RE: Why Lotus won't be building an SUV - yet

RE: Why Lotus won't be building an SUV - yet

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BIRMA

3,803 posts

193 months

Friday 22nd March 2019
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DonkeyApple said:
I think the key aspect that Lotus must cater to is that the largest number of wealthy people, the single biggest group of high end consumers, almost all live in or around cities that have these ever tightening emission controls that require hybridisation to bypass easily, combined with an ever growing demand from this type of consumer for a high end product to enable them to justify their purchase socially. And frankly if there is one brand out there that should be able to achieve this with bells on it is Lotus, whose ‘add lightness’ mantra is at the very heart of adding ‘greenness’.
What a depressing thought, thank God I live out in the sticks where naturally aspirated and turbo monsters with 8 or more cylinders are free to roam.

DonkeyApple

54,923 posts

168 months

Friday 22nd March 2019
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BIRMA said:
What a depressing thought, thank God I live out in the sticks where naturally aspirated and turbo monsters with 8 or more cylinders are free to roam.
It’s absolutely depressing but sadly we are on the cusp of generational change and companies that desire to live beyond that must adapt but for Lotus it should have been so easy yet they’ve been like 80s restauranteurs holding on to a past for a few aging clientele but not having the money and balls to change the decor to bring in hundreds of new clients. Lotus should have been at the absolute forefront of this social change and would have been if they’d just stick to what they actually were always all about.

Jellinek

274 posts

274 months

Saturday 23rd March 2019
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DonkeyApple said:
BIRMA said:
What a depressing thought, thank God I live out in the sticks where naturally aspirated and turbo monsters with 8 or more cylinders are free to roam.
It’s absolutely depressing but sadly we are on the cusp of generational change and companies that desire to live beyond that must adapt but for Lotus it should have been so easy yet they’ve been like 80s restauranteurs holding on to a past for a few aging clientele but not having the money and balls to change the decor to bring in hundreds of new clients. Lotus should have been at the absolute forefront of this social change and would have been if they’d just stick to what they actually were always all about.
My hope is that Lotus will build a car that can do both. They are not mutually exclusive surely? Something that can win in LMGTE in racing form whilst not eclipsing all hope of the road going version being a daily driver. Powertrain wise, I see no historical objection to a longitudinal mid 4 Cylinder Turbo with a KERS or other energy recovery system to increase power in motorsport mode and improve economy/ drivability when desired. Above all, I hope Omega will debut some really innovative tech or application of tech like the original Elise to deliver the competitive advantage in racing and the kudos on the street.
I honestly think there is little chance of breaking the cycle at Lotus by adding to the endless stream of under-developed, carbon loaded V engined me too supercars with mega horsepower, 24 inch screens and the ability to drive upside down at 100mph. Fingers crossed.

anonymous-user

53 months

Sunday 24th March 2019
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Check out the last 30 years history and the only car that's actually worked for Lotus is the original Elise and its many, many children. Astoundingly, the Elise was pulled together on the back of a fag packet when the company was in dire straits. I always felt their "next car" should have been a larger version with longitudinal V6 but that never happened - and Porsche moved in to take the territory.

I wouldn't want to be a Lotus product planner right now. Whichever direction they turn they're likely to face stiff competition from established manufacturers with good products and dealer/service networks. There must also be a huge question mark over whether the "brand" has anything relevant to say in today's market.

Having said that - if they build a car that fits my life I will buy it!

Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 24th March 13:50

deltashad

6,731 posts

196 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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Looks like testing is on going at Hethal with the Lync & co body suv.
This could be a good marriage, lotus have made many collaborations which have sold successfully over the years. The only failure I can think of was the Proton, which was a bit max power and lacking power.
As reports have said, it may just be a platform mule. Still, the thought of a reasonably priced SUV with some Lotus Angel dust wouldn't be such a bad thing.

DonkeyApple

54,923 posts

168 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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deltashad said:
Looks like testing is on going at Hethal with the Lync & co body suv.
This could be a good marriage, lotus have made many collaborations which have sold successfully over the years. The only failure I can think of was the Proton, which was a bit max power and lacking power.
As reports have said, it may just be a platform mule. Still, the thought of a reasonably priced SUV with some Lotus Angel dust wouldn't be such a bad thing.
They do need a product that sells in regular volume, across multiple markets and with good margins to help underpin their core business but do we know yet if any such vehicle will be someone else’s with a Lotus badge gliednon the back and shoved out the door with a load of marketing guff or whether it will actually be someone else’s car turned into a Lotus?

