The Lotus Elise isn't typical Green Car Reports material, but its aluminum chassis certainly is.

The lightweight, strong, bonded structure has gone on to underpin the Tesla Roadster, Detroit Electric SP:01, PG Elektrus, Nemesis and more--all exciting electric-powered sports cars.

But not all electric sports cars have to be Lotus-based--take this electric TommyKaira ZZ spotted by Gas2.

Tommy who? Unless you're a videogamer familiar with the Gran Turismo or Forza series on PlayStation or Xbox, you might not have heard of TommyKaira before.

The Japanese firm usually puts its efforts into tuning Nissan and Subaru vehicles, but it's made one or two in-house sports cars in the past too--usually powered by Nissan engines.

The ZZ you see here is one of those vehicles, its resemblance to the popular Lotus more a result of automotive convergent evolution than any underlying similarity.

Like the Lotus, and the electric cars it spawned, it uses its small and lightweight qualities to go quickly, rather than huge amounts of power.

Not that a 305 horsepower, 300 lb-ft electric motor isn't rather healthy in a car weighing just 1,870 pounds. It's enough for the electric ZZ to sprint to 60 mph in around 3.9 seconds.

The electric ZZ was developed in conjunction with GreenLord Motors, a company based on the Campus of Kyoto’s University.

And as you can see in the video above, it looks a whole lot of fun.

With no roof--and the small issue of finding one anywhere outside of Japan--it's hardly the most practical of electric vehicles ever.

But with Tesla's Roadster gone, it wouldn't harm to have another figurehead electric roadster to lust after, would it?

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