Lotus SUV could challenge Porsche Macan from 2022

Lotus’s first SUV is under development; brand aims for it to be lighter and more dynamic than rivals
Mark Tisshaw
by Mark Tisshaw
19 January 2017

Lotus boss Jean-Marc Gales believes there is a gap in the market for a “lightweight, good-handling SUV” as he plots the revitalised sports car maker’s future model plans.

Gales has confirmed that the first Lotus to appear in a next-generation line-up will be a replacement for the Elise in 2020, followed soon after by its more hardcore Exige sibling. A new Evora will complete the new range of sports cars by 2022.

By this point, Lotus’s SUV may well be ready for production as a fourth model line, with the Norfolk-based company joining the likes of Porsche, Jaguar, Maserati, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce and Bentley in recognising the benefits an SUV can have in boosting profitability.

Gales told Autocar recently that work on a prototype SUV model had started. The car has not yet been signed off for production, nor a design finalised, but if the company makes a success of its turnaround plans, the SUV is “four or five years away, as with the rest of the new range”, said Gales.

The most likely option for the development of the SUV is for Lotus to work with its Chinese engineering partner, Goldstar Heavy Industrial. Gales said development work on the prototype was not something Lotus had started alone.

However the car is developed and made, Gales said it would be “a nice addition to the line-up” and noted that “no one makes a lightweight, good-handling SUV”. He added: “It’s a niche, and it looks well positioned.” 

Gales believes the SUV has the potential to double or even treble Lotus’s planned annual sales volume of 4000 units — more than double today’s figure — once its next generation of sports cars is in production early in the next decade for sale in all major global markets.

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Before the next generation of sports cars arrives, an open-top version of the Evora will be launched later next year, and more incremental improvements of Lotus’s existing Elise, Exige and Evora models will follow.

“We will show what we can do for now with existing sports cars,” said Gales.

The current models will be made faster and lighter and with improved aerodynamics and build quality, before the next-generation line-up is kick-started with the launch of the new Elise in 2020.

The new Elise and Exige will be built on an all-new version of Lotus’s bonded and extruded aluminium platform, and Gales has set his engineering team the task of making them the “handling benchmark”.

Gales said the Elise will weigh less than 1000kg and will grow only marginally in size, chiefly to accommodate a crash structure that will allow for sales in the US.

The US is seen as a key market for the new Elise and Exige. Lotus has engineered the Evora for sale in the US in its present guise without needing any safety concessions and adding less than 10kg in weight. The early success of the Evora in the US has allowed Lotus to be cashflow positive and provide greater security to the future business.

The same engineering process will be repeated for the Elise and Exige, allowing them to pass crash tests in the US and be sold with no safety concessions.

“We will make the Elise and Exige US-compliant, as we did for the Evora,” said Gales. “We have the confidence in-house. We’re the smallest US car maker on the market to be fully type approved and sold with no concessions. The Evora has an 8kg weight penalty for the US. With the Elise and Exige, the target is the same again. Crash tests are very important.”

Gales describes the next Elise and Exige launches as “the most significant, certainly” for Lotus in its history. Gales wants to build modularity into Lotus’s next sports car platform to allow the Elise and Exige to share more components with the next Evora, including heating and infotainment systems. There is little crossover at present, because the model ranges are built on separate bases. This will reduce complexity and engineering times.

“The platform on which the future products are based will need to span 140-150bhp to 450bhp, so it needs to be a very good and solid platform and we know it,” said Gales. “I like our extruded and bonded aluminium chassis. No one will find a way of doing it stronger or lighter, and it’s of huge quality. No brand beats it.

“I’d love a modular platform. Using big modules that are the same on all cars, such as the harnesses, lighting, infotainment and HVAC [heating, ventilation and air conditioning], would be a big step forward. We don’t do that at present. In the future, we will do that across all three sports car lines. It will reduce costs.”

Gales also said he expects carbonfibre to be used for the future bodies of Lotus models, sourced locally from a company called Polar, from which Lotus already sources the material in smaller quantities.

