The first day of the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed got off to an inauspicious start for Lotus, after one of its wild electric hypercars crashed seconds after heading up the famed hillclimb.
Lotus’ Evija X – based on the production Evija electric hypercar, but with even wilder aerodynamics – left the start line performing a four-wheel burnout, creating a huge smokeshow behind it.
However, the perhaps cruel joke of ‘Lots of Trouble, Usually Serious’ soon kicked in, as the Evija X turned hard right into the hay bales lining the course, bouncing off the barrier and eventually coming to a rest.
The cause of the crash is not yet known, though given the Evija X is powered by an electric motor on each axle – producing up to 1500kW and 1704Nm – it’s possible one of the motors stopped working, effectively pulling it in one direction.
It’s not the first time a car has crashed at Goodwood: last year a one-off Hyundai RN22e concept crashed at the high-speed Molecomb corner.
A similar fate was suffered by multi gold-medal Olympian and amateur racer Sir Chris Hoy in 2014, who went off the track in the same spot aboard a Nissan GT-R.
Lotus hasn’t yet announced how much damage the Evija X suffered, or whether it’ll be repaired to head back to the Nürburgring after setting the fourth-fastest time around the Nordschleife course last year.
