Race to the first i4

[CraigO]

Hi there, I got an email from Lotus Cars Australia last Friday saying that my car (I4) has been built and is in transit, been given a wide ETA date range sighting shipping/clearance delays. Anyone else in Aus or outside of the UK getting comms of their I4 arrival?

Glad it seems to be moving for you over there, great to see. Nothing from the UK so far, just the usual radio silence from Lotus for me.

 

[Zayex]

Hi there, I got an email from Lotus Cars Australia last Friday saying that my car (I4) has been built and is in transit, been given a wide ETA date range sighting shipping/clearance delays. Anyone else in Aus or outside of the UK getting comms of their I4 arrival?

I tell you, I promise you... I guarantee you that you have all our attention.

Please remember to write when you have news, don't just run off to enjoy your amazing new car.

 

[Bilbao-Emira]

September 2022. LOTUS HQ.
First V6 manual customer car delivery meeting.

Now that we have produced after one year a few manual cars, we have to find a guinee pig to try the first out of production. Where shall we send it?
Belgium, of course, good network connection, just in case we need to recover it.

March 2023
First V6 Auto delivery.
Where to?
Spain, of course, let @Bilbao-Emira be our guinee pig. The guy is confused, he ordered an Auto when nobody wants it. Good news, our production guys did not put an extra pedal and he did not return it.

Summer 2023
First i4 Auto delivery.
Our president, GEELY is ordering AMG engines should arrive in China first (don´t ask why)
Wow, they are running with 40 hp more than rest of the World. We are geniuses.

January 2024.
First handicapped i4 Auto delivery.
We are not sure what´s gonna happen. Maybe we should send it as far as possible. Australia, there you go! Let our partner (AMG) deal with DCT sloppy complaints.
40 hp less, no problem for Aussies, they will put 2 or 3. kangaroos inside and will go faster

TODAY:
Crisis management team:
US is complaining they don´t see any customer driving an Emira.
Ah, don´t worry, let the dealers deal with those strange CARB regulations.
We shipped, invoiced and got paid last year a good bunch of them anyway.

Now let´s move on to our refrigerators with wheels and speakers. It´s the best new thing. With help from the politicians, customer will have to buy them and will be able to hear only the KEF system.

Next meeting: 2025

 

[PsymonR]

Hi there, I got an email from Lotus Cars Australia last Friday saying that my car (I4) has been built and is in transit, been given a wide ETA date range sighting shipping/clearance delays. Anyone else in Aus or outside of the UK getting comms of their I4 arrival?

That's good news, I think the first non-China I4 that we've heard about being in transit, hope your car doesn't have too many delays en-route!

Does anyone think the delay is due to the new rules for manufacturers that they have to sell 20% of annual sales in EV or everycar that is not EV gets fined £13k? (this is for the UK, not sure about Europe)

This is what's happening at Toyota, hence the rush to sell all the GR86 before end of 2023. Not sure if Lotus is a large enough producer to fall under these same rules. If this is the case, they need to see some many Eletre they can sell. If not enough, then its going to be another £13k price rise on the i4 and v6.

I think that's unlikely to be the reason for the delay, if it was and following the GR86 logic, why weren't lotus keen to get I4s out of the door before the end of the year instead of delaying them into this year.

Also if there is a shortfall come year end, Lotus will likely be able to be able to make it up by buying credits from other manufacturers if required or possibly share credit from elsewhere within Geely, which should help lessen any impact.

In general with the car industry I think the main initial impact of the new regulations is going to be that ICE cars will be harder to buy towards the end of the year as manufacturers try to meet the targets rather than at the start of the year.

