Lotus has created its first hybrid SUV! Priced at least 20,000 yuan cheaper than pre-sale, Feng Qifeng sets a profit target for next year.

Author | Zhou Zhiyu

“Putting the refrigerator, the color TV, and the big sofa into it—hard? Not hard. What’s hard is making everyone drive it in a really comfortable, really free way.” After the new vehicle was unveiled, Lotus Automobile CEO Feng Qinfeng said.

On the evening of March 29, Lotus released its first plug-in hybrid SUV. The preliminary price has been lowered by 20,000–30,000 yuan compared with earlier figures; across the lineup, options have been changed to standard equipment. Feng Qinfeng also candidly told Wall Street Insights, “Expanding the product line is so that the finances can turn around.” Hybrid will be the long-term technical route that Lotus sticks to.

Wall Street Insights has learned that Lotus Automobile also has plans to launch a series of hybrid products.

Hybrid is becoming a technical direction that high-performance brands can’t afford to bypass. This year, F1 will kick off new rules for the 2026 season. In the power unit, the motor power contribution is close to about half of total output. The competition between oil and electric is almost evenly split. This top event—seen as a barometer for automotive technology—is officially upgrading hybrid from a transitional solution to a competitive standard.

The old playbook in which ultra-luxury brands use scarcity-based pricing, use brand storytelling to maintain a premium, and use a single powertrain selling to the world is starting to fail. This Lotus SUV is a direct response to that turning point.

Lotus survival arithmetic

Lotus needs this vehicle—more urgently than the outside world thinks.

In its Win26 strategy, Feng Qinfeng drew a line for himself: achieve positive EBITDA and positive operating cash flow in 2026. In conversations with Wall Street Insights and others, he once again emphasized that this goal remains unchanged.

Feng Qinfeng pointed out, “If we just position ourselves as a standalone sports car company, our product line will be too narrow.”

Ferrari made the Purosangue; Lamborghini has the Urus. The ultra-luxury brands as a whole are chasing cash flow from SUVs—Lotus is no exception.

Every business decision for this SUV points to the same thing: improving conversion efficiency.

Feng Qinfeng gave a number: consumer online touchpoints have been stretched from 14 times to 24 times to form a single conversion. The decision chain gets longer; for every additional options item, there’s one more layer of hesitation. Cut all the options and make the standard configuration as complete as possible. “Don’t let users make choices again”—the purpose is to shorten the decision path.

Cutting the price by 20,000–30,000 yuan—how do you hold the gross margin up? Feng Qinfeng’s answer is the Geely system. Shared factories and shared electronic architectures. In its latest quarterly report, Lotus Technology shows gross margin rebounding to 8%.

On the product side, Feng Qinfeng has staked differentiation in places consumers can’t see.

900 horsepower isn’t the power limit—it’s the handling limit. Lotus has built the Evija with 2,000 horsepower. They have the capability, but they voluntarily limit it to 900 horsepower, because if a 2.5-ton car were pushed to 2,000 horsepower, it would be hard for the driver to “Hold it.” Together with Pirelli, Lotus customizes exclusive LTS tires; the tire tread is narrowed, and grip actually increases by 10%, while rolling resistance drops by 20%. The braking distance is 60 centimeters shorter than that of the Porsche Cayenne. This isn’t just a different brake disc—it’s the result of a combined tuning across lightweighting, aerodynamics, tires, and the chassis.

Feng Qinfeng shared a detail. He visited a supplier in Canada and saw them use structural engineering to make steel as light as aluminum, with strength even higher than aluminum. “To reduce weight, there’s no other weapon—only two things: materials and technology.” The body is reduced by more than 100 kilograms, and every kilogram costs money.

“You can’t see how much a 48-volt active anti-roll bar is worth. Is a refrigerator, a color TV, and a big sofa hard to do? What we’re making is the hard stuff.”

Feng Qinfeng’s words sound like product faith, but behind it is also a pricing strategy. What Lotus sells is an experience that other automakers can’t directly price and can only be obtained by actually driving. The problem is: things you can’t put a price on are the hardest to spread.

Global scale rollout is the prerequisite for this logic to hold. China launches first, the Middle East follows in sync. After Canada reduces import tariffs, the top 10 dealers have already reached out to five of them; Europe will follow in the second half. Feng Qinfeng proposed the “3331” strategy: the sales share in the U.S., Europe, China, and other regions follows 3:3:3:1.

The user profile is also changing. In the past, it was business owners and the first generation of entrepreneurs. After the small order started, financial executives began to enter the picture. The repurchase rate for older owners is 20%.

