The future of Lotus’s UK factory Hethel is under review, as its Chinese owner, Geely, takes drastic action to fix the loss-making British sports car brand.
The car maker is trapped in a perfect storm, buffeted by tariffs that have inflated the cost of UK sports car exports to the United States, and exorbitant American import duties on its Chinese-built lifestyle EVs that make sales commercially impossible. Lotus is also grappling with inconsistent electric car demand, and growing the brand from a tiny customer base.
Geely has pumped billions of investment into Lotus, funding the clean-sheet electric technology that underpins the Eletre SUV and Emeya sports saloon and a factory in Wuhan, China, with a 150,000-unit capacity. It has also invested £100 million in its Norfolk site, yielding new production lines to build the petrol-powered Emira sports car and pure electric Evija hypercar.
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Nonetheless, Lotus sold only 12,134 vehicles in 2024, and deliveries slid 42 per cent in the first three months of this year to just 1,274. Sports cars contributed 555 of those, but volume will have taken a further dive since, with Hethel having to stop production in May in the aftermath of President Trump’s announcement of global tariffs.
