By ZHOU Shuqi

Premium sports car maker Lotus is laying off 200 employees, mainly in engineering and management positions following poor financial results.

Lotus said that the restructuring is about optimizing and enhancing, not a result of weak performance. In 2022, the company lost £145 million (1.3 billion yuan). The company's total revenue was £56 million, down 30.3 percent year on year.

The sackings are primarily at the Lotus operation in the UK and do not affect other regions including China and Germany. The company's focus in the UK will remain on manufacturing the Emira and the pure electric supercar Evija.

As a luxury sports car brand that once competed with Ferrari and Porsche, Lotus has faced problems for many years, principally not selling enough cars. 

Chinese automaker Geely acquired a 51 percent stake in Lotus in 2017, and the brand announced its complete transformation into a pure electric sports car brand, attempting to revive its fortunes.

Lotus now has three models, the pure electric supercar Evija, the fuel-powered Emira, and the smart pure electric Eletre, released in October last year.

Lotus considered the Eletre key to its sales revival and a step towards electrification. However, the SUV immediately ran into trouble. Lotus mistakenly delivered test vehicles as new cars, sparking a collective protest from around 150 owners.

Last year, Lotus sold a total of 576 cars, worse even than 2021's 1,566.

Lotus global headquarters moved to Wuhan in 2022 and built an 8-billion yuan factory. In November last year, MAO Jingbo took on the role of president and reorganized the marketing team, leading to the departure of Lotus China's chief marketing officer QING Yan and PR general manager GUO Tiefu. 

Lotus plans four new models by 2026. Geely expects annual sales of Lotus to grow to 150,000 in 10 years, China is expected to contribute half of this.