Lotus is pitching itself as the coming electric performance luxury car brand ahead of its public listing later this year, but the Geely-owned company is facing a series of headwinds that has already forced it to pull back on its near-term ambitions.
Lotus last week brought to the UK its new Emeya electric saloon, a rival to the Mercedes EQS, and in meetings with journalists projected outward confidence that the company was on course to achieve its long-term target of 150,000 cars per year by 2028.
Deliveries for the Emeya start next year and follow those of the Lotus Eletre large electric SUV, which have already begun in China. However, it’s the smaller SUV, codenamed Type 134 – aimed at the Porsche Macan and scheduled for launch in 2024 ahead of deliveries in 2026 – that is targeted to account for the bulk of the 150,000 annual sales at a planned 80,000-90,000 a year from 2027. That suggests it’ll be as popular as the Macan itself, which last year reached 86,724 sales.
But this ambitious plan has already run into problems, with sales figures revised downwards twice. As part of its initial pitch to investors in its share offering, Lotus Technology (essentially the Chinese electric vehicle arm of the company) forecast that Lotus would sell 21,500 cars this year, of which 18,000 would be the Eletre SUV.
In June, however, that figure was lowered to 12,000 (including 8000 of Eletre), according to Lotus’s October filing to US financial authority the SEC. Last month, it was revised downward again to 9000, of which 6000 would be the Eletre.
Lotus blamed a “prolonged custom clearance process” for the delays, while Lotus Tech chief commercial officer Mike Johnstone (pictured below) told Autocar that a shortage of semiconductors had also affected the roll-out of the Eletre.
Lotus also faced slow progress in getting its much-praised Lotus Emira combustion-engine sports car to customers in the key market of the US, with dealers still waiting for deliveries into autumn this year, almost a year later than initially promised. Up to the end of September, Lotus said it had shipped 4800 of both the Eletre and Emira globally this year, without breaking down the numbers.
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