Harry's Garage videos - visit to Hethel and Matt Windle interview, Emira collection and drive

[donskibeat]

Perhaps a new era of openness has dawned at LCC. Matt was certainly more open in the vid than I expected.

About bloody time. Agreed, he came out with a lot more than I had expected him too.

 

[TomE]

Sorry, I may have missed it, be a bit dim, or both. But what is the 498 YTD number on the screen? 498 in, 191 out? 307 evaporated?

498 cars started build (in) and 191 finished build (out). The rest are mid-build, which I’m guessing includes all the nearly-finished ones sat waiting for shortage parts.

 

[695 to Emira]

498 cars started build (in) and 191 finished build (out). The rest are mid-build, which I’m guessing includes all the nearly-finished ones sat waiting for shortage parts.

That’s the way I read it. But it’s a hell of a lot of cars in mid build, surely?

 

[Medic518]

22:30 Confirms can still order FEs in some geographies - is a limit per country and UK still has capacity. I believe this is linked to emissions regulations.

23:20 Still holding the price despite inflation and increased logistics costs.

Did I misunderstand the logistics portion? I heard him say they were flying parts in which cost 4x more that usual, but are making changes to ship and rail. Although he did not explicitly state, I inferred those were methods they are using to try and reign in the logistical costs.

 

[Pegasi]

Wanted a "true" sports car for the longest. 718 was at the top of my list for almost two years. Saw the Emira in August of 2021 and called the dealer the next day. I am new to the whole "ordering" a car business. The only thing I knew about Lotus was that I loved the James Bond Esprits. At 10:04 of the video seeing the inside of my car being built was truly incredible. Thank you Lotus for doing this. I am excited for all the forum members who are weeks or months away from delivery.

 

[Eagle7]

On the YouTube page, there are over 400+ comments and 99% of them are positive. This is good to see, and good for Lotus.

I really enjoyed this video. There were a lot of interesting views of things I will never see otherwise. When you look at the complexity of what's under the skin, it's amazing all the little cuts, shapes, and routing that has to take place to fit everything under the body. Designing the body is the easy part.

Harry is right about the suspension part; anybody who knows what they're doing should be able to adjust the caster, camber and toe-in/toe-out to get the steering and handling characteristics they want, if the factory settings aren't to their liking.

It was also interesting and not surprising that Matt said they want to follow order sequence, and are working to get on that schedule, but thus far have been building the cars they can build as the parts come in. Makes sense. You could clearly see he was frustrated with everything in his manner and body language, but not giving up. 2022 is a done deal, and he's working on setting things up to make 2023 be much closer to what they want for production.

Harry said in the comments section of his video on YouTube, that Matt told him off-camera that they're hiring about 30 people a week and putting them through the training process to get the second shift up and running. This costs money, so it's clear that Geely is still behind them 100% which is also good to see. Just need to get past all these bumps in the production road.

 

[TomE]

That’s the way I read it. But it’s a hell of a lot of cars in mid build, surely?

Yes it is. They've tried to get ahead of the parts supply problem by part-building cars in the hope they can then finish them quickly once the shortage parts arrive. Obviously that's not possible with every shortage item and they must be running out of space to keep them all.

 

[TomE]

Did I misunderstand the logistics portion? I heard him say they were flying parts in which cost 4x more that usual, but are making changes to ship and rail. Although he did not explicitly state, I inferred those were methods they are using to try and reign in the logistical costs.

They'd flown some parts in to get them to the factory quicker and avoid the issues with sea freight, ports, port-based customs clearance and on-shipment to the warehouse/factory. It's more expensive, hence why they're now switching to more conventional ship and rail as the bottlenecks with those methods are easing.

 

[Cutting42]

He actually calls is "takt" which interestingly (to me atleast) is a Porsche Continuous Improvement term

Nope, it's an industry time measure for how often you complete a car (or anything actually) so when the line is in full speed a new car will be produced every takt time period; so 22 - 17 minutes for the Emira. This drives the speed of each station as each station must not exceed the takt time or it will slow the line. It is from a German word meaning beat or pulse from music and most high throughput car manufacturers have a takt time of 60-90 seconds these days.

