RE: Lotus EV hypercar plans emerge...
Discussion
Tri_Doc said:
Just when you think everything is going to get better for Lotus, they pull defeat from the jaws of victory.
Why not use the existing Geely group tech to build a mega hybrid hatch or a profit churning cayenne alternative to enable expansion of the 2 seater range?
Who says they aren't ?Why not use the existing Geely group tech to build a mega hybrid hatch or a profit churning cayenne alternative to enable expansion of the 2 seater range?
CABC said:
It’ll reset price expectations in the market. Lotus has diminished cache in the market right now but in 7 years time once a real halo has been produced their parts bin special that you describe will be well over 50k, and will sell in reasonable global volume.
On a similar note I wonder what the purpose of a loss making Bugatti was? Fantastic halo that vast majority of people don’t realise is related to VW or Audi? Was it just a vanity project or is there a long term payback?
I think that’s really the point. Lotus needs to push prices higher but the brand is just not strong enough to do that. Having a £2m hypercar washing around will genuinely reset consumers’ perceptions. On a similar note I wonder what the purpose of a loss making Bugatti was? Fantastic halo that vast majority of people don’t realise is related to VW or Audi? Was it just a vanity project or is there a long term payback?
However, being Lotus their solution to the enormous weight of the battery pack will probably be to make the hypercar a track only car where you run a long extension cable to a plug socket in the centre of the circuit and then just drive round and round off the mains.
To me this feels like an irrelevance. But I guess there is merit in the argument that they need to change the perception of the brand, so that customers stop expecting performance cars cheaper than a top spec hot hatch.
In the 21st century you need to appeal to rap stars and vacuous YouTube ‘celebrities’. Then the millennials might consider Lotus a ‘must have’ lifestyle accessory.
In the 21st century you need to appeal to rap stars and vacuous YouTube ‘celebrities’. Then the millennials might consider Lotus a ‘must have’ lifestyle accessory.
DonkeyApple said:
However, being Lotus their solution to the enormous weight of the battery pack will probably be to make the hypercar a track only car where you run a long extension cable to a plug socket in the centre of the circuit and then just drive round and round off the mains.
That’s the kind of innovative blue sky thinking that Lotus need to stand out from the herd. SpudLink said:
To me this feels like an irrelevance. But I guess there is merit in the argument that they need to change the perception of the brand, so that customers stop expecting performance cars cheaper than a top spec hot hatch.
In the 21st century you need to appeal to rap stars and vacuous YouTube ‘celebrities’. Then the millennials might consider Lotus a ‘must have’ lifestyle accessory.
Not so innovative, reminded me of my old VertiBird helicopter... In the 21st century you need to appeal to rap stars and vacuous YouTube ‘celebrities’. Then the millennials might consider Lotus a ‘must have’ lifestyle accessory.
DonkeyApple said:
However, being Lotus their solution to the enormous weight of the battery pack will probably be to make the hypercar a track only car where you run a long extension cable to a plug socket in the centre of the circuit and then just drive round and round off the mains.
That’s the kind of innovative blue sky thinking that Lotus need to stand out from the herd. 
98elise said:
Then there is the fact that the lotus VVA modular chassis can be used for ICE, Electric or Hybrid drivetrains
https://www.lotuscars.com/engineering/vehicle-plat...
...and the fact the Tesla roadster used the Elise chassis.
Tesla had to massively re-engineer the Elise platform to work as an electric car, changing almost everything - suspension, sub frames, panels, etc. In the end it apparently used 7% Lotus parts.https://www.lotuscars.com/engineering/vehicle-plat...
...and the fact the Tesla roadster used the Elise chassis.
Musk is on record stating had they known this beforehand they would just have started from scratch.
I'm sure I've seen that Autocar rendering before somewhere.....oh yeah!
On a slightly more prosaic note, surely a high end, 2 seat Lotus EV with X hundred horsepower and Y thousand Nm of torque based on Volvo architecture is just going to be a re-badged Polestar 1??? It would be commercial madness to do anything else?
On a slightly more prosaic note, surely a high end, 2 seat Lotus EV with X hundred horsepower and Y thousand Nm of torque based on Volvo architecture is just going to be a re-badged Polestar 1??? It would be commercial madness to do anything else?
DonkeyApple said:
Only really surpassed by the later DertiBird....
....with its own theme song!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RAH-bK2cUs
Olivera said:
Tesla had to massively re-engineer the Elise platform to work as an electric car, changing almost everything - suspension, sub frames, panels, etc. In the end it apparently used 7% Lotus parts.
