Showing posts with label Nick Gibbs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nick Gibbs. Show all posts
Monday, August 24, 2015
Lotus Cars aims for new SUV to be launched in 2018, along with profits and US re-entry.
British sports car maker Lotus Cars will be profitable again by 2017 after years of losing money, CEO Jean-Marc Gales said. The former PSA/Peugeot-Citroen and Daimler executive has implemented measures to cut costs while improving the automaker’s product lineup since he took over Lotus in May 2014.
But Gales said the company will not launch all-new cars until its new China-built SUV debuts in 2018/19 as he focuses on boosting sales and cashflow.
Lotus will increase sales in the short term by making changes to the current three-car line-up, Gales said. The company has added an automatic transmission to its track-focused Exige two-seater, which is close to passing the entry-level Elise as the company’s top-seller.
Gales expects 40 percent of Exige sales to be models with the automatic transmission.
The company also unveiled a facelifted version of the flagship Evora coupe at the Geneva auto show in March that will spearhead the brand’s return to the U.S. market. The Evora was the only Lotus model sold in the U.S. but was dropped for the 2015 model year because it no longer met federal crash standards.
Lotus has redesigned the Evora to meet U.S. standards and moved the mid-engine coupe further upmarket to better compete with the likes of the Porsche 911 and Audi R8. A convertible version is due next year. Gales expects the U.S. to be the Evora's biggest market.
Supplier squeeze
Gales said Lotus has stripped 10 percent from the costs out of producing cars and he plans further cut costs by switching suppliers. “We are going through our whole supply chain, gradually replacing smaller suppliers with larger ones, reducing costs and improving quality,” he said.
Last September Lotus said it was cutting 225 jobs from the 1,250 workforce at its headquarters here. The final figure was 260, Gales said.
Gales has also scaled back the work of the company’s consultancy, Lotus Engineering, a separate arm of Group Lotus that contracts engineering services to automakers and suppliers. “It used to account for half of Lotus revenue 10-15 years ago. Now it’s 10 percent,” he said. “It was a conscious decision to focus the engineers flat out on the development of our road cars.”
Gales said he does not expect the engineering side of the business to grow again until after three to four years.
Lotus said that its wholesale vehicle sales were up 55 percent to 2,015 in the financial year to the end of March 2015, from 1,403 the year before. Gales said he is targeting annual sales of 3,500 by 2016.
Lotus’s sales growth has been boosted by an expansion of dealerships. Gales aims to increase Lotus dealerships to 200 by the end of this year from 174 by the end of March.
He said that losses have been “massively reduced” in the year to the end of March compared to a loss of 65.6 million pounds ($100 million) for the year ending March 31, 2014. The year before Lotus lost 159.4 million pounds, according to figures released by the company.
Gales says that the company will show a profit in the financial year ending March 2017. “It’s something we haven’t done consistently from the car side in over 20 years,” he said.
Gales’s ambitions for Lotus are more modest than those of his predecessor, former Ferrari executive Dany Bahar, who had planned to boost Lotus's annual vehicle sales to 10,000, a similar volume to Ferrari. Bahar was fired in 2012.
Nick Gibbs
SEAT pins future profitability on new SUV which could spawn a range of new SUV's for the Spanish Brand.
Volkswagen’s Seat brand is mulling a family of SUVs as it seeks to boost volume and become sustainably profitable. Seat CEO Juergen Stackmann said the brand could offer different designs as well as different sizes of SUVs, pointing to a possible coupe-styled crossover.
The brand’s first SUV will go on sale next year. The compact model will be based on VW Group’s MQB architecture that will also underpin the new-generation VW Tiguan. The Seat SUV will be built by sister brand Skoda in Kvasiny, Czech Republic, alongside a Skoda sibling.
Seat unveiled the 20V20 concept at the Geneva auto show last month previewing a larger SUV that could go on sale by 2020.
“We are starting with the core model next year, but also other expressions are absolutely possible,” Stackmann told Automotive News Europe. “We believe the crossover and SUV market are the perfect turf for the brand to create its new profile.”
At 4660mm in length, the 20V20 is close in size to the Audi Q5. The Seat concept also was designed to accommodate different drivetrains, including a plug-in hybrid, along with having four-wheel drive and room to accommodate five people comfortably, Seat said.
Currently, Seat relies on smaller cars -- the Ibiza subcompact, Leon compact and Mii minicar -- for the bulk of its sales. The brand sees the fast-growing, more profitable SUV/crossover market as a way to boost volume and end years of financial losses.
Stackmann said that the 2020 time frame for the larger SUV is because Seat customers currently would not accept such a large vehicle. “In order to create a customer group that will put Seat on the shopping list for this size of car we need time to develop the brand. If we get there earlier we will,” he said.
Increased sales of the Leon have shown customers are willing to buy larger cars from the brand, Stackmann said.
Helped by the success of the new Leon, Seat swung to a 33 million euro operating profit in the first quarter from a 36 million loss in the same quarter last year. The result was Seat's first quarterly profit in seven years.
Seat's vehicle sales grew by 10 percent to 102,700 vehicles, a brand record for the quarter. The Leon showed the highest sales growth with a 14.6 percent increase to 39,700 units, Seat said in a statement on April 16. The Leon is catching up with the Seat's best-selling car, the Ibiza subcompact, whose volume grew by 9.5 percent to 41,900 in the first quarter.
German media reports have said that Seat is also mulling a subcompact SUV that would rival models such as the Nissan Juke.
Nick Gibbs
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