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Lotus might be facing its biggest financial challenge in years, including slashing the workforce at its Hethel HQ in the UK, but it’s good to see the brand isn’t standing still and is still looking to the future. In a recent second-quarter results call, company CEO Feng Qingfeng gave an update on future product, specifically the future of the Emira sports car. The Emira, which was planned to be Lotus’s last combustion-powered car ever, will now have a stay of execution, with a 2027 facelift bringing with it plug-in hybrid power.

The ‘Hyper Hybrid’ technology will allegedly be the same as the stuff going into the Eletre later this year, but there will be fundamental differences. The Eletre started life out as a battery-electric vehicle, while the Emira uses an older combustion platform. While there may be some tech sharing, it won’t quite be a case of combining one with the other and getting something perfect in the middle ground.

Supercharged Toyota V6 Likely To Be Axed

Lotus doesn’t produce its own engines. Instead, it outsources engine supply to Toyota and Mercedes-AMG. The supercharged 3.5-liter Toyota V6 that has been a mainstay in Lotus’s sports cars for years, however, is unlikely to continue, even with hybrid assistance. Lotus previously said the engine could not be upgraded to comply with incoming emissions legislation in Europe, and with Toyota doing away with that motor with the previous Camry, it’ll likely be all too happy to stop producing it altogether.

The other engine used in the Emira is an AMG-sourced turbo four-cylinder. The future of this motor is uncertain, too, although variations of this have been used in concert with plug-in power in Mercedes models like the AMG C63 S E-Performance.

Plug-in hybrid technology isn’t entirely foreign to Lotus, as the brand previously pioneered a plug-in hybrid Evora concept called the 414E. That used a 1.2-liter three-cylinder engine and a 17 kWh battery pack with an electric range of 35 miles back in 2010. PHEV technology has evolved significantly since then, and lighter, more power-dense batteries could provide an Emira PHEV with ample range and performance without compromising its lightweight nature. What remains to be seen is where the battery, e-motor, and combustion components will come from. The US remains a key market for Lotus, so it will need to avoid sourcing powertrain elements from China – problematic when one of Lotus’s owners, Geely, is Chinese.

Lotus

Rumors have suggested the Emira could somehow get a Mercedes-AMG V8 in future iterations, but it’s still unclear whether this would be a hybrid powertrain or coexist alongside the PHEV for markets like the US where demand for V8s has seen a resurgence.

Lotus Losses Only Dampened By Improved Sales In China

The tantalizing lifeline for the Emira was one of only a few bright points in the earnings call. On the whole, things aren’t looking good for Lotus right now. The company posted a $313 million net loss for the first half of 2025 – but this was an improvement from the same period last year, when it lost $424 million. It was largely buoyed by improved sales of the Eletre SUV and new Emeya electric sedan in China.

Qingfeng didn’t touch on the recent laying off of 550 Hethel-based staff and focused the conversation on the efficiencies Lotus could achieve through combining Lotus Technologies with Lotus Cars. “We see big room for efficiency improvements while we consolidate a lot of the functions together, including the technology synergies,” said Feng, adding that Lotus has “ambitious goals for the Lotus Cars operation in the future.” He highlighted a focus on “very-high-performance attributes and also high-performance engineering services,” and it has been recently reported that Lotus could assist other brands in the engineering and even production of their vehicles. The Polestar 6 was highlighted as a potential model that may be produced by Lotus.

Lotus has only sold 2,813 cars in the first half of 2025, almost half what it had managed at the same time in 2024. The tariff situation in the UK was a large proponent of this slip, as Lotus had to halt deliveries of the Emira to the US earlier this year. Only 891 Emiras were delivered in the first six months of 2025, down 64%. But Lotus’s woes started long before the Trump administration, and even under Biden, when a 102% tariff was implemented on Chinese-built vehicles, the Eletre and Emeya’s fates were all but sealed.

Lotus

Source: Autocar