New Lotus Omnivore methanol engine up and running

The Lotus Exige has a vociferous appetite for speed as we all know. And back in April this year MT told you it was about to broaden it’s predominantly petroleum diet and snack on methanol in Trifuel 270E concept car form.

Well, now we learn that the Exige will in fact be able to snaffle at anything it wishes, to support driver transit, with news that the Lotus Omnivore is being readied.

If you kept your head down at school you’ll know that carnivores feast primarily on meaty goodness, whilst herbivores insist on leaf and root to survive on. And are usually pastier in skin colour.

Yet an omnivore if you recall, can gorge itself on just about anything that crosses its path. Animal, vegetable or mineral. So say hello to the Lotus Omnivore – the Ray Mears of the automotive plains.

Petrol and alcohol are this new Lotus Exige project’s main fodder as it happens, and kinda rubber-stamps this story we broke.

Development is on-going between Lotus Engineering, Jaguar, a team of egg-heads from Queen’s University of Belfast and DEFRA on this unique power source. Or more precisely, the cogs, springs, coils and the fiddly, none-descript components that are marked Fig. A – Fig. 700 on a combustion engine wall chart – that feeds off the lubricants that are currently being tested.

Basically, the Omnivore engine is derived from a two-stroke, single-cylinder blueprint that hankers after direct-injection to get its kicks and fill its trousers. Yet it’s a nifty variable compression ratio system that makes the whole thing work, which – if all going to plan – will feed more petroleum, alcopops or permeation of both into the engine.

A number of differing alcohol-type biofuels that signpost higher engine and fuel efficiency and lower carbon dioxide emissions are on the cards, and as we mentioned with regard the Lotus Exige Trifuel, methanol is one such byproduct that reacts well.

That’s because it combusts more efficiently than petrol, and can be synthesized from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, this theory – yet not so much of the practice - being originally explored by Saab back in the day.

January 2009 sees the completion of the project, so until then the planet remains victimized by the Exige’s carbon dioxide.