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Internal combustion final:
The final editions of the Lotus Elise Sport 240 (blue), Lotus Exige Sport 390 (yellow) and Exige Sport 420 (red) will only be built until the end of the year, then the Lotus Emira will follow as the last internal combustion model before the complete conversion to electric
Photo: Jordan Butters
Lotus sports cars were once used in James Bond films, the brand had a highly successful Formula 1 team - but these heyday were a few decades ago.
In the past decade, the former high-gloss finish of Lotus noticeably faded: the British wore out CEOs as if on the assembly line, changes of ownership repeatedly led to grandiose announcements - which were never actually implemented.
Photo: Jens Büttner / dpa / dpa-tmn
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Lotus sold just 1,400 vehicles in 2020, something like that is not even a side note in the auto world. However, Lotus has had a new, financially strong owner for four years:
Li Shufu
(57), founder of the Chinese car maker Geely, Volvo owner and major Daimler shareholder. When he bought Lotus four years ago, Li declared that he wanted to revamp the starving British sports car brand - and soon made billions in investments, as manager magazin reported almost two years ago.
Now a report in the Financial Times (FT) shows how far the British have come with their comeback plans.
Lotus can invest a total of 2.5 billion pounds in the resurrection by 2028, they want to produce exclusively electric cars in the future - and increase their sales figures to "tens of thousands" annually by the middle of the decade.
It almost sounds like a speech by Boris Johnson about Britain's bright post-Brexit future.
Lotus plant planned in China
To achieve this goal, Lotus is completely overhauling its model range, and in future the British will also produce electric SUVs in addition to purely battery-powered sports cars.
Lotus is currently creating hundreds of new jobs in Great Britain: The Lotus Emira is to be built from the end of the year - the last sports car model with an internal combustion engine under the hood.
The production figures in the main plant in Hethel are expected to triple in the next seven years, but at the same time Lotus will also open a plant in China - by the way, the first Lotus factory outside the Kingdom.
"Tens of thousands instead of thousands of cars a year"
"The plan will lead us into new segments and new parts of the auto market," said Lotus CEO Matt Windle, who has been in office since January, to the "FT". "When the lifestyle products and the new sports cars hit the market, we're talking about tens of thousands of cars a year, not thousands". While sports car production will remain in Great Britain, the SUVs will in future be manufactured in China. And as befits a sports car brand, Lotus has already presented the prototype of an electric "hypercar": the Evija, a 2000 hp bolide, of which only 130 are to be built - at a unit price of a good 2 million euros.
Last year, Lotus manufactured exactly 1,378 vehicles, with a turnover of 96 million pounds and a loss of 14 million pounds.
According to the FT, the bad numbers are due to the outdated range of products.
The currently built sports car models Elise, Evora and Exige will be completely canceled, from the end of the year only the new Emira will be built in Hethel - and in future all-electric sports cars.
These will then be on one of a total of two purely electric platforms that are being developed together with Renault's sports car brand Alpine.
Cooperation on parts between the British and French is also conceivable, according to Windle, but no Alpine models in Great Britain or Lotus sports cars in France.
Plans for an electric SUV: Porsche, Lamborghini and Aston Martin are ahead
Lotus' expertise in lightweight construction will be incorporated into the development of the second e-platform for electric SUVs.
The SUV platform must also be "light and simple," said Windle - and result in off-road vehicles with a high level of driving pleasure.
With its SUV plans, Lotus is entering a competitive market segment among sports car specialists: In addition to Porsche and Lamborghini, the British competition from Aston Martin also has such a vehicle on offer with the DBX.
Even Ferrari is planning a higher-level sports car with the Purosangue.
What Lotus is still missing, however, Windle also let through to the FT: The brand still lacks a battery contract.
Only suppliers from Great Britain or the EU area come into consideration, because this is the only way duty-free deliveries to Great Britain are possible.
This also shows that Brexit is still causing problems for the British auto industry.
wed
