AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)08/31 Report--

On August 31, Lutes, a sports car brand of Geely Holdings, officially announced the establishment of Lutes Technology, and moved its global headquarters to Wuhan Economic Development District. Lutes Global Intelligent Factory will also be located in Wuhan. It is understood that Lutes Science and Technology Intelligent Factory has been built in 2020, and the production line will be completed by the end of this year. After it is put into production, it will have an annual production capacity of 150000 vehicles.

Data show that Lotus, which was founded in 1952, was on a par with Lamborghini, Ferrari and other supercars, and was acquired by Malaysian automaker Proton Motor in 1996. In June 2011, Lotus officially entered the Chinese market and issued the official Chinese name "Lutes". In June 2017, Geely Holdings Group and Malaysia DRB-HICOM Group signed the final agreement. It became Geely's first sports car brand by acquiring a 49.9 per cent stake in its Proton car unit and a 51 per cent stake in luxury sports car brand Lutes.

According to the announcement of the Hubei Provincial Development and Reform Commission, Geely plans to invest a total of 9.044 billion yuan in the Wuhan factory, and the project is located on Weihu Road, Shamao Street, Hannan District, Wuhan City. Geely holding Group contributed 2.031 billion yuan, accounting for 71.06%, and the legal representative is an Conghui. Construction of Geely's Wuhan plant began in early 2019 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2021 with an annual production capacity of 150000 vehicles.

According to the plan, Lutes Technology will launch four pure electric products in the next five years. In 2022, the E-class SUV; codenamed Type132 will launch the E-class four-door sedan codenamed Type133 in 2023, and in 2025, the D-class "pure electric intelligent species" will be launched code-named Type134. The above three new models will form Lutes Group's global pure electric product matrix in the next five years, together with Lutes UK's pure electric supercar EVIJA and pure electric trot to be launched in 2026.

According to previous documents, the Lutes Lambda will be Lutes' first SUV model and the first domestic model in China. The data show that the length, width and height of Lutes Lambda body are 4900/2017/1625mm and wheelbase 2999mm respectively. In terms of power, there will be three power forms: fuel, hybrid and pure electric, of which the fuel version is equipped with a Volvo 2.0T engine, the pure electric version uses a front and rear motor, the maximum power 550Kw, and the peak torque is 710N ·m / 1140N ·m, which mainly competes with brilliance BMW X5, Mercedes-Benz GLE, Porsche Cayenne and Tesla Model X models. In addition to Lambda, Lutes will also make two pure electric models, Sigma and Alpha, respectively, in 2023 and 2024.

It is worth mentioning that Li Bin, founder of Lulai Automobile, also showed up at the press conference as an investor. According to previous sources quoted by foreign media, Lutes has completed 2 billion US dollars in financing, and the valuation before the A round of financing has reached 15 billion yuan. Investors participating in this round of financing include Lulai Capital, an investment arm of Lulai Motors. However, both sides declined to comment, while Li Bin appeared at the press conference to confirm the relevant news.

Li Shufu has said Geely wants to turn Lutes into a luxury brand that competes with Porsche and Ferrari. To this end, Geely has developed a plan to restore sales and influence to Fuxing Lutes. The plan includes building factories in China to increase sales and popularity, and increasing investment to promote brand-new sports cars.

Welcome to subscribe to the WeChat public account "Automotive Industry Focus" to get the first-hand insider information on the automotive industry and talk about things in the automotive circle. Welcome to break the news! WeChat ID autoWechat