Reinvention, Again
May 13, 2026
Alex KiersteinEver-precarious Lotus rethinks its focus. This time, it might make sense.
Few car-making businesses have so resembled the characteristics of the products they produce as Lotus. Brilliant, dodgy if not outright flawed, focused, impractical. Lots of historic reimaginings, like the wedgy Eclat/Elite following on from the Seven/Elan/Europa era. And more recently, fits and starts, like the unreasonably ambitious Dany Behar product onslaught that never happened. So it’s a bit of a relief to read Lotus’ latest near-future plans, which don’t bet solely on BEV SUVs or a multi-vehicle vaporware parade. Instead, Lotus will build something that sounds a lot like a new Esprit.
Lotus under Geely ownership has been hard to parse. The three new vehicles: the Evija hypercar, the Eletre SUV, and Emeya GT car, are all BEVs with Geely/Zeekr underpinnings and an identity tangential to the company’s established identity. I wondered if Lotus might become an upscale MG, a captured brand with reworked sensibilities for the home market—and yes, eventually exported back to its original home country. This sort of adaptation is fine for a carmaker as a corporate entity; it’s less fine for anyone interested in the brand’s original product focus.
So here is what Lotus has promised in its Focus 2030 outlook. Instead of focusing solely on BEVs, it’ll lean into the PHEV/hybrid segment. This is something it’s already doing, in a sense, with the Eletre; that SUV’s PHEV variant (renamed the “Lotus For Me” for reasons that I assume make sense in China) is available to order on Lotus’ Chinese page. It’ll take this technology, which presumably originates from somewhere in Geely’s corporate holdings, and may be adapted for the Type 135, which the company teased in a rear-end shot.
The Type 35 is alleged to be a European-built hybrid supercar with a V8, good for a total system output of around 980 hp. That is a serious step up from the Esprit in terms of raw output and relative positioning, but a V8 Lotus brings to mind the Esprit, and so that is the name the internet is ruminating about.
Lotus claims that Focus 2030 brings it back into alignment with its roots. I think it’s a step, but a small one. It’s one thing to build a supercar-caliber headline-grabber, it’s another to successfully produce sportscars priced in the Porsche 911 realm that offer a unique enough buying proposition to poach said 911 buyers. The Esprit, Elise, and Exige were never big sellers, but they were successful (and attainable) enough to eek out an existence. As a focused manufacturer of that kind of car, that’s really all that can be expected.
If Lotus wants to reestablish itself in that respect, I think a solid option is to use the supercar hype of the Type 135 to enter into a partnership with some other automaker, producing an Elise-like vehicle at a lower cost. Perhaps some one-piece pressing that emulates its old extruded-and-bonded aluminum construction, something flexible and perhaps salable to other automakers.
But as much as I’d like the Elise to be reinvented again, I am not sure it’s a responsible corporate decision. Were I a fiduciary advisor to Geely, I might be eyeballing the Macan EV and making a play a size down from the Eletre/For Me. Not to be hagiographic about Chapman, but there needs to be a charismatic argument, a strong voice, pushing against the rational to get enthusiast cars built. I hope Geely has some voices like that in Lotus’ hierarchy. If the V8-powered Lotus emerges, if it’s more than just hype, that’s a good sign.
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