Being Chinese owned gives us an electric car advantage said Lotus as it gears up to battle BMW and Porsche

The booming Chinese electric vehicle industry could be the key to Lotus reinventing itself as a luxury brand.

That’s the view of the man charged with steering Lotus’ fortunes in Australia, Lee Knappett, who has told CarsGuide he sees the brand’s takeover by Chinese giant, Geely, as crucial for the British brand’s future.

Lotus recently launched its all-new electric models, the Eletre SUV and Emeya sports sedan, in Australia as it begins to move away from its internal combustion engine powered past. While a radical change from the brand’s heritage making simple, lightweight sports cars, Knappett believes Lotus can succeed for two decisive reasons - it’s scaling up to EV, not replacing a range of ICE models, and its Chinese connections.

“First one I would suggest is we're not playing in that mass volume market [with BMW, Mercedes-Benz, etc], we're in a luxury bespoke space and our business model is geared towards the volume aspirations that we've projected,” Knappett said. “Which is not something that we're trying to hang on to in the past, which was an ICE volume, which some of the [rival] brands are trying to stay and replace that with pure EV.”

Lotus Eletre and Emeya

So while rival prestige brands try to transition current ICE volume to EV, Knappett said Lotus can scale up as its global sales grow, allowing it to keep control of costs in a volatile EV market. But speaking of the fluctuations in the electric space, Knappett believes Geely’s strong ties to the government-supported Chinese car industry will be vital to Lotus’ growth.

“I feel like being partnered, being part of the Chinese EV technology is a big advantage,” he said. “I think that the brands that are really struggling right now with EV are the European brands. So being part of China, having access to the infrastructure, the supply chain that's associated with the China EV is a big advantage for us.

Lotus Emira

“And coupling that with the European know-how around suspension, brake systems, etc you know, because Lotus have invested in the big engineering center in the Netherlands, a second engineering center in the UK. So, [Geely] invested in [long-time Lotus base] Hethel and brought that facility up to a real high standard. They have a second facility in Coventry, with a lot of engineering expertise coming out of there, So we've kind of got that best of both worlds. We've got like the cherry picking of the best systems and the best resource of what we can get [in China] coupled with some European influence to get the products in market.”

Lotus Emeya

Geely, which owns several all-electric brands including Polestar and Zeekr, as well as Volvo, Lynk & Co, Smart and Proton, has already moved Lotus production to China, including the Eletre and the Emeya. While the Chinese government has been supportive of EV technology and uptake, Geely is a privately owned business.

The Chinese market has already made a major shift towards electric cars, with more than eight million new registrations in 2023, a massive 35 per cent increase on 2022.