The delivery cadence has changed too. Feng Qinfeng said that they previously suffered a loss: they would organize production only after receiving orders, but then orders piled in, and deliveries were scheduled out to 800 days. This time, they prepared inventory in advance, and the cars arrive at dealerships as ready stock.

Using SUV cash flow to fund the next-generation sports car R&D and running into the positive cycle before the financial window closes. This is the survival arithmetic of a company, and also a structural question that the entire ultra-luxury segment is facing.

The old playbook of ultra-luxury no longer works

Right now, ultra-luxury brands are going through a headwind in the market.

In China, Porsche sold 41,900 units in 2025, down 26% year over year. Four years ago, this figure was nearly 100,000 units. China fell from being the world’s largest market to third place. Dealerships have been cut from 150 to 114. By end of 2026, the plan is to continue shrinking to 80. Full-year operating profit margin is about 2%, the lowest in recent years.

Porsche is not an exception. Bentley, Ferrari, and Lamborghini all recorded a three-way decline in China: Bentley sold 2,030 units by 2030, down 13% year over year; Ferrari sold 664 units, down 15%; Lamborghini sold 512 units, down 7%. Data from the CPCA shows that in the first 11 months of 2025, the cumulative sales of domestic luxury brands were about 2.201 million units, down 10.6% year over year. Retail sales of imported cars for the full year were 540,000 units, down a steep 33%.

It’s not that nobody buys expensive cars anymore. Plug-in hybrid sales above 400,000 yuan previously recorded more than 90% year-over-year growth. Aito M9 sold over 10,000 units in September, and NIO ET9 has started deliveries. The money is still there—it’s just flowing to a different place, from brand premiums to technical experiences.

Feng Qinfeng sees a clue in the opposite direction: “There’s already a very clear trend toward personalized consumption this year.” Cars on the road are becoming more and more uniform, which in turn is driving demand for differentiation. That gap is what he is betting on. But he’s also clear-eyed: “We’re not making cars for everyone. We’re making cars for those people who have a love for them.” If you compromise and make a refrigerator, a color TV, and a big sofa, then it won’t be Lotus anymore—Lotus will truly lose itself.

China’s new energy automakers have turned stacking horsepower, stacking computing power, and stacking screens into industry default language. Consumers have been trained to look at tables and buy cars.

Chassis tuning, lightweighting, and aerodynamics—these real technical barriers of ultra-luxury brands—are precisely the things that are hardest to quantify and hardest to spread. The biggest selling point needs you to drive on mountain roads to feel it. Their rivals’ selling points are clearly visible in the parameter sheet.

Feng Qinfeng has felt this change too: “In the past, maybe 14 touchpoints would produce one conversion; now it might take 24.” Behind the longer decision chain is that consumers are no longer willing to unconditionally pay for “invisible value.”

The technical route is also splitting. Porsche Taycan’s full-year sales are down 22% year over year. Pure-electric Macan just launched and immediately met a cold reception; Porsche had to announce in September 2025 that it would add gasoline models back into its product matrix, quietly shelving its earlier goal of “80% pure electric by 2030.” Ferrari and Lamborghini have also delayed their pure-electric timelines. China’s market pushes pure electric through policy. In the Middle East and Southeast Asia, charging infrastructure is far from mature. In Europe, there has been repeated back-and-forth between carbon-emissions regulations and consumer acceptance. The era of selling one powertrain route to the entire world has ended.

Feng Qinfeng went to the event to watch this year’s F1 race. Under the new rules, drivers must allocate energy in real time at extreme speeds. “You can’t just dump all the electricity at once; then when you need it, you won’t have it.” In his view, when the top competitive motorsport on the track is embracing hybrid, there’s no need for civil-market cars to keep debating the direction anymore.

This is a pragmatic hedging strategy. It also means that in any single market, Lotus isn’t the most extreme option. But for a company that needs to scale up across multiple global markets at the same time, it may be the only feasible path.

In an interview, Feng Qinfeng also said: “The immutable rules will inevitably create the immutable rankings for a thousand years.” He was talking about F1, but if applied to the ultra-luxury auto industry, the logic is the same. Lamborghini cuts across all models toward hybrid; Ferrari is still waiting for pure electric; Porsche pulls back on gasoline; Lotus moves forward betting on hybrid. Four paths, four ways of wagering. The rules have changed, and the old rankings are no longer a protective talisman.

Whoever runs through the new business model first will define the next round of order. Lotus is setting its submission deadline for next year.

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