See, the rumour of a tie-up with Lotus for a revival of the MR-2 sportscar has been floating around for a while. The Hethel marque has openly spoken of the next electric-powered Elise – which could serve as the MR-2’s British twin – packing a ‘chest’ battery pack sitting around where the engine would traditionally. This, as opposed to the more ubiquitous ‘Skateboard’ in-the-floor battery layout of many EVs. As for the GR prototype shown here? It’s an aggressive-looking thing but don’t let the supercar muscles fool you. The compact dimensions and pop-out roof are telling of a spiritual MR-2 successor with possible Lotus genes.
The other concept that very much caught our eye is the Sports Battery EV, badged as a Lexus. Without beating about the bush at all, Toyota president Akio Toyoda claimed it “inherits the driving taste, or the secret sauce, of the performance cultivated via the development of the LFA”. There’s talk of solid-state batteries, too, for high-performance cars capable of 0-62mph in the low twos, while also having range capabilities of over 434miles (700km).
Aesthetically, it looks like Toyota’s FT-One Concept – the car that inspired the GR Supra – has moved on with a new and evolved Lexus styling language that’s evident across many of these prototypes. It’s really quite beautiful, but also technical, in a typically Japanese way that we first saw with the curvaceous A80 Supra and FD generation Mazda RX-7 of the 1990s.