Anyone doing the factory tour w/c 6 June?

If anyone is booked on the tours next week, can you please look closely to see if they have started production of customer cars.

With press embargo lifting next Tue and first customer deliveries due in July, my hunch is they will need to start customer builds next week.

They could start w/c 13 June and still meet anticipated deliveries, but only if they ramp up quickly. I suspect they will be taking a slower ramp up.

Also, can someone ask their tour guide what the expected start to end build duration is expected to be when they’re at full productivity. We know it’s a 17 minute cycle time between work stations, but not the overall elapsed time to build a car.

TomE said:

If anyone is booked on the tours next week, can you please look closely to see if they have started production of customer cars.

With press embargo lifting next Tue and first customer deliveries due in July, my hunch is they will need to start customer builds next week.

They could start w/c 13 June and still meet anticipated deliveries, but only if they ramp up quickly. I suspect they will be taking a slower ramp up.

Also, can someone ask their tour guide what the expected start to end build duration is expected to be when they’re at full productivity. We know it’s a 17 minute cycle time between work stations, but not the overall elapsed time to build a car.

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Guide Nick said there were around 42 cycles, equating to 12 hours per car?

TomE said:

If anyone is booked on the tours next week, can you please look closely to see if they have started production of customer cars.

With press embargo lifting next Tue and first customer deliveries due in July, my hunch is they will need to start customer builds next week.

They could start w/c 13 June and still meet anticipated deliveries, but only if they ramp up quickly. I suspect they will be taking a slower ramp up.

Also, can someone ask their tour guide what the expected start to end build duration is expected to be when they’re at full productivity. We know it’s a 17 minute cycle time between work stations, but not the overall elapsed time to build a car.

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My gut feel is they will start next. If Lotus thought a delay was likely I reckon we would have known by now. Confirmation would be a weight off the shoulders though!

Can you imagine if we get an email that says:

"Your build has started: #00043. - ETD July 14th. Here is a picture of the chassis"

Umm, good idea that. I will put it to them.

You used to be able to time a factory visit to see your car during build. If it’s 12 hours / 2 days start to finish then that’s going to be tricky to schedule!

Evotion said:

Can you imagine if we get an email that says:

"Your build has started: #00043. - ETD July 14th. Here is a picture of the chassis"

Umm, good idea that. I will put it to them.

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I got such an email when my mountain bike build started, about 1/50th of the cost on an Emira.

With the build to order digitialisation of modern JIT manufacturing - i.e they know exactly what stage each order is at and what parts it needs, should be a piece of cake to do.

Agreed - a nice touch and would be welcomed by all.
I'd be willing to stay overnight at Hethel and film my whole car build from start to finish,

TomE said:

If anyone is booked on the tours next week, can you please look closely to see if they have started production of customer cars.

With press embargo lifting next Tue and first customer deliveries due in July, my hunch is they will need to start customer builds next week.

They could start w/c 13 June and still meet anticipated deliveries, but only if they ramp up quickly. I suspect they will be taking a slower ramp up.

Also, can someone ask their tour guide what the expected start to end build duration is expected to be when they’re at full productivity. We know it’s a 17 minute cycle time between work stations, but not the overall elapsed time to build a car.

Click to expand...

We asked about the time to build an actual car yesterday on the tour…we were told when everything is running at full speed it will take 11 hours per car.

Emiragirl said:

We asked about the time to build an actual car yesterday on the tour…we were told when everything is running at full speed it will take 11 hours per car.

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Wait.
11 hours from “Spec Loaded” to “Here is the car, go ahead and drive it”?

That’s amazing! So cool.
Virtual tours needed!

#ForTheAmericans (that can’t figure out a way to make that trip faster…)

TXEMIRA said:

Wait.
11 hours from “Spec Loaded” to “Here is the car, go ahead and drive it”?

That’s amazing! So cool.
Virtual tours needed!

#ForTheAmericans (that can’t figure out a way to make that trip faster…)

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And they can shave off some of that time by not drilling the front bumper for the plate...

Evotion said:

Can you imagine if we get an email that says:

"Your build has started: #00043. - ETD July 14th. Here is a picture of the chassis"

Umm, good idea that. I will put it to them.

Click to expand...

I have a poster that's an x-ray drawing of a 2010 Camaro, and it's from the Oshawa plant in Canada that built it (they're no longer making Camaros) and it has my car's VIN on it, and the signatures of all the workers that built my car on the assembly line. Pretty cool.

It would be nice to have something like that from Lotus, at least for the FE's.

These etched on metal spec drawings are really nice and can be customised with your car details. They will be doing an Emira one:

Eagle7 said:

I have a poster that's an x-ray drawing of a 2010 Camaro, and it's from the Oshawa plant in Canada that built it (they're no longer making Camaros) and it has my car's VIN on it, and the signatures of all the workers that built my car on the assembly line. Pretty cool.

It would be nice to have something like that from Lotus, at least for the FE's.

