Lotus wants to be rubbing shoulders with Peugeot on the Australian sales charts.
The brand has been tasked with selling up to 2000 cars per year in Australia by its new Chinese owners, although the sales targets are only relevant once the Eletre and Emeya have been joined by a third, Porsche Macan-sized electric SUV in 2026.
“The Asia Pacific region is expected to deliver around 10 per cent of Lotus global volume,” Lotus Cars Australia COO Richard Gibbs told CarExpert.
“Here in Australia we’ll be expected to contribute one to two per cent of that, which at its height is probably going to translate to a couple of thousand-plus cars.”
Lotus Eletre
That’s up significantly on its result from last year (183 deliveries), and would be knocking on the door of Peugeot (2516 sales) and Polestar (2463 sales) based on 2023’s full-year figures.
Mr Gibbs acknowledged the five-strong Simply Sports Cars dealer network which distributes Lotus may need to grow, and pointed to Canberra as a logical spot for a new showroom.
The rebirth of Lotus started with the Eletre SUV, which was recently treated to price cuts of up to $50,000 in Australia.
It’s a similar size to a BMW X7 on the outside, although its cabin has space for five rather than seven. Pricing kicks off at $189,990 before on-road costs, and extends to $279,990 before on-roads for the Eletre R.
The most powerful R hits 100km/h in less than three seconds from standstill, and tips the scales at more than 2500kg.
Sitting alongside it in showrooms is the Emeya, a large electric sedan that goes head-to-head with cars ranging from the Porsche Taycan to the Mercedes-Benz EQS.
Neither of these is a traditional Lotus; a brand known for sports cars developed under the mantra of “simplify, then add lightness”.
Even the new Emira sports car – the brand’s final vehicles with petrol power – packs a turbocharged Mercedes-AMG four-cylinder engine and a dual-clutch transmission, which is a new take on the formula laid down by the Elise and Exige.
Mr Gibbs said Lotus is being careful not to leave its traditional buyers behind.
“This comes back to what we do as an organisation in terms of experience offerings,” Mr Gibbs said.
“None of that’s going to change. All the things we became really well known for [such as] providing drive experience for our customers, local dealer events, track days, our national events like Bathurst, Lotus Week which ran for the first time last year, and hopefully – one day – we’ll be back in the Targa space.
“That’s all designed to keep the existing customer base with what we refer to as our heritage fleet closely engaged.”
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