Lotus Plans to Unveil Its EV Sports Car Next Year

Back in 2021, Lotus announced an ambitious timeline of new EV reveals culminating in the first look at an electric sports car that would combine the brand's long history of lightweight performance with its otherwise-incompatible modern goal of entering the luxury EV space. In that original plan, the Type 135 sports car was set to be shown in 2026. According to Lotus executives, that car will now be unveiled in 2025.

In a conversation with Top Gear, executives from the company say that the car will be unveiled next year in preparation for sales in 2027. The brand's ultimate goal is to sell between 10,000 and 15,000 of these EV sports cars a year, all built and developed in the company's historic Hethel, England base rather than the brand's new facilities for larger EVs in Wuhan, China. That production target is two to three times larger than the 5000 per year goal for the brand's last gas-powered sports car, the Emira.

Autocar adds that the Type 135 will be a successor to the Emira, although that does not necessarily mean that the gas-powered Lotus will exit production just a few years after it reaches the market. More likely, the pair will be sold alongside each other for some years before Lotus finally drops the last remnants of its gas-powered business further on down the line.

Although executives stress in both conversations that a sports car like the Type 135 is at the core of what Lotus is doing, the brand's biggest volume sales will likely be luxury SUVs and sedans. Lotus has already shown the Eletre SUV and Emeya sedan, two cars that have little to nothing to do with the brand's historic fleet of lightweight sports cars. That strategy is set to continue with the still-unnamed Type 134, a smaller electric SUV that will debut later this year.

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