3rd round of Redundancies at Lotus 😞

Lotus Cars job losses as 'volatile market' and US tariffs blamed

Up to 270 jobs are to go due to "evolving market conditions including the US tariffs", Lotus says.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[virtualmacho]

"It will have the strong embedded Lotus DNA"

My guess is some form of water ingress.

 

[geoffbland]

Earnings call this morning points to Hethel remaining as an engineering / design / marketing / very low production situation. They are Euro 7 exempt until 2030. They also said an updated V6 model will enter in 2027 with facelift as well as plug in hybrid tech. I think Hethel will be expected to build around 1k sports cars per year going forward and expect in 2027 for the price to jump significantly. Finally the Emira Cup with 430BHP and a lot of carbon coming?

That's my read on it too. Abandon the 10,000 sports cars a year idea and scale back down to 1,000-3,000 a year; as sales show that's the market and now they have reduced the workforce to 500+ that's all they can produce at Hethel. So similar volumes as traditionally managed by Lotus prior to Geely. EVs still to be made in China, where they have cheap labour and materials for batteries. No chance of a US factory as it doesn't make economic sense even with tariffs, the only advantage to doing that would be to appease Trump but there's a high chance he'll just change his mind again so too risky. Hybrid engines (probably range-extender rather than driving hybrids) to try and revitalise the EV segment. Facelift/Cup-Sport Emira in a couple of years. Hethel being kept on for design and for heritage, possibly a halo product from Hethel too in very low volumes (10s) for show, maybe a facelift Evija.

 

[geoffbland]

...And then we have also a new model, internal project code, we call it Vision X. That project, we are foreseeing to launch into the market in 2027.
Wonder what Vision X will be - sounds like a hybrid competitor to Artura, 296, etc.

The type-135 electric sports cars was meant to be released in 2027 - maybe this is Vision-X. That's meant to be the successor to the Elise rather than a Artura/296 competitor. Maybe would be hybrid now rather than all electric. I would also suspect this would be built in China.

 

[Six Speed Stephen]

The type-135 electric sports cars was meant to be released in 2027 - maybe this is Vision-X. That's meant to be the successor to the Elise rather than a Artura/296 competitor. Maybe would be hybrid now rather than all electric. I would also suspect this would be built in China.

Vision X sounds like a different car than the 135. Some hyper hybrid performance car with 1,000 miles in range. I would guess they're keeping China for the Hybrid SUV's/Sedan's high volume, and Hethel for low volume (Emira, Emira Hybrid, Vision X) for the "prominence" "Lotus DNA" hence the scale down at Hethel, which coincides with the 50% reduction in Emira sales.

Maybe the Vision X is the V8 they're exploring. Hybrid V8 seems like a competitive product right now

 

[seriously]

Maybe vision X is a hybrid evija. Would make sense if they want to elevate the brand.

 

[Biggles of Norwich]

I'm also very curious. All the recent redundancies at Hethel suggest that at the very least they must be severely scaling back Emira production if not planning to halt it altogether. Who knows, maybe the $300m is to move production elsewhere? I suspect that kind of money wouldn't go very far when it comes to developing new models.

Emira production is due to restart next week. A source at Hethel says they have a year's worth of Emira orders. No idea what that translates to in terms of numbers of cars!

 

[GrahamClark_60-68]

Autocar released their take on the call in this article today. Their impressions parallel what’s already been stated but with this interesting takeaway that no one seems to have mentioned yet: “The current four-cylinder Emira Turbo, which uses a Mercedes-AMG petrol engine, appears to on the chopping block amid the EU7 makeover.”

Lotus Emira to go hybrid! | Autocar

Sports car will gain same 'Hyper Hybrid' technology being developed for the brand's luxury EVs

www.autocar.co.uk

 

[anshumanoz]

I'm quoting an article here and I feel it captures my sentiment exactly - "That's a whole lot of inconsistency and no finite action plans for a brand whose recent products have almost all been financial failures. Technically, all is not lost, and Geely may yet bail out the brand, but from where we're sitting, things are looking bad for Lotus. We hope we're wrong."

To add to the above - its the uncertainty that really annoys me. Pick a lane, see it through.