Lotus declares Hethel open for business
New Hethel Performance Hub is intended to attract engineering partnerships - Zenos has already signed on
Lotus, you’ll hardly need reminding, has not enjoyed much luck recently. In fact, the firm appeared to be hemorrhaging so many employees from its famed Norfolk headquarters last year that we wondered how many could be left, and what precisely they were doing inside the giant facility. Well, it turns out one thing they were busy seeing to was the completion of something called the Hethel Performance Hub, which was officially launched this week by Minister for Industry, Chris McDonald.
The what now? ‘The Hub brings together engineering, manufacturing and testing capability within a single site’, says the Lotus blurb. Given that the single site in question is Hethel, a location already famous for engineering, manufacturing and testing, you might wonder what all the fuss is about. But what we’re talking about here is less about Lotus-branded sports cars (still the factory’s day job) and more about ‘creating new opportunities for partners to collaborate, develop and manufacture at the site’.
In other words, Lotus is hoping to use some of its spare production capacity and expertise in vehicle development to attract other OEMs to Hethel - a physical expansion of the old Lotus Engineering business model, where it quietly (often secretly) did a magnificent job of making other people’s cars handle better. We won’t bore you with a rundown of its previous clients, though apparently well-known examples of its previous collaborations were on display for the Minister, but suffice it to say the list is both long and distinguished.
The list of ‘current and prospective’ partners is perhaps less auspicious right now - Charge Cars, for example, is said to be using the Hub to perfect its Mustang-bodied EV - though news that Zenos intends to build new examples of its flyweight roadster (which we drove toward the end of last year) at Hethel is a more significant announcement, and doubtless represents the sort of reciprocal relationship that Lotus would like to foster with other manufacturers, foreign or domestic.
Though it doesn't mention its Chapman manufacturing centre by name, Autocar suggests that the flexibility of this facility - which assembles cars at work stations rather than a fixed production line - is key to the third-party appeal of the Performance Hub, because it allows other platforms to be conveniently added to a process that currently builds 2,500-3,000 Emiras a year. And when you consider that the factory was overhauled in 2022 to produce up to 15,000 cars a year, clearly Hethel has some space for its new friends.
Of course, Zenos originally featured many old friends, which likely helped firm up the new partnership - but with improvements to the surrounding road infrastructure taken into account, alongside Hethel’s innate ability to help with everything from individual components to novel vehicle architecture, Lotus obviously feels like it still has the kudos and technical bandwidth to appeal to a host of companies looking for help.
Or as Paul Abercrombie, Charge Holdings’ CEO put it: “We are delighted to be one of the first organisations moving to the Hethel Performance Hub. This is a defining moment for Charge Holdings as Hethel offers something genuinely unique: a live, integrated environment where engineering, manufacturing and motorsport capability sit side by side.” If Lotus convinces more people that its UK operation possesses not just a healthy pulse, but also the industrial heft needed for longer-term collaboration, it might yet find its luck change. Let’s hope so.
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