Future of Lotus

[Bibs]

No, there's a section of management (inc JMG) who are in the 'white building' that Proton built and used for some time, a long time ago and they've been in there for a good number of years. No new construction, the extra 'engine & gearbox' factory that Bahar commissioned on the old ASO location is still just the steelwork frame as it has been for a couple of years now... 

[NedaSay]

Thanks for clarifying.

[Bibs]

That whole article is poorly researched and written to be fair, I'd not pay attention to much in there! 

[Colin G]

New Lotus story giving JMG's plans on Pistonheads front page, instantly followed by a wave of negativity in the comments section. That place really is waste of time if you're anything other than a Porsche fanboy. At least the article itself was fairly positive.

[NedaSay]

JMG is following his plan and I have read on a thread Lotustalk.com that production appears to be close to 70 cars a week that is pretty much 3500 cars per year. So if they can sustain these levels now without Evora roadster which is anticipated to represent a fair chunk of cars sold in the US... Things are looking up.

No 450BHP on the Evora is a bit disappointing as the car is more than probably able to cope with the power and the cooling has been designed to handle the extra load. But there's a logic to let the 3Eleven be the sole user of the revised engine during its production run and possibly introduce the engine on the evora at the end of it. I guess Evora 400 SPORT will feature the probax seat showed a while back, the louvered tail gate, a big wing, lighter battery and rear seat removal.

[C8RKH]

46 minutes ago, NedaSay said:

 I guess Evora 400 SPORT will feature the probax seat showed a while back, the louvered tail gate, a big wing, lighter battery and rear seat removal.

More dosh for less. But then as they say less is more.

So in 2 years I buy Colin's nice red Evora 400, 2 years after that who's gonna have a nice red 400 Sport for me to buy? The future's not orange, it's bright RED!

[NedaSay]

Still I'd like to see an Evora 450 GT with all the Evora Sport 400 adjustments, and Cup style extra aero bits, the moment they are done selling the 3Eleven ; so mid 2017 with any luck. 

[Bibs]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/12095259/Lotus-on-the-road-to-recovery-as-losses-narrow.html

[NedaSay]

That's good news. The company is gearing up for it's first year in the black in March 2016 or maybe possibly just a small loss as they seem to me that they are slightly (2 month or so) behind their expected schedule with the Evora 400 US launch scheduled for april, when the car should have started shipping in december then january... 

Good news is that even with a substantially reduced  staff Lotus engineering is contributing to the results in a significative manner. 

Geneva should be quite a year at Lotus with no less than Evora 400 roadster, 3Eleven, Exige Sport 350 to have their first autoshow display.  

[TBD]

Its also old news, reflecting the FY that ended last March. I'm much more interested in the numbers for the running year, I'm sure we'll be reading about that soon enough. 

[Bibs]

In the UK, companies get 9 months from their year end to submit their accounts. Don't hold your breath although JMG did tell me in Dec that he expects this year to bring them into the black financially.

[TLF News]

Lotus Sales up 60% in the UK for 2015

[NedaSay]

The question being are the sales up 60% on the rest of the planet for the same period...

[TBD]

Plus 23% (142 cars), 5 new dealers in Germany. Also not bad. 

[DaveC72]

Lotus Cars have tweeted a bunch of similar stats:

 

1. Lotus Cars ‏@grouplotusplc  4h4 hours ago

   Italy saw a 44% increase in new car registrations of Lotus cars with registrations up from 39 in 2014 to 56 in 2015. #Lotus #evora400 #Elise

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2.  

   Lotus Cars ‏@grouplotusplc  4h4 hours ago

   New car registrations of Lotus cars in France are up by 38%, with 108 cars registered in 2015 from 78 in 2014. #Lotus #Evora #Elise #Exige

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3.  

   Lotus Cars ‏@grouplotusplc  4h4 hours ago

   In Germany, new Lotus car registrations are up by 23% for 2015 compared to 2014, with sales of 142 cars in 2015 compared to 115 in 2014.

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[NedaSay]

3000 cars sold for 2016 should not be too much of a stretch when  your home market looks up and the immediate Europe is up it generally bodes well... 

It will be interesting to see the numbers in Japan and the middle east. Japan has long been Lotus most important market after the US. The middle east has been one of Lotus main focus these past four years with 3/4 dealers now serving the UAE.... It will never be a mass market but it will be a good indicator of Lotus premium appeal as there's very little customer loyalty over there. 

