Lotus has proven that its customers travel too many kilometers a year and do not find so many differences between a powerful luxury car with a combustion engine and an electric one, so the brand has decided to change its strategy and stop betting everything on electric cars, as they are doing. other luxury brands.
Your goal is to launch plug-in hybridsor convert some of its current electric models into extended range electric, in order to meet the needs of its customers.
180-degree turn in Lotus’ electrification strategy
Since the Chinese giant Geely bought Lotus in mid-2017, things have changed a lot for the English brand because the cars it has launched since then do not have much to do with those developed by Colin Chapman, the founder of the firm.
Chapman opted from day one to make very light cars that, thanks to their low weight, were extremely fast and fun, even if they were not too powerful. When Geely took over the company, Lotus bet everything on electric cars.
The truth is that all electric Lotus are very fast (perhaps too fast), from the Emeya sedan to the Evija hypercar, including the Eletre SUV, which aims to be the king of the Nürburgring. However, they have two drawbacks: they are too heavy and they do not seem to convince all of the brand’s customers.
Lotus already has plans to return to manufacturing light cars, in fact, Lotus Group design chief Ben Payne says that “The Elise is the reference point of contact for Lotus” and assures that the brand is working on making light electric cars. . He Lotus Type 135 It should be the brand’s first lightweight zero emissions.
To solve the other problem, what Lotus could do is make a 180-degree turn in its strategy and back down with its total commitment to electric cars. And Lotus will stop betting everything on electric cars to expand its range with models hybrids.
According to account Autocarthe CEO of Lotus confirmed it at the recent Guangzhou Motor Show, in China. What Lotus plans is to develop a technology called “Super Hybrid” which will allow plug-in hybrid cars to be charged ultra-fast and offer a total range of about 1,100 kilometers.
This Super Hybrid technology could reach current electric models, such as the Emeya and the Eletre. They will use a 900V electrical architecture to charge the battery in a matter of minutes, even faster than changing the battery at a battery exchange station, such as those used by the Chinese firm NIO.
In an interview given to the Wall Street Journal that can be read in the Emira forumthe CEO of Lotus Group Feng Qingfeng explained why the brand makes this decision: “Lotus users usually drive long distances; Doing 20,000 kilometers a year in a pure electric car is already a lot, but Lotus users travel an average of 30,000 kilometers a year, so long range is still very important.”
Qingfeng also says that his customers are accustomed to very high performance and that electric vehicles do not provide great advantages in this regard compared to cars with eight or twelve cylinder engines: “The penetration of pure electric vehicles in the luxury car segment is slow because luxury car engines are already very powerful, and the driving experience is quite similar, with eight-cylinder and twelve-cylinder engines working well.”
“In the past, low-end cars in China had weak engines, with 0-100 km/h acceleration in 8 seconds being good, but luxury cars are all in 4 seconds, so the demand for improvement of energy is not obvious,” explains Qingfeng.
As Lotus is very oriented towards that segment of luxury cars, it has simply decided to adapt to the needs of its customers and that means not limiting its range to 100% electric cars, as other brands are doing.
In the particular case of Lotus, furthermore, it must be taken into account that it is now a brand very focused on the Chinese market and that, there, EREVs (or super PHEVs) are selling better and better, to the detriment of 100% electric ones, so it makes sense that Lotus has realized this and changed its plans so as not to lose steam.
Source: www.motorpasion.com
