No you are correct it's certainly not commonplace.
But it's certainly not unheard of either. Especially when there is known to be significant discontent and conjecture.
I've done it myself in the past and it helps diffuse a poor brand experience pretty quickly and is normally seen in a positive way by consumers.
Not quite in the same league, but on the Ariel Atom / Ace / Nomad facebook group and their forum also, the creator of the Nomad, ie one of the two sons of the guy who started the company, did participate in the group, mainly to answer technical questions and stop false information from flowing around, which often happens, you see it here all the time. People repeat what they have heard, even from Lotus themselves, but it then turns out to be untrue as Lotus change their minds or cant fulful etc etc. so we get even more frustrated. 2nd hand info soon gets out of hand, with people like myself making assumptions which may be "logical" but can be incorrect and then they slowly get altered and then get taken to be fact instead of fantasy.
However, Ariel are in the 100 cars a year bracket and Lotus are aiming for 5 - 20 to 50k to who knows how many a year including Ev's of course, so its not feasible for them to do this and its also very dangerous as one wrong word on these places can lead to widespread condemnation! One bad review in google on a hotel website has disastrous effects for the hotel for example, so why risk it? It easy to say they dont need to say much, but what they say can change due to the unforeseen etc.
Also, we on this forum represent a very small % of their customers and as we have said many times, we are not in the majority of their typical customer profile for the Emira in general, so why should they think about us more than the others who represent maybe 90% of their audience.
Hence, while it would be unfair to say they dont care about us, it would be very fair to say it makes no business sense to be feeding info and adding flames to the fires here with the lotus gurus , rather than doing what they should be doing, which is providing timely and accurate information / updates through their various media outlets.... something they are falling down on, day after day, after week after month. But answering us here isn't a realistic solution and I wouldnt like it personally as its not professional and Lotus need to be professional, they need to address all their customers, not a chosen few who shout loudest.
I agree, I think an interview, although with a professional journalist interested in the car, I would say Harry, speaking about the issues currently faced, delays, customer service improvements planned, errors made, the future, realistic expectations, changes between prototypes and final cars, rubber strips, wheel gaps, dates...all these things, this is what the vast majority of customers would appreciate, rather than specific suspension set ups, and very technical things that some of just us care about. These questions need a technical channel on the website perhaps.
Still, I am afraid that is clearly not going to happen either. They are simply holding out for people to get their cars over the next 5-10 weeks and let the car do the talking, rather than invest any more time/effort in communications. Maybe their comms department is going through an upheaval (or on holiday) and they feel it's best not to do anything, who knows, but it is what it is.
Everything we talk and complain about here I am sure happened/happens with Alpine also for example, originally a similar size company to where Lotus was before 5-10,000 orders. They have forums of many frustrated customers where apple car play for example was an afterthought on the original cars etc.... "Why no manual gear box?" "Why only 3 release colours!!!!!?" "why one 4 cyl engine?" "Why only 2xx HP?" etc etc, imagine, we have 6 colours, 400 HP and people still complain haha.
Think of their first release car and you will see many similarities in what they did, marketing wise, extras wise, communication wise.... Lotus made many of the same mistakes. And unfortunately, although the Alpine drives well, it was IMO a failure in terms of numbers and thats with the VERY VERY high praise of James May and just about every jounalist out there. In the end, the public decide and looks are key, whether you/we like it or not. An actress's ability is clearly important, but name me 3 unattractive actresses under the age of 40 who get the big bucks..... Not one can I come up with. Sex sells... and boy is the Emira a symbol !
Exciting times
