AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)10/15 Report--

Recently, Lutes Group CEO Feng Jingfeng said in an interview with the media that "Lotus" will become the official Chinese name of Lotus.

Feng Jingfeng revealed that the reason why the Chinese name of Lotus was changed to "Lutes" was that when Lotus entered the Chinese market, the name "Lotus" had been registered by another parts company. The parts company has not used the name "Lotus" in the field of complete vehicles, and in this case, Lutes will make a comeback after more than two years of efforts. As for why Lutes was changed back to "Lotus", Feng Jingfeng said that Chinese consumers are still very impressed by "Lotus". "Lutes" itself is the transliteration of Lotus, but the mention of "Lotus" will be more emotional.

The glorious history of Lotus can be traced back to 1948, and its literal translation is Lotus. At that time, Colin Chapman, an engineering major at the University of London, modified an Austin 7 sports car himself and re-registered it as Lotus Mark 1. This is the first car in the history of Lutes. In 1952, Colin Chapman founded Lutes Mechanical Engineering Company, which participated in F1 competition for the first time in 1958 by improving and updating the design of the car and winning seven F1 team championships one after another in 1978. During this period, Lutes has also launched mass-produced sports cars, including Elite, Elen, Europa, Esprit and other classic models, which are on a par with top supercar brands such as Ferrari and Porsche. In 1982, Colin Chapman, founder of Lutes, died.

After entering, Lutes was unable to make a profit on a large scale, so he was finally caught in a financial crisis and was successively acquired by Toyota, GM, Italian capitalists and Proton Group. In June 2017, a turning point came when Chinese carmaker Geely Holdings signed a final agreement with Malaysia's DRB-HICOM Group: Zhejiang Geely Automobile holding Group acquired a 49.9% stake in DRB-HICOM Group's Proton Motor and a 51% stake in luxury sports car brand Lotus.

The fact that Lutes became a brand owned by Geely Holdings did not seem to make much of a stir and was even regarded as a "giveaway" for Geely Holdings to acquire Proton cars. Although Lutersgui is a top supercar brand, no new car has been released since 2008, and Geely Holdings has been at a loss for a long time after buying Lutes, not knowing how to revive Lutes.

In the second year of Geely Holdings' acquisition of Lutes, Lutes proposed the "Vision80 Ten-year Brand Revival Plan", which is to complete the comprehensive transformation of the brand to electrification and intelligence on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Lutes brand in 2028. In 2019, Lutes released its first pure electric supercar Evija, which sells for up to 21.88 million yuan and is limited to 130 units worldwide. In August 2021, Lutes Group established Lutes Technology and settled its global headquarters in Wuhan Economic and technological Development Zone to build ultra-high-end pure electric smart cars for the global market. At the same time, Lutes Technology signed an investment agreement with Lulai Capital. In November 2021, the Emira, the last fuel car of the Lutes brand, went on sale with an official guiding price of 858000 yuan. In October 2022, Lutes launched its first pure electric supercar, SUV Lutes ELETRE, and the new version of ELETRE currently sells for 728000 yuan to 1.028 million yuan. In January this year, the pure electric supercar EMEYA Fanhua also officially went on sale, with a price ranging from 668000 yuan to 1.18 million yuan. According to the plan, Lutes will launch two more pure electric models in the next two years.

Unlike Porsche and Ferrari, Lutes is still losing money. From 2021 to 2023, Lutes Technology posted net losses of $111 million, $725 million and $743 million, respectively.

In fact, the main purpose of changing the Chinese name of Lutos from "Lutes" to "Lotus" is to sell cars. In 2023, Lutes Technology delivered 6970 new cars for the whole year, a record in Lutes'76-year history, with electric models accounting for 63 per cent of total deliveries. Although the delivery volume has reached an all-time high, its overall performance is not strong, and most of the sales come from overseas markets, indicating that the Chinese market is not "attracted" to the Lutes brand, compared with ultra-luxury brands such as Ferrari and Porsche. In addition, the ultra-luxury market is also changing, and Porsche, which used to be popular, is becoming more and more difficult to sell, not to mention Lutes, which has lower brand awareness. As a result, the Chinese name of Lutos has been changed from "Lutes" to "Lotus", which is intended to awaken the impression of Lotus sports cars among Chinese consumers, thereby driving sales growth.

In 2025, Lutes initially set a delivery target of 30, 000 vehicles, but now it has been reduced to 18000. Feng Jingfeng revealed that Lutes will release a new car by the end of 2025, which is expected to bring more sales to the company. According to Lutes' semi-annual report, Lutes delivered a total of 4873 new cars in the first half of 2024, an increase of 239% over the same period last year. At present, Lutes has entered the global market, forming four major sales regions in Europe, China, America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

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