British sports carmaker Lotus is set to bring a new vehicle to their 2020 lineup.
Things are getting busy over at Lotus. Since being purchased by Geely Automotive in 2017, the British carmaker has started building a 1.3 billion dollar factory to start building cars in China (which was only discovered through internal job advertisement and Chinese government documents) as well as begun development of a seven-figure hypercar to take on the best McLaren and Aston Martin has to offer.
That’s not even mentioning the rumored SUV that is under development.
But in addition to all of this, Lotus CEO Phil Popham has just announced that they’ll also get a brand new sports car to round out their three-car lineup of the Evora, Exige, and Elise.
In an interview with Autocar, Popham said that the new model will serve as a bridge between Lotus’ current generation of vehicles and the next one that will arrive sometime in the mid-2020s. “There’s this one car, then the new platform,” he said.
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The new design is said to be more practical than Lotus’ current offerings, but will still retain the essential qualities of all Lotus automobiles--that being lightness, handling, and acceleration. It will be based on a heavily revised version of the current Lotus platform, making it likely to share much of its design with the Evora.
Toyota is still the most likely source of engine, as Lotus’ agreement with the Japanese carmaker is still going strong, but Geely will likely provide some engineering work, according to Popham.
“All conceptual work and product planning management will sit at Lotus, but we can and will sub-contract packages back into Geely. They have lots of technology capabilities, a design studio in Coventry, engineers in Sweden, Germany, and China. We employed 150 engineers last year and will employ more this year while also using the resource in Geely.”
In addition to Lotus creating their first SUVs, the carmaker will eventually adopt electrification across all their models. Just what forms that electrification will take is still up for debate as Popham didn’t provide any further details.
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