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I can do something like that for you in size A3 or A4 with a LED backlight. The text in the footer can be personalised the way you want.

Evotion said:

Can you imagine if we get an email that says:

"Your build has started: #00043. - ETD July 14th. Here is a picture of the chassis"

Umm, good idea that. I will put it to them.

Click to expand...

I sent something along these lines to them 4 or 5 years ago, which they say they are working towards in many ways.... now... 5 years later. Porsche now do many of these things.... its not a huge investment, but changes the whole buying experience from night to day...:

Microsoft Word - Lotus Project Layout.docx

Your Order

Here you can see your current specification and indeed your online invoice, just in case you ever loose it. You can explore delivery options including receiving your car at the factory and maybe taking it directly onto the track or a similar car at the time of delivery.

There would also be a how to section with many videos explaining all the functions of the cars and of all the options available. If you don’t fully understand the benefits of the available options it's then unlikely you will purchase any of them. The current embarrassing paperwork at the dealers for the options is from a previous time, way before computers existed.

Order progress is self explanatory and it costs little to have a system that will automatically send updates every few hours of the build process with photos, chassis number, the name of the engine builder, all sorts of information that will be known at the end anyway, which can easily be known during the process by positioning of wifi connected cameras.


42


All this builds up interest in the car and gets customers speaking about LOTUS, which has to be a good thing.

A section on special offers could be used for trying to convince people of the harder to sell options, certain carbon parts or brakes that most people don’t consider due to cost, but with a discount they may become more attractive. There could also be offers here on related services like paint protection and extra warranties or tyre and alloy wheel insurance.

Items to consider is the chance for the Customer Focus department to tell you what other customers with the same car have added as extras or what LOTUS itself recommends. These items can also have an impact on future resale value, which is sometimes a good reason to get an extra that you are unsure about.

And optional items goes through all the available extras and colours, explaining up until what moment in the build process you can add them, something which helps to encourage the purchase of these optional extras, where of course more profit is made.

This would be worth copying. Always thought it was a really nice idea:

TomE said:

If anyone is booked on the tours next week, can you please look closely to see if they have started production of customer cars.

With press embargo lifting next Tue and first customer deliveries due in July, my hunch is they will need to start customer builds next week.

They could start w/c 13 June and still meet anticipated deliveries, but only if they ramp up quickly. I suspect they will be taking a slower ramp up.

Also, can someone ask their tour guide what the expected start to end build duration is expected to be when they’re at full productivity. We know it’s a 17 minute cycle time between work stations, but not the overall elapsed time to build a car.

Click to expand...

Was there today and build time according to Nick was 11.2 hrs, just over a single shift.

Prod sign off was “soon”

Cutting42 said:

Was there today and build time according to Nick was 11.2 hrs, just over a single shift.

Prod sign off was “soon”

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What are your impressions?

Wizardwings said:

What are your impressions?

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Most has been said in previous posts but amazing attention to detail. The colours are all stunning, the one that astonished me most was Dark Verdant. I have a Seneca order with Magma as second choice but the visit pushed Magma into 4th place behind Hethel Yellow in 3rd, Dark Verdant in 2nd and Seneca Blue still my fave.

No question was ignored or not answered, no photo rule was very strict even in the reception which was a little silly I thought but never mind. Nick was Very generous with his time, we had a delayed start due to a guest being delayed in an accident so was 30 mins late starting but carried on until 5.30 giving an hour over.

Got to see the robot glueing and fitting a roof and cantrails but still a lot of standing about going on waiting for prod to start.

I will prob get a factory delivery as I would like to see the factory in full production mode.

Cutting42 - good to meet you yesterday. Factory tour was very interesting. Not much activity but seems to be a very modern and impressive facility.
My overall impression was a well designed high quality car - the aluminium tub looks very hi tech and some of the components (thinking of the box of wishbone suspension parts we saw) was top notch. Lots of evidence of quality control and the shut lines looked very good even on the pre-production cars we were seeing - a proper step-up for Lotus.

Had a close look at both engines - the V6 looked noticeably larger but only 23kg more if I remember correctly (gearbox for both engines weighs the same). I can see a case for both engines but I want a manual (and love a good engine note) so V6 for me even if that means the car is ultimately slower.

There are no bad colours so just personal preference. Agree that the Dark Verdant was better than I expected and looked very classy. I’m still thinking Hethel yellow for me but plenty of time to change my mind. Wasn’t able to sit in any cars or take photos which was a shame.

We were able to compare the first edition wheels with the base spec sheet wheels - both look good but I did prefer the first edition (forged?) wheels.

This was the first time I’d seen an Emira not in photos and the styling is fantastic - not a single bad angle and surely set to become a design classic.

Anyone with an order can be justifiably excited. Let’s hope the 7 June reviews don’t disappoint!

More comments about DV looking classy! That's great, but is it more or less black? Can you tell it's a green car from 50 meters?