Composite Guru

2,205 posts

202 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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DonkeyApple said:
deltashad said:
Looks like testing is on going at Hethal with the Lync & co body suv.
This could be a good marriage, lotus have made many collaborations which have sold successfully over the years. The only failure I can think of was the Proton, which was a bit max power and lacking power.
As reports have said, it may just be a platform mule. Still, the thought of a reasonably priced SUV with some Lotus Angel dust wouldn't be such a bad thing.
They do need a product that sells in regular volume, across multiple markets and with good margins to help underpin their core business but do we know yet if any such vehicle will be someone else’s with a Lotus badge gliednon the back and shoved out the door with a load of marketing guff or whether it will actually be someone else’s car turned into a Lotus?
It was speculated that the chassis was maybe going to be based on the XC40.
Porsche use the Touareg chassis on the Cayenne so why not.

swisstoni

16,850 posts

278 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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It's a difficult time for designers of 'next' cars.
There is obviously a lot of love and respect for the piston engine but I suspect that people will quickly flip to wanting electric once they start to prove their abilities.






Cold

15,207 posts

89 months

DonkeyApple

54,923 posts

168 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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Composite Guru said:
DonkeyApple said:
deltashad said:
Looks like testing is on going at Hethal with the Lync & co body suv.
This could be a good marriage, lotus have made many collaborations which have sold successfully over the years. The only failure I can think of was the Proton, which was a bit max power and lacking power.
As reports have said, it may just be a platform mule. Still, the thought of a reasonably priced SUV with some Lotus Angel dust wouldn't be such a bad thing.
They do need a product that sells in regular volume, across multiple markets and with good margins to help underpin their core business but do we know yet if any such vehicle will be someone else’s with a Lotus badge gliednon the back and shoved out the door with a load of marketing guff or whether it will actually be someone else’s car turned into a Lotus?
It was speculated that the chassis was maybe going to be based on the XC40.
Porsche use the Touareg chassis on the Cayenne so why not.
Would make sense but for the end product to actually be a Lotus they don’t just need to add a handling kit but to strip a load of mass so that their version is much lighter. SUVs are the sitting duck of excess weight and huge profit margins that Chapman would have leapt upon two decades ago for treatment.

A lightweight, small pot, nimble SUV would be a Lotus through and through.

But I’m not sure they are planning to build a Lotus but instead are planning to stick a Lotus badge on a generic tank and try to we it to as many fools as possible.

Lotus, with their history of clever engineering, small pot engines, stripping weight and complexity could have been the kings of the ‘eco’ trend. Their original cars were everything that the commercial eco movement of today claim their heavy, overcomplicated, expensive and thirsty behemoths are when they are very clearly not.

If Lotus could take a Volvo frame and remove all the heavy life support systems that seem to turn all high end SUVs into pensioner life support pods, fit a smaller engine, lighter, simpler drivetrain, lighter wheels etc then a Lotus SUV would be something genuinely desirable. Something with the down the road performance to bother high performance SUVs but by being half a ton lighter and smarter.

deltashad

6,731 posts

196 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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That would be the ideal SUV, hopefully this is the direction they are able to go and have the financial backing/ resources available.
Nanny state restrictions on safety systems will be a big hurdle as we all know.

RobM77

35,349 posts

233 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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st4 said:
The Evora? Cracking car and IMHO the best car in the segment. So much more interesting than a derivative whites goods PCP porsche.
yes I agree. I test drove two Caymans back when I had the cash to buy one and was left completely cold; objectively good, but didn't put a smile on my face. I drove a second at the suggestion of someone on PH, because they couldn't believe I felt the way I did and we suspected something was wrong with the car and/or spec. After a brief flirtation with buying a 550 or a 996 GT3 (wish I had!), I put the money into a house instead, and had a chance drive in an Evora shortly afterwards. I went on to try a couple of different Evoras - one IPS S and one manual S. The Evora is just so much better and nicer to drive in so many ways. Engine location means that the Cayman has the inherent handling balance that the Evora doesn't, and sure, the Porsche interior was nicer, and yes, I prefer the engine (designed for a sports car!), but the way the Evora's engineered to engage the driver is just on another level and dominates everything about the car for me. I couldn't give a toss about "white goods" image etc, I'm purely talking from a driving perspective.

DonkeyApple

54,923 posts

168 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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deltashad said:
That would be the ideal SUV, hopefully this is the direction they are able to go and have the financial backing/ resources available.
Nanny state restrictions on safety systems will be a big hurdle as we all know.
Yup. It’s going to need all the sensible safety systems and frankly as a consumer it would be expected. The question is whether there are enough young people who are able to move their own seat or whether there really is only a market these days for cars that are filled with a thousand motors, sensors and miles of cables.

A Dacia Duster weighs 1200kg and a Porsche Macan 1900.