Tesla did much the same "re-engineering" to turn the Elise into the Roadster that Lotus did to turn the Elise into the V6 Exige. Nothing really to do with it being Electric - different body, different drivetrain, different rear subframe to hold the drivetrain, different front subframe to hold the cooling gubbins, different body for styling reasons and to deal with the different wheelbase created by the different rear subframe, tweeked suspension tuning to deal with the different weight,...CABC said:
On a similar note I wonder what the purpose of a loss making Bugatti was? Fantastic halo that vast majority of people don’t realise is related to VW or Audi? Was it just a vanity project or is there a long term payback?
There is precisely zero evidence that Bugatti has actually made a loss in the long term.The "Bugatti makes $4 million loss on every car story" was basically made up by a "consulting" group when only about 70 cars had been delivered.
This figure which the original consulting firm essentially said was just for fun has been doing the rounds for about 12 years and got repeated until it's fact.
Considering that the Bugatti Veyron cost considerably more (average sale price € 2.6m) than cars like the Porsche Carrera GT, Mercedes SLR and Ferrari Enzo that sold in comparable or lower volumes it seems rather odd that VW couldn't design and make a limited production supercar for 1.2 billion euros. That isn't covering the servicing which is extortionate on a new level.
VW is a commercial company, losing $4 million per Bugatti would essentially wipe out the profits made by Bentley (today never mind 10 years ago).
It is basically illegal to willing make a massive loss, and there is no business reason to lose hundreds of millions per year on Bugatti, as you point out it's not advertising or any other loss leader. VW have non exec directors and works council representatives who specifically exist to stop the company doing crazy things like that.
It is perfectly possible to lose money on car manufacture, but to lose multiples of the sales price of the car the only way to do it to sell substantially less cars than you had planned to sell. Bugatti didn't do this, they had originally planned to sell 300 and in the end sold 450.
There two other scenarios for losing money, one is that you development costs are excessive, let's say that the original business case was break even at 300 cars at € 1 million per car and development costs were €150 million and production costs were € 0.5 million per car.
To lose a million per car would need the development costs to go from €150 million to €450 million, to lose 4 million it would need to go to from €150 million to €1350 million, once you equate for the € 2.6m sale price and 450 units you now need it to be €2745 million.
In a modern enterprise with modern reporting tools you would be able to track spend and estimated cost to completion, you would simply kill a project when it becomes obvious that the estimated cost at completion means that you would be better off just writing off the sunk cost and cancelling the programme.
The other way to lose money is to sell the car for less than it costs to make it. This not a sustainable position and a real enterprise won't keep a negative margin on a car apart from in the early days of production, it's simply cheaper to stop making the car if its costing you money. It could be that each car doesn't make enough margin to pay back the development costs but you can't lose more than the sale price unless you are making each car at a negative margin.
However they sold 1.5 times as many Veyrons as were originally planned and for more than double the initial price. I don't think it is credible that the Veyron was being sold for a per unit loss if they priced manufacture to make money when the car sold for €1 million.
In short I suspect that the Veyron's economic performance ranges from a minor loss to a massive profit. The fact that they have developed a successor is indicative that they did as a minimum break even.
The Veyron is far from the first hypercar that is claimed to have lost the manufacturer money, my suspicion is that this might be deliberate as the best way to convince a buyer to part with €1-2.6 million for a car is to convince them that it is really a €4-6 million car!
kambites said:
Olivera said:
Tesla had to massively re-engineer the Elise platform to work as an electric car, changing almost everything - suspension, sub frames, panels, etc. In the end it apparently used 7% Lotus parts.
Tesla did much the same "re-engineering" to turn the Elise into the Roadster that Lotus did to turn the Elise into the V6 Exige. Nothing really to do with it being Electric - different body, different drivetrain, different rear subframe to hold the drivetrain, different front subframe to hold the cooling gubbins, different body for styling reasons and to deal with the different wheelbase created by the different rear subframe, tweeked suspension tuning to deal with the different weight,...Lotus made the Tesla Roadster as a glider, they shipped car as a rolling chassis with everything but the drivetrain which was installed in California.
The Crack Fox said:
The picture is nothing like it, though, and it's not strictly a 100% Lotus project either.
So it is based on the Polestar platform then?And the reason for the ‘Omega’ project name is presumably some wag realising that the omega symbol is used to denote electrical resistance... see what they did there? Electrical Resistance for all those die hard ICE fans.
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