Lotus has formally opened the doors of its storied Norfolk home to other manufacturers, with industry minister Chris McDonald officially launching the Hethel Performance Hub and signalling that the government sees the site as a test bed for the future of British car-making.
The hub is an attempt to turn Lotus’s long-established engineering, manufacturing and testing capability at Hethel into a shared resource. Rather than guarding its designers, engineers, test track and assembly lines for its own use, the Geely-owned firm wants to let similar manufacturers and technology companies develop and build alongside it, on the principle of partnership rather than competition.
“By creating an environment where partners can collaborate, develop and deliver side by side, we enable a faster, smarter way to innovate in a sector where traditional models often slow things down,” said Matt Nice, deputy managing director at Lotus Cars. The aim, he added, was to unlock “the full potential” of a site that already has “everything here to be a perfect incubator for partners to bring their concepts and ideas to production”, while ensuring those products do not compete directly with Lotus’s own cars.
Four partners are already working within the Hethel environment. Charge Holdings is relocating its full operations, including Charge Cars and wider group vehicle programmes, to the Norfolk site, while Zenos Cars has signed Heads of Terms with Lotus with a view to using the hub as a future production base. DR Automobiles is a confirmed partner, with further details of a confidential project expected later this year, and Cranfield University is collaborating on an Emira GT4 race car project.
Matt Sanger of Zenos Cars, which is already producing vehicles at the site, said the relationship was complementary rather than combative. “We don’t clash with Lotus Cars, it’s a very complimentary relationship,” he said. “The skills and the facilities on site mean we can benefit from that without having to spend huge amounts of investment.”
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