das SUV ist ja quasi so sicher wie das amen in der kirche. wuerde ich jetzt auch drauf tippen, zumal shanghai als ort der praesentation gewaehlt wurde. morgen wissen wir mehr.
Zitat von LTG... guckt doch mal recht hin! Form und Lichter Evora, oben ein Ansaugstutzen und hinten ein Flügel, folglich ein Evora GTXY 435,75, dafür 10K teurer
2019 Caterham 485 S coole Motorräder von Triumph - to be continued
In Shanghai later today, the Lotus will flower once more. After years of driving up blind alleys and running out of gas, Lotus Cars will use China?s premier motor show to unveil plans for a £1 million-plus all-electric hypercar. It will be both a statement of intent and the basis of a seven-year plan that aims to put the forgotten heritage brand of British sports cars back on a par with the likes of Aston Martin and McLaren.
Only a very few of the new hypercar ? codenamed Type 130 ? will ever be made, but it will be, in the argot of the industry, ?a halo car?, a top-of-the-range benchmark that will provide the design cues for a new generation of Lotus sports cars, the first new models in a decade that will begin production in 2020 and that also will come in electric and hybrid variants.
We have been here before. At the 2010 Paris Motor Show, when the rest of the automotive industry was in recession, Dany Bahar, then the chief executive of Lotus, unveiled five new models, apparently backed by the UK government, to create 1,000 jobs. The rest of the industry laughed. The project was shelved. Mr Bahar left the company.
The question for Lotus?s legion of enthusiasts is: will this time will be any different? A well-funded owner in Geely, the most western-facing of China?s big automotive groups, and the promise of $2 billion investment in Lotus to 2025 suggests that it might. As does access to the Chinese car-buying market, the largest in the world, where the likes of Lotus and Aston Martin have not played.
Lotus also has a new chief executive ? Phil Popham, 53, who was poached to head the project last autumn. He was one of a clutch of senior British executives behind the renaissance of Jaguar Land Rover before quitting in 2014 to run Sunseeker, the Dorset-based, Chinese-owned maker of superyachts. He was lured back on to dry land at Lotus with the promise of a big chequebook from Geely, which has already turned around the likes of Volvo and the Coventry-based London black cab manufacturer now called LEVC.
?We are, if you like, a 70-year-old start-up,? Mr Popham said ahead of the Shanghai Motor Show, referencing both the legacy of Lotus?s postwar founder Colin Chapman but also its decline into an automotive bit-part player. ?We are a famous UK brand, but we are a small company. The awareness of Lotus is high, but familiarity with our models is low.?
Awareness remains high because of the legacy of its grand prix successes and six Formula One construction successes with Emerson Fittipaldi, Graham Hill and Jim Clark at the wheel. And because, like Aston Martin, it got his cars into James Bond films. But all of this was 40 years ago.
?Lotus hasn?t done anything for quite a while because it has not had the funding, nor the resources,? Mr Popham said. ?We want to take the brand back to where it was and take it to where it could be. We are now on a brand-building exercise and the launch of the hypercar is part of that. We need to be aggressive and we will go through an abnormal amount of brand spending. At the moment Lotus is still a brand for enthusiasts.?
Volvo offers a template. Geely acquired Lotus from its previous Malaysian owners in the summer of 2017. ?Geely knew with Lotus it was buying a brand with equity. Volvo is the example of what can be done, a sustainable and global brand which is still very much a Swedish brand. Lotus is a very British brand.?
It is also a loss-making and low- volume brand: £16 million in the red in the nine months to December 31, having lost £50 million in the two previous years; and sales of only 1,630, roughly a quarter of the production levels of Aston Martin and McLaren, though still its best effort since 2011. It makes only three models at its factory in Hethel in the Norfolk countryside. The Evora, Elise and Exige retail at between £45,000 and £75,000.
At Hethel work has begun on creating a new assembly line that from 2022 will begin to produce a stable of electrified Lotus sports cars with the intention of the company still playing in that sub-£100,000 sports car market. It has been hiring talent from other British manufacturers, such as Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover and Bentley. The new cars also will address what Mr Popham calls the barriers to purchase, including ?ingress and egress? issues ? a 6ft 4in man like him can have problems getting in and out of a Lotus.
Inevitably, decisions will have to be made about whether Lotus stretches the brand to compete in the 4x4 market, along with the Tesla Model X, or in luxury tourers, such as the Bentley Continental. According to its boss, the company ?could, but any vehicle must have that Lotus DNA of driving dynamics, the handling, the performance, the appeal?.
The immediate plan is to stop haemorrhaging cash and then to take annual production to above 5,000 units a year. That will mean a second plant, perhaps at Hethel, maybe elsewhere in the UK, or in China. Nevertheless, Hethel will remain the spiritual home of Lotus, with Geely giving the green light to a heritage centre, an homage to Chapman and the F1 years, and a Lotus experience facility allowing access to the factory?s much-envied two-mile test track.
Today Lotus will provide only ?tease? images of its new hypercar before showing it in final form later in the year. ?It will be a showcase, and a reminder, of our capabilities and our engineering,? Mr Popham said, ?and it will demonstrate that we are well-funded. It will be about making a statement.?
Also ein Race Evora und später ein Elektrohypercar. Beides nichts für mich.. Der Schnorchel auf dem Dach ist für die Kabinenbelüftung
Denke es dauert noch ein paar Jährchen bis wir irgendwelche neue Modelle sehen. Denke die nächste Zeit wird mal wieder schwierig für Lotus, die Verkaufszahlen werde wohl eher südwärts gegen..
PS: War am SA morgen über Julier/Bernina/Maloja bei Sonnenschein und wenig Verkehr... Das ist das schöne am Evora, die Saison endet nie.. [/img]
Zitat von LTGDas war unterdem Lumpen in Shanhai, ein möglicher GT4...
Ist und bleibt mir ein Rätsel, wie die mit solchem Unfug Geld verdienen wollen... Es würde mich interessieren, WORAN die sich in ihren Zielsetzungen orientieren.
2019 Caterham 485 S coole Motorräder von Triumph - to be continued
Überall wird gebaute, grosse mehrstöckige Hallen, viele Gebäude sind abgerissen, überall Baumaschinen.
Auftragseingang nicht steigend, Freitag wurde nicht gearbeitet, Offiziell wegen Brexit ?
Ob es jetzt vorwärts geht? Die Leute waren jedenfalls, sehr verhalten wenn man die neue Situation ansprach, nun ja denke die meisten haben dies schon x-mal erlebt.
Die Zeit wird zeigen wo es lang geht jedenfalls haben die Chinesen den ganzen Schuh drin ?
Diese Medizin gibt es nicht auf Krankenschein, ich weiss, dass Gaspedal ist rechts!
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12.04.2019 13:07
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Es würde mich interessieren, WORAN die sich in ihren Zielsetzungen orientieren.
