed the eBike and debuting it at the Paris Motor Show. After watching the video you can see that the eBike is extremely well made and packed with some nifty technology like a hub-mounted electric motor as well as iPod integration. Let’s face it though, this is supposed to be a bicycle, not a scooter so what the hell is Smart doing building one of these? The way I see it, this bike will appeal to the same hipster urban-ites who purchased the original Smart Car. Sure it’s cool, but at the end of the day it’s not going to help you lose those saddlebags you’ve been carting around on that big ass of yours. My opinion… save the money, go buy a Schwinn and do some real exercise. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.

Source: Youtube.com