350pk Evora

[Bosbon_be]

http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default ... ryId=19201

Begin maar te sparen

Peter

[JeanVM]

Haha, laat de pond maar zakken dan geraken we er wel sneller.

[JeanVM]

Enige info over de EVORA SC en waarom Lotus deze crisis kan overleven. Dit zijn comments van de engelse forum door de voorzitter en de zoon Anthony van Mike Kimberley :

Bibs;
I think that the Evora is a key in the plan for Lotus but you have to remember, they don't make much money on cars sales, their turnover and profit mainly comes from Engineering Consultancy. They sold 4 cars in a month recently I think the figure was, that's not enough to pay 1,400 people's wages but it's not such a huge deal as it's not their main income stream.

The first few years of Evora sales will be at a loss for Lotus, it won't be until year 5 onwards that the car begins to make them money.
The plan is to sell 2,000 Evoras per year, worldwide. I'm guessing that they would have around 500 deposits now which isn't bad considering no-one has driven or reviewed the car.

Anthony:
I always seem to end up putting this one right, no matter that Bibs argues the point correctly till he's blue in the face.

Making Money on cars, as a business model at Lotus, does not work! It just doesn't. During the last 6 years this has been one of the problems, a succession of Management with focus's on the wrong area of business. Lotus Cars are there to showcase their Engineering skills and to sell Lotus Engineering! (Which currently has 350 Projects on the go to 127 Companies). I'm not saying they never make money on cars, I know that their profit margins on Esprits from around yr 2000 onwards was a very decent amount and older models, like the base Elise, may make them a very small profit.

But historically a small company like Lotus has to write off design and development costs over a longer term and as a bigger sum per car, as a cost on it's vehicles. For example, the new Ford Fiesta cost (somewhere around) 500 million to develop but they may sell 250,000 per annum worldwide (lets not forget US historically gets different models).

Now look at the Evora. lets suppose (I really don't know exact figures) that the development cost £150 million, but they only sell 2000 a year. You can see why they make losses and for longer, than the bigger players. It's all economies of scale! BUT then take into account that the suspension they developed specifically for the Evora has now been bought by several Performance car manufacturers, The chassis likewise etc etc and you can see why Engineering reaps the benefit of Car development and production.

This is my own Opinion BTW and I will ask the old man to comment on this over the weekend.

As for sales figures I think 400 sales into the States at present would please any performance car manufacturer!! And with only 2000 to go around the whole world per annum I would think 400 for 10 months isn't that far out....IMHO

As for one model taking away sales from the other, why? Does that mean that Ford should only bring out 1.4 Fiesta and bin the 1.2, or Hybrid because they aren't as fast? No, because each new model pulls sales away from competitors. The base model compete's with different Porsche's to the SC model. Many people have different views on what a Sports car should do. One thing Lotus have NEVER EVER done is compete on HP, so for me, I would be happier with the base model and save myself loads of money on fuel, Tax and vehicle cost and still have performance that equals my S4 Esprit.