By an extremely crude metric that does allude to the possibility that removing all the gadgetry and lightening the whole drivetrain could result in quite enormous weight savings which would translate into performance.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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DonkeyApple said:
Yup. It’s going to need all the sensible safety systems and frankly as a consumer it would be expected. The question is whether there are enough young people who are able to move their own seat or whether there really is only a market these days for cars that are filled with a thousand motors, sensors and miles of cables.

A Dacia Duster weighs 1200kg and a Porsche Macan 1900.

By an extremely crude metric that does allude to the possibility that removing all the gadgetry and lightening the whole drivetrain could result in quite enormous weight savings which would translate into performance.
The Porker is a bit bigger, fitting into a 15% larger rectangle or 10% larger cuboid, but that's quite a large difference. Whether that's down to equipment and furnishings or to a requirement for higher torsional stiffness for handling and perceived quality, or to having a drivetrain beefy enough to give that level of performance plus brakes, wheels and tyres to match, I wouldn't like to say. There's certainly a virtuous circle of weight reduction available there, though. If you can reduce the overall weight it doesn't need to be as stiff, to have as much power, to have such big brakes, to have big enough wheels to fit the brakes, etc. Whether you can do that without it feeling flimsy, and whether buyers in that segment are as willing to accept that in return for lightness compared to the sports car market is another matter.

DonkeyApple

54,923 posts

168 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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otolith said:
The Porker is a bit bigger, fitting into a 15% larger rectangle or 10% larger cuboid, but that's quite a large difference. Whether that's down to equipment and furnishings or to a requirement for higher torsional stiffness for handling and perceived quality, or to having a drivetrain beefy enough to give that level of performance plus brakes, wheels and tyres to match, I wouldn't like to say. There's certainly a virtuous circle of weight reduction available there, though. If you can reduce the overall weight it doesn't need to be as stiff, to have as much power, to have such big brakes, to have big enough wheels to fit the brakes, etc. Whether you can do that without it feeling flimsy, and whether buyers in that segment are as willing to accept that in return for lightness compared to the sports car market is another matter.
Yup. I suspect that something like the Volvo shell is quite rigid to carry the weight of the drivetrain, suspension and all the luxury kit so it should be ok but I think the bigger issue is, as you allude, that really all the consumer wants is a utility box with a brand stucknon the back to publish their social and wealth standing. We aren’t really at a stage in our evolution where anyone really has any interest in how a product actually, tangibly feels to them.

Having said that, Lotus could easily go down the eco virtue signalling route by simply explaining that an SUV that can get down the road at the same speed as a Macan but doesn’t murder millions of kittens and innocent children because they’ve removed all the weight. They just need to rebrand their tag line for the modern consumer who doesn’t give a flying fk about ‘adding lightness’ but will remortgage their house to rent a product that says it rapes fewer kittens.

The essence of what Lotus is all about is absolutely the prime position for today’s consumer. Lightness equals environmentalism. But that consumer doesn’t understand that vastly complicated type of Kindergarten physics. Nor does it give them a boner or make them superior to other consumers. All that’s needed is to change the word lightness. Rebrand it to what the modern consumer can understand and what they want. Lightness is simply superior environmental credentials.

otolith

55,899 posts

203 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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One of the downers for that approach now is that anything with regenerative braking has taken a big chunk out of the environmental advantage of light weight. If instead of chucking away 1/2mv^2 when you brake you're now getting 70% of it back, and it's only costing you a 10% or 20% increase in mass, the efficiency benefits of cutting weight are proportionately reduced.

LotusOmega375D

7,580 posts

152 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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Weren't these all going to be built in China at a Geely plant pretty much exclusively for their domestic market? I'm sure they'll sell plenty over there, if not here.

Cold

15,207 posts

89 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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Stand down. Lotus has just stated that the recently spotted camouflaged suv is a customer consultancy project.

anonymous-user

53 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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Looking forward to a Lotus van.

If they're going to make vehicles so far removed from what they're all about (an SUV) then why not a high-top Luton van?

You'll tell me that that is the market and they need to shift units - we'll make a van. Vans sell. And city cars. And tractors.

I'll take a Ferrari van too. If these companies are going to make SUVs then they should be offering other popular vehicles.

FWIW

3,042 posts

96 months

Tuesday 25th June 2019
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PRND said:
Looking forward to a Lotus van.

If they're going to make vehicles so far removed from what they're all about (an SUV) then why not a high-top Luton van?

You'll tell me that that is the market and they need to shift units - we'll make a van. Vans sell. And city cars. And tractors.

I'll take a Ferrari van too. If these companies are going to make SUVs then they should be offering other popular vehicles.
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