Lotus announced that it’s purchasing a majority stake in Lotus. It’s also purchasing that majority stake from Geely. This does not mean that Lotus is going independent. Lotus as a whole will continue to be owned by Geely. This is because what’s happening is that one portion of Lotus is taking over another portion of Lotus, but since Geely will still be the majority owner of the other Lotus company. Let’s dig in a little deeper.
Lotus
The brainchild of Colin Chapman, Lotus Cars was the roadgoing arm of Lotus, founded in 1948. Priding itself on lightweight models with a driver focus, Lotus has become synonymous with the featherweight ethos promoted by Chapman of “Simplify, then add lightness.” Lotus also enjoyed great success in Formula 1, with seven world championships to its name. A controlling stake in Lotus was acquired by Geely in 2017.
- Founded
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1948
- Founder
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Colin Chapman
- Headquarters
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Hethel, England
- Owned By
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Geely Holding, Etika Automotive
- Current CEO
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Qingfeng Feng
The Two Kinds Of Lotus
The thing about Lotus is that it’s broken into different companies. Even though Geely bought a majority stake in the entire Lotus Group a few years ago, Geely really bought the majority stake in a couple operations named after Lotus and that would work with each other. The two portions involved in this ownership shuffle are Lotus Technology, Inc. and Lotus Advance Technologies Sdn. Bhd. Lotus Technology is, broadly speaking, the company responsible for designing and managing Lotus cars from the Emira to the Eletre.
Lotus Advance Technologies is a little strange. It operates Lotus Engineering, which does all kinds of engineering and development work both for Lotus Technologies and other companies with which it contracts. It also operates the UK-based manufacturing facilities for Lotus Technology’s sports cars.
Related
It’s Finally Happening: China’s Geely Is Buying Control Of Lotus
Is this a good thing?
Simplifying And Consolidating
So, what’s basically happening is that the main car company portion of Lotus, is now integrating the engineering and manufacturing portion of Lotus. It’s bringing all the Lotus bits together under one Lotus company. As for the Geely part, while it’s selling its portion of Lotus Advance Technologies to Lotus Technology, it still has a majority stake of Lotus Technology. Basically, Geely owns the Lotus that owns the other Lotus, so it still has control of it all. Lotus CEO Qingfeng Feng said this was all to better integrate the different parts of Lotus and apparently create some value for the brand. We’re betting that this might also help streamline how the two Lotus divisions work together. On the consumer side, though, nothing is likely to change about what kind of products show up at Lotus dealers.
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