Chinese-backed carmaker Lotus ‘studying’ US factory

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Lotus is “studying” plans to open a US factory as the Chinese-backed carmaker is seeking to ramp up production beyond its UK homebase.

The plant would be the third for the Norfolk-based sports car brand, after its owner Geely funded a factory in the Chinese town of Wuhan to produce Lotus’s first core electric model, the Eletre. The Wuhan plant, which was opened this year, has a capacity of 150,000 cars a year.

“We want to expand our capacity somewhere else,” Lotus Group CEO Qingfeng Feng said on the sidelines of the Goodwood Festival of Speed on Thursday. The company was “studying” US options along with other potential countries, he added. A decision is likely before the end of the year.

A US site would mark the scale of the transformation of the brand, which for decades only made hand-built sports cars in the East Anglian city of Norwich, 160km north-east of London. Geely, which acquired a 51 per cent stake in the company in 2017, has invested more than £3bn in the British carmaker.

Lotus may opt for the same production plant as that of Geely-backed Volvo Cars’ in South Carolina. Polestar, an EV only brand owned by Volvo and Geely, is already adding a line at the South Carolina site to make electric vehicles. But Lotus could also look at an entirely new US site if it chooses the country, Feng said.

Lotus expects to sell 150,000 cars by 2028, a level that would see it outgrow the Wuhan facility, which opened this year, the company’s chief commercial officer Mike Johnstone said.

While Lotus models are too expensive to benefit from green incentives offered under the US Inflation Reduction Act, locating in the country would take Lotus closer to a key market.

It sells only a handful of models in the US, but wants the market — which is the largest sports and luxury market globally — to account for a third of sales eventually, Johnston said.

The carmaker expects to list shares through a reverse merger with LVMH-backed investment group “L Catterton Asia Acquisition Corp” by the end of the year. Feng said the company was “on track” with the listing despite conditions in global markets.

The listing is specifically of Lotus’s newly formed EV division, which includes the Chinese factory, in order to try to achieve a higher valuation. The business has the option to roll the UK sports car entity into the listed business after the deal completes, Feng added.

“We are hitting all of our targets,” he said. The listing will raise the profile of the brand globally, as well as helping the business to become “healthier”, he said.