Lotus Operandi

As always, the tiny British carmaker has ambitious plans, but a major investment from Chinese giant Geely means this time they might happen.

- Jamie Kitman

Increasing profits is the goal for Matt Windle, managing director of Group Lotus since January 2021. He's presiding over an explosion of new products and a well-funded future made possible by the deep pockets of Geely. The Chinese giant has pumped more than $3 billion into the plucky but chronically underfunded British sports car and racing marque. Lotus has said goodbye to standard-bearers-Elise, Exige, Evora over the past few years and next plans to fire off new products, including its first SUV, like Steph Curry on a three-point tear.

Launching as you read this, and due in America this fall, is the Emira, which the company calls its last gasoline-powered car. Coming “late in the second quarter, early third quarter,” according to Windle, is the oft-delayed Evija, a near-2000-hp electric hypercar with a price tag of more than $2 million-an edition so limited it skirts import regulations by qualifying as “show and display only.” Then, in the not-too-distant future, expect a series of more affordable electric sports cars based on the company's new aluminum-intensive platform. The so-called light electric vehicle architecture (LEVA) aims to move the goalposts from what the Elise's groundbreaking chassis did back in the 1990s. Substantially lighter-lightness being Lotus's raison d'être since its founding by Colin Chapman almost three-quarters of a century ago—the Evija's rear structure tips in with 37 percent less mass than the Emira's. LEVA will underpin a range of sports machines of different sizes, with batteries stacked vertically behind the driver or laid out horizontally, skateboard-style.