 

[Tokion]

Hi there, I got an email from Lotus Cars Australia last Friday saying that my car (I4) has been built and is in transit, been given a wide ETA date range sighting shipping/clearance delays. Anyone else in Aus or outside of the UK getting comms of their I4 arrival?

ak3888

This is wonderful news, and exactly what I wanted to hear. I am also waiting for word from my (Japan) importer telling me that my own i4 has been manufactured @Hethel and that it exists in this world. I was told for a long time that it was to be manufactured in November 2023, but in December I was told the manufacturing has been moved to January 2024 (this month), but again I receive no information about whether this manufacturing has happened or that the car actually exist.

ak3888:
Does Lotus Australia tell you whether any of “the issues” (especially regarding delays when paddle shifting the DCT in manual mode) reported by Harry & Son and also Matt Farah, has been “sorted” in the currently produced i4 cars? I expect that no such information is provided, and that we simply got to find out by ourselves after receiving our cars.

At least I hope “the gremlins” are being cleared out over time as manufacturing is progressing. I would also like to believe that the additional delays of the i4 means that the i4 model is in the process of being gradually improved.

I am so happy for you that your i4 is about to arrive, although homologation and preparation after arriving in Australia also could take quite some time.

Keep us posted

 

[ak3888]

Thanks everyone.

@Tokion @Zayex Yes I thought it was positive news that should be shared. But no the "issues" wasn't addressed, it was a very generic email.

Which leads to why I was reaching out to see if other markets has an update too. Like @Bilbao-Emira was saying: "sending it as far as possible" , odd that Australia gets it before other markets (apart from China), being the furthest away other than New Zealand

Anyway, cautiously optimistic. The latter range of the ETA is end of Feb, but will keep everyone posted if things change before then.

 

[PsymonR]

I got the exact same email, I rang Lotus Cars Australia and to discuss as I had previously had email updates mistakenly sent to me. Confirmed, there is a VIN and I am currently waiting on what ship it's on so I can track it. Also got confirmation that the DCT software had been updated on my car since Harry's initial review but also advised that they expect further DCT software updates.

I asked about ADAS but "official" position is the car does not have any ADAS features.

Have you been given the VIN or just been told there is one assigned to your order? If you do have it it'd be interesting to see what the engine identification is.

The VIN decoder for the US has two options in the 7th position for the engine: 'A' for the V6 and 'M' for the 400hp (China) I4. If yours shows something different it may help determine whether they are sticking to just one 400hp variant (as was suggested by someone's dealer in the US).

To note, My Lotus shows a 'K' in that position for my UK car, but I don't know if that's the definitive VIN seeing as the car is supposedly yet to enter production and the VIN shows a 2023 model year car.

 

[Lotustoronto]

Have you been given the VIN or just been told there is one assigned to your order? If you do have it it'd be interesting to see what the engine identification is.

The VIN decoder for the US has two options in the 7th position for the engine: 'A' for the V6 and 'M' for the 400hp (China) I4. If yours shows something different it may help determine whether they are sticking to just one 400hp variant (as was suggested by someone's dealer in the US).

To note, My Lotus shows a 'K' in that position for my UK car, but I don't know if that's the definitive VIN seeing as the car is supposedly yet to enter production and the VIN shows a 2023 model year car.

If Lotus was changing the BHP to 400 on the i4 it would have announced this and changed the advertising. The V6 will be top of range for BHP until it goes out of production. 2025 - Base Edition? 2026 - Final edition V6 @ 430 BHP?, i4 moves up to 400 BHP in 2026/27?

 

[PsymonR]

If Lotus was changing the BHP to 400 on the i4 it would have announced this and changed the advertising. The V6 will be top of range for BHP until it goes out of production. 2025 - Base Edition? 2026 - Final edition V6 @ 430 BHP?, i4 moves up to 400 BHP in 2026/27?

I should have said that I'm fully expecting non-China cars to still be 360hp, but with there having been some speculation about it from a dealer in the US it'd be useful to see if I4s being distributed outside of China have a different engine designation. (and yes, having read the USA delivery thread I realise some of the dealers just seem to make stuff up)

 

[JClem]

So after Lotus called UK i4 orders saying delivery was delayed until summer 24 this has appeared on the available cars for delivery in 4 weeks.