 

[kitkat]

Cool seeing some production but it sure feels like we’re not going to see any Emiras delivered in the U.S until at least summer instead of spring.

 

[VL3X]

Cool seeing some production but it sure feels like we’re not going to see any Emiras delivered in the U.S until at least summer instead of spring.

Probably right, but I sure hope you're wrong and we start seeing them in March.

 

[Lotustoronto]

But for Lotus it isn't. It's their largest market after the US, unless you want to lump all of Asia together. After Goodwood 2021 Lotus revised the country allocations and assigned more of 2022 and 2023 capacity to UK because of the number of UK deposits.

I think they are looking at which market will be larger for thier EV lines... and then prioritize that way. Emira is just eye candy to get you into the store. From a business standpoint I can understand it. However, I surely would have given more priority to the people that have kept Lotus alive for the last 30 years and not let them get strung along. I really don't think Matt had much of a choice on what was going where.

 

[NicolasB]

This was buried deep in the comments, but may be a helpful explanation for some:

Harry's garage
6 hours ago
You have to have EU type approval first before you can go for UK approval. Hence why they could ship cars to EU before UK. Same thing happening in the USA, I understand they have approval for certain States but need approval in all States before they can ship any cars over there, even though they have approval for for than half of the States already.

 

[DJS]

So if they are now only getting 25% of cars out the door of the projected 3200 for 2022 does that mean 800 cars worldwide or is that just a UK projection?

Also its no surprise that since Geely turned up at Hethal 2 weeks ago that there is now stacks of cars heading Chinas way.

Maybe the only way to get revenue through the door and stop the debt stacking up.

 

[TomE]

This was buried deep in the comments, but may be a helpful explanation for some:

Harry's garage
6 hours ago
You have to have EU type approval first before you can go for UK approval. Hence why they could ship cars to EU before UK. Same thing happening in the USA, I understand they have approval for certain States but need approval in all States before they can ship any cars over there, even though they have approval for for than half of the States already.

I think that's Harry repeating what he was told by Lotus. I don't think it's required to do EU approval first, but Lotus decided to do it in that order. That was a change from their original plans.

Back in January they were definitely going for UK approval first. When I visited the factory Matt told me they were nearly ready to make the UK submission. They were confident enough it would be approved that they were planning to start building production cars before approval was granted, if necessary to maintain the timelines for first deliveries.

 

[TomE]

So if they are now only getting 25% of cars out the door of the projected 3200 for 2022 does that mean 800 cars worldwide or is that just a UK projection?

Also its no surprise that since Geely turned up at Hethal 2 weeks ago that there is now stacks of cars heading the Chinas way.

Maybe the only way to get revenue through the door and stop the debt stacking up.

3200 and 800 are the global figures for 2022. My educated guess is UK will be 30-40% of that.

 

[RENDERMAN]

Production figures:

View attachment 9829

Only 191 out versus 817 planned.

I suck at math but those are actually very accurate numbers to my prediction!

 

[Climber]

can't go wrong with Eibach and Bilstein! I've put that combination on almost every car I've owned.. And you can see the challenges faced trying to get steady production up and running. That's a challenge even when everything is going right!! Seems like the Lotus team is giving it their best effort and we should applaud them for that!

Love you attitude! The world needs more positive people . Hope to meet you someday.. from Texas

 

[Pops68]

Love you attitude! The world needs more positive people . Hope to meet you someday.. from Texas

Likewise! To be honest though I wasn't planning on getting a car till late next year anyway so this works for me, unlike the poor fellows who have already been waiting over a year.. We'll meet up when we get our cars. Good excuse for a road trip!!

 

[Scruff111S]

Likewise! To be honest though I wasn't planning on getting a car till late next year anyway so this works for me, unlike the poor fellows who have already been waiting over a year.. We'll meet up when we get our cars. Good excuse for a road trip!!

3 years in my case. UK deposit holder.