As for what engines will power the future sports car range, Gales said Lotus “has a very good relationship with Toyota”. He added that the Japanese car maker was “the obvious choice”, although Lotus is keeping its eyes open for other partners.

Expect 1.6 and 1.8-litre engines to remain the core four-cylinder powerplants in the future Lotus range, while the supercharged 3.5-litre V6 is likely to be downsized to around 3.0 litres. Gales is not averse to the idea of that engine being turbocharged instead of supercharged.

“A turbo could be right if done correctly,” he added. “I don’t preclude it.”

Gales said the styling of the new Elise has been decided and will “evolve what we’ve got now” rather than try to reinvent Lotus design. “The new Elise is recognisable at 100 metres as an Elise,” he said.

The quality of Lotus’s interiors will also continue to be improved, and Gales is looking at ways of making Lotus’s infotainment offerings more competitive.

“Lotus is not known as a leader in infotainment but shouldn’t be last,” he said. “We’re working on improving. It needs to be fresh.”

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Comments
26

RealTruth

19 January 2017
How can anyone in the world believe a word that the venerable Jean Marc Gales of Lotus has to say? He has been telling the world for months that Lotus is now profitable for the first time in its history then the truth comes out that he lost the business £42million last year! And now he thinks he will develop a contender-worthy SUV to the Porsche- or any other manufacturer for that matter and have it and the Elise and Exige and a redesigned Evora prepared without safety concessions for the US market by the early 2020's. If anyone believes anything that this crook has to say about the future of Lotus in the UK or the rest of the world- they must be on hallucinogenics! When will Malaysian DRB Hi-Com wake up and realize this hack is only destroying the Lotus brand and heritage worldwide for his own device.

Why don't any of these publications look into the real story of the company instead of believing what this Kim Jong-un of Lotus tells people and everyone seems to believe all the lies. Does he serve all these journalists Kool-Aid before their interviews so whatever Jean Marc Gales states is like the words of Kim Jong-un to his North Korean populace?

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James Dene

19 January 2017
Image as imagined by Carlos Fandango.

Autocar needs to stop treating its readers with such disrespect.

sabre

19 January 2017
Lotus SUV could challenge Porsche Macan from 2022 but the SUV will fall apart by June 2022, unless Lotus join forces with Toyta QA department

Adeewuff

19 January 2017
An open top version of the Evora? Wow, thats a stretch of their technical know how....

manicm

19 January 2017
You either do or you don't. This is not what I call leadership. The next Elise better be a step up in styling, interior or it's game over.

Also, I agree with Adeewuff - an open top Evora is scraping the bottom of the barrel - and why would one ever choose it over a Boxster?

LP in Brighton

19 January 2017
Selling a few Lotus Elise models isn't going to provide the billion pound investment needed to develop a completely new range of products, not to mention the production facilities to build them. It can only mean (1) Lotus is about to go bust again, (2) is looking for more investment from other parties or (3) is seeking a new partner to replace the current one.

289

19 January 2017
....this is what desperate looks like!

RealTruth

25 January 2017
289 wrote:

....this is what desperate looks like!

That's the understatement of the year!!

The Truth for a Change!

Deputy

19 January 2017
I am new the new CEO of Lotus and by the end of 2017 we will have launched an electric SUV with a range of 2,000 miles and 0-62mph in 2 seconds with room for 7 people yet handles like an F1 car. (If Autocar are going to publish b0ll0cks might as well make it interesting.....)

 

 

 

TBC

19 January 2017
The future of Lotus was always in developing its core models. If they are able to reduce costs by component sharing, as VAG do, then this can only be a good thing. With Porsche's production being a majority of SUVs, it's easy to see why Lotus would be keen to tap into this market. The idea that Lotus could ever produce a direct competitor to the Macan is genuinely laughable, for too many reasons to mention. However, on a pure performance/driver enjoyment front, a Lotus fettled SUV, actually produced by another manufacturer (along the lines of the Lotus Carlton), is not beyond the realms of the imagination. If they could sell 2000-4000 a year, including China and the U.S., this could be a profitable enterprise for them.

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