Lotus For Sale | Car Locator | Lotus Cars United Kingdom

www.lotuscars.com

 

[Cutting42]

So after Lotus called UK i4 orders saying delivery was delayed until summer 24 this has appeared on the available cars for delivery in 4 weeks.

Lotus For Sale | Car Locator | Lotus Cars United Kingdom

www.lotuscars.com

Well that’s very strange.

 

[CraigO]

So after Lotus called UK i4 orders saying delivery was delayed until summer 24 this has appeared on the available cars for delivery in 4 weeks.

Lotus For Sale | Car Locator | Lotus Cars United Kingdom

www.lotuscars.com

I might just be clutching at straws after 2 1/2 years of waiting, but I see this as a positive, well just maybe.
The communication I had was that they would be delivered before summer. So, it might be they are slightly ahead (of the much delayed) most recent timeline? Or it could be yet another website "error"

 

[simonb]

Would lay a wager that that wont be on any uk doorstep before middle of march

 

[PsymonR]

So after Lotus called UK i4 orders saying delivery was delayed until summer 24 this has appeared on the available cars for delivery in 4 weeks.

Lotus For Sale | Car Locator | Lotus Cars United Kingdom

www.lotuscars.com

Interesting spot, as CraigO says the communication was that they were looking to deliver the cars by summer, so it could be that Lotus had given extra wiggle room in their delay timescales that they've ended up not needing.

But then again the 4-6 week timescale looks to be the standard for all of the pre-delivered cars so it could just have gone up with default settings without any checks on the content of the posting, after all on the renderings of the interior there is no gear selector...

 

[JClem]

Interesting spot, as CraigO says the communication was that they were looking to deliver the cars by summer, so it could be that Lotus had given extra wiggle room in their delay timescales that they've ended up not needing.

But then again the 4-6 week timescale looks to be the standard for all of the pre-delivered cars so it could just have gone up with default settings without any checks on the content of the posting, after all on the renderings of the interior there is no gear selector...

View attachment 36524

But there are paddles and listed as 360hp

 

[PsymonR]

But there are paddles and listed as 360hp

I'm not disputing that the advert looks to be for an I4, the price checks out too. I'm more just wondering about the overall accuracy of the posting, including timescale.

There should still be a gear selector! If they've uploaded a badly rendered image, what else about the advert is incorrect?

 

[JClem]

I'm not disputing that the advert looks to be for an I4, the price checks out too. I'm more just wondering about the overall accuracy of the posting, including timescale.

There should still be a gear selector! If they've uploaded a badly rendered image, what else about the advert is incorrect?

I remember using the configurator once for the v6 and it didn’t show a steering wheel! But I get your point.

 

[Cutting42]

p

I'm not disputing that the advert looks to be for an I4, the price checks out too. I'm more just wondering about the overall accuracy of the posting, including timescale.

There should still be a gear selector! If they've uploaded a badly rendered image, what else about the advert is incorrect?

Left hand drive?

 

[PsymonR]

Left hand drive?

I find it pretty common for LHD car renders to be used in configurators or when the car is coming soon so that didn't stand out to mention. Renders missing obvious components of the car on the other hand isn't the best look!

 

[Zayex]

Interesting spot, as CraigO says the communication was that they were looking to deliver the cars by summer, so it could be that Lotus had given extra wiggle room in their delay timescales that they've ended up not needing.

But then again the 4-6 week timescale looks to be the standard for all of the pre-delivered cars so it could just have gone up with default settings without any checks on the content of the posting, after all on the renderings of the interior there is no gear selector...

View attachment 36524

Please... I only ask you not to help to generate hopes, we all already accept anything to dream!


Now seriously, and from ignorance. The rendering does not show the gear selector from several angles, it will not be easier to take the ones that already had it? Let's see if they are changing the design...