Edited January 21, 2016 by NedaSay

[Bravo73]

Does anybody know how many Evora 400 have been sold so far?

[NedaSay]

Only Lotus Cars knows at this point.

[auRouge]

The Spring air is almost upon us... The Lotus dealers have plenty of cool cars to sell this year, let's hope JMG's got a plan to tell the normal non petrol heads (city boys, lawyers and doctors (airline pilots!)) that Lotus Cars have something they may want to buy for the weekend instead of a Boxter, Cockster or 911...

A long way to go but surely the numbers they can manufacture could easily be sold around the globe to pave the path for new investment?

[Bibs]

9 hours ago, NedaSay said:

Only Lotus Cars knows at this point.

I did post the numbers in another thread. 

[NedaSay]

Uh which one ? Did you post UK numbers or global ones?

[Bibs]

UK and USA which I believe we 75 UK and 350-400 USA orders iirc.

[JayEmm]

I'm relatively new to the whole Lotus thing but I think the news coming out of the factory seems to be generally good, they seem to be going the right way and I am personally really excited to see what they do.

I'd LOVE to see a new Esprit, something to take the fight to Ferrari and McLaren. But for now I am happy for JMG do the things necessary to keep the company in good health. And the Evora 400 is a mighty thing on its own.

[NedaSay]

5 hours ago, Bibs said:

UK and USA which I believe we 75 UK and 350-400 USA orders iirc.

That leaves out a lot of countries! Some of which are pretty big markets for Lotus, we know deliveries have started in Germany, France and Japan and we don't have the numbers for these markets so until Lotus publishes the sales for 2015-2016 MY we don't know much however we can do some projections. 

[NedaSay]

I don't know if it was mentioned already but Lotus parent company, Proton is spending some 100M GBP developing no less than 7 new engines :

• 1.0 litre three-cylinder VVT (Variable Valve Timing)
• 1.2 litre three-cylinder VVT
• 1.3 litre four-cylinder GDI (gasoline direct injection)
• 1.3 litre four-cylinder TGDI (turbocharged gasoline direct injection)
• 1.5 litre four-cylinder GDI
• 1.5 litre four-cylinder TGDI (anticipated to produce over 180bhp)
• 2.0 litre four-cylinder (formally known as Petronas E01 which produced 200bhp way back when... )  

Actually, it is more like 2 engines a 3 cylinder (1.0L and 1.2L displacement) and a 4 cylinder (1.3L a 1.5L with a turbo variant, and  2L) - all derived from a nearly 20 years old engine project developed when Petronas was Sauber's main partner and Osamu Goto was running their engine side (Petronas badged Ferrari engines) .  All these engine are actually derived loosely from the original Petronas E01 as Proton purchased all patents and other assets pertaining to the project. Fun stuff petronas actually fitted that engine into a Lotus Elise back then for testing purposes.

Now, developing a whole family of engine is not easy business especially on that little money. However if you look at the numbers closely, Proton is actually developing one modular engine as they chop the 4 cylinder block to create the 3 cylinder engine ; all engines will share same bore (the diameter of the circular chambers cut into the cylinder block), only the stroke will change which means that they are only developing one set of pistons and all the systems VVT, GDI, turbo, miller cycle... can be freely shared. only the camshaft needs to be either chopped as the block - which is necessary any way - or modified to produce the longer or shorter stroke needed to change the overall displacement. 

The good stuff is that they are entrusting the development of said engine to Ricardo , the company manufacturing the McLaren V8 and the Bugatti 7 speed gearbox among other things and which was originally working on the project almost 20 years ; and Lotus. 

All these units are currently testing in the UK and are reported to be rolled out from 2017 onwards. At the start these new engines will be iron blocks with but Proton COO said that in due time they will switch over to all aluminium, as of now only the pistons and other bits will be. However these engines will be EURO 6c compliant as proton is aiming at a comeback in the UK. 

So a 1.5L TGDI with 180 bhp and a 2L with 200bhp+ , surely cheaper than a Toyota 1.8 or their upcoming 1.6 Turbo, and available by the time the new Elise and the SUV are out, and Lotus is already fiddling with it... I am probably just seeing a pie in the sky or maybe just maybe could Lotus get "home made engines again"  ?   

 

Paul Tan the Malaysian car blogger has covered the topic at length so follow the link to read more if you are procrastinating your day/night away.