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Hear! Hear! 🍻🍻

Yup. Maybe it's because Matt came up through the engineering ranks, but he just doesn't seem interested in customers. You'd like to think that the MD of a small sports car specialist like Lotus Cars would be hanging out with customers at drive days, attending Goodwood, chatting with...

Totally agree, but my point is that none of that is the reason why Lotus may close Hethel and relocate to the US. Yes, Lotus Cars under Windle has done a lousy job with Emira customer service, quality control, etc. No debate. But at the end of the day, the Emira has sold reasonably well. The...

Geely yes, Matt W not really. Matt, Lotus Cars, and the Emira are just a side show for Lotus Technology. Emira has sold pretty well and originally it was only supposed to be on sale for ~4 years before being replaced by the all-electric TYP135. The disaster is all about Geely's bad...

It's a Geely factory. Lotus just has a contract manufacturing arrangement with Geely . . . I'm sure they can reallocate the manufacturing capacity to another brand. My bet is that Hethel continues to make the Emira (at least for a few more years), but the EVs end up being built in a shared...

I think both things can be true. EVs were already struggling to sell in most markets because the infrastructure isn't ready, they're too expensive, resale values suck, and so on . . . but also, the introduction of US tariffs is negatively impacting car manufacturers, especially Chinese car...

Nope. That's not what the CEO said in the investor call earlier this week. This is the product pipeline he presented. You can see that the "new model" TYP 134 is set to debut later this year and go on sale in Q1 2026. He described it as a "world first hyper performance PHEV".

It almost looks like someone has taped off sections of the car for a respray, and then the tape has lifted paint off when it was removed!

Absolutely. They need a solution to the US tariff problem before they launch the TYP 134 later this year. They have to position that vehicle for success, or Lotus really will be finished.

This is the first time I've seen this type of paint issue on an Emira. From the photos, it could be paint damage rather than a manufacturing fault? I wonder if some apprentice at the dealership had a crack at it with a buffing wheel? You can really f*ck up the paint if you don't know what...

We tend to focus on the Emira (this is an Emira forum!). But Hethel and the Emira are really just a distraction in this situation. The Chinese leadership (effectively Geely) have burned over a billion dollars because of a combination of poor strategy and bad luck: 1. They bet that the world...

Nah. They said on the investor call that Lotus is in the early stages of examining some form of US production to be shared by multiple Geely brands. The US tariffs are a serious problem for all the Geely brands that currently manufacture in China and want to sell in America . . . Volvo...

Wow. This AI summary is bloody impressive. Which LLM did you use?

Look at this stunner!

Q1 was pretty dismal, as expected. Only 555 Emiras delivered and 1,274 total vehicles. Q2 will presumably be as bad or worse due to the suspension of US deliveries. At least they are mostly finished with de-stocking, so perhaps UK used Emira values will improve. On the investment call it...

I think it's a lousy video, though I agree with many of the things James says in it. It's more of a self-indulgent and wide-ranging rant than an objective discussion of "where Lotus went so wrong". He misses the most important point: that Lotus has burned over a billion dollars because they...

In fairness to your supplier, that looks like the standard Xpel template. If you want them to custom-cut and remove trims/parts to avoid those seams, you should expect it to cost more. Having said that, PPF is certainly expensive in your country! In Australia for $9K I could have got a full...

My bet is a loose object like a metal nut sitting on the underfloor plate and vibrating.

Been there, done that. I was lucky to have a friend with a vehicle hoist/lift and found it easy to remove the steel floor plate. It's actually harder to remove and reinstall the lower rear bumper, so I'd just leave that alone.

Will this finally silence the experts who "know for a fact" that Lotus has ended or is about to end production of the V6? 😁

I took these in London about 18 months ago. It was a pre-production car, hence no ugly wiper (can't believe they couldn't come up with a better solution than having it sitting in the middle of the windscreen!).

Glad to see you have upgraded to Nimbus :D Fingers crossed that you have a much better ownership experience this time.

It has always seemed odd to me that the name Lotus doesn't appear anywhere on the Team Lotus JPS cars. I guess those tobacco marketing guys were tough negotiators!

Lotus clearly trying to market their racing history. Would be amazing to see the Lotus name back on an F1 car.

Absolute Lotus isn't keeping up with the news cycle. Lotus announced the 10,000 Emiras milestone back in March when they launched the Turbo SE model (in non-US markets). In fact, photos of car number 10,000 were circulated and discussed on this forum.

Hope he didn't get it cheap from Auto100. :cool:

Of course, but any decent company has a system that makes sure a letter to the CEO isn't just ignored. Normally there is an assistant who reads the letters, channels them to the appropriate person for response/follow-up and then makes sure a reply has been sent. Good CEOs also personally...

Hard to argue with that. A company can't just ignore letters to their CEO.

I was about to say the same thing, but then I remembered that Lotus sold over 35,000 Elises, so perhaps it's too soon to label Emira as their most successful car. On the other hand, it took them 26 years to sell all those Elises!

I guess when they compared the Emira to the disaster that is Emeya and Eletre, he looked pretty good!

I'm convinced the right strategy is: 1. Quietly kill off the Emeya and Eletre and stop using the contract factory in Wuhan 2. Build the TYP 134 (Macan competitor) in Hethel with a hybrid engine. This could be done alongside the Polestar 6 electric roadster to get volume savings...