Lotus puts the brakes on and rules out becoming an all-electric brand for the time being

Lotus, the iconic British brand owned by the Chinese Geely group, has finally decided not to limit its future range of vehicles to those with a fully electric powertrain, as it had originally planned. At the end of 2024, the company announced that by 2028 it would only sell this type of vehicle, but a year later, management at Lotus has changed its mind.

Qingfeng Feng, the current chief executive of Lotus, recently confirmed that the brand will launch its first plug-in hybrid (PHEV) car next year, thus responding to the demands of some of its customers.

This new model will debut in China during the first quarter of 2026 and will reach Europe in the second half of the same year. Although its name is still unknown, everything points to it being a version of the Eletre SUV, the brand’s current flagship electric model. Tests carried out in China on camouflaged Eletre prototypes have revealed an extra fuel filler cap and rear exhaust outlets, which is a fairly obvious clue.

What else do we know about this new model?

According to reports published by specialised Chinese media, this Lotus PHEV will retain the 900-volt architecture of the electric Eletre and will offer a combined range of around 1,100 kilometres under the always optimistic Chinese CLTC homologation cycle. The thermal side of the hybrid system will probably come from Horse Powertrain, the combustion engine joint venture that Geely shares with Renault and Aramco.

The most likely candidate is the 2.0-litre, four-cylinder turbo engine DHE20TDE with 205 kW, already used in the Zeekr 9X plug-in hybrid. In its most powerful configuration, this unit is combined with three electric motors to reach more than a thousand kilowatts of combined power, and it also comes with a battery pack of 50 or 70 kWh.

This decision by Lotus reflects the current market reality and follows the path already taken by other manufacturers that had earlier announced they would become exclusively electric brands. During the first nine months of 2024, Lotus delivered only 4,612 vehicles worldwide, a decline compared with the previous year. Almost half, 46 per cent, were sold in China, where demand for plug-in hybrid models remains very high and restrictions on petrol vehicles are becoming increasingly strict.

Meanwhile, management at Lotus believes that this plug-in hybrid model will allow them to maintain the sportiness and high performance that have always defined the brand, while offering their customers a new alternative that may better suit their needs, bearing in mind that fast-charging infrastructure is not equally developed in all markets.