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Allocation and other dirty words

3K views 31 replies 16 participants last post by  Lotus Fury 
#1 ·
Here's a conversation I had with my dealer, Park Place in Bellevue, WA this afternoon:

Q: do you know what your allocation will be?
A: no information yet, but we expect 50 cars the first year
Q: I'm #32, so that means I'll get my car sometime around August?
A: That sounds about right. we don't know for sure but Aug would be my guess
Q: any more info from lotus?
A: we're supposed to get color chips, brochures, etc. but probably not until after the official launch in LA
Q: when would you be finalizing orders for deposit holders?
A: probably in feb
Q: what does #32 mean to me. what happens if 10 bill gates come in and ask for a car. do I get screwed?
A: I give you my word that we will honor the list. you were smart to have a deposit down for a year and I'm not going to make you wait any longer because someone else wants to step in line. That being said, we have had 3 drop off the list in front of you and we will not move you up. we reserve the right to sell those spots for more than MSRP buy you are guaranteed msrp.

It was very reassuring and made me feel good. Very honest conversation and response from the dealer.
 
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#27 ·
About the container size, they might hold 6 cars per. But most likely there’ll be a bunch of container in the same ship. Unloaded then off to the different dealers. Might they put 4 for one dealer and 2 for another in the same container? Wouldn’t see why not. With a couple of cars, I’ve order before the dealer, would get a batch every couple of weeks, hopefully that’s the case with Lotus.
 
#28 ·
I would expect the following:

1. March - Production at Hethel is ramped up minorly to build American versions.

2. April/May - The first few months each dealership gets just a few cars.

3. July/ Aug - A few months into production the money hits Lotus UK.

4. Aug / Sept - At this time they build up a their cash balances a little, say a few months.

5. December - They add on more production, maybe a second line for spring delivery. This is where they start producing a lot more product.

This is obviously just a guess but if Lotus' cash situation is bad it would be prudent to build up some cash reserves before they start more shifts. And they won't see the money from the US Sales for at least a month or two after the sale takes place (Lotus US to dealer, not Dealer to customer). It also depends on many factors that we don't know about: deposits, short term loans to cover production costs, etc. They may have plans to ramp up production massively but I highly doubt that they would until money starts coming back from the US.
 
#31 · (Edited)
About a month ago Lotus USA was saying first shipment will head out in April. My guess with orders going in Dec/early Jan. production will start in March. In which case they'll have 1.5-2 months to ramp up the production line & ship out a "full" months wroth of cars... at least that's what I'm hoping for. Don't think it's really a question of money, more just getting the line up to speed. And with that they may give the cars a good once over, last thing they'd want is assembly problems for the first batch, to give the car a bad rep.

As far as ramping production over there current goals. Yeah would expect them to wait a few months to see how the car is doing. Then if they give the go ahead a few more months to get the double shifts started.
 
#32 ·
I'm pretty sure that Lotus is going to play it safe with this one. It would be better to keep lower production and see what happens the first few months that the car is out before they go all willy nilly (I love that phrase) and start adding production. I'ld say they will wait til the 4th Q before making any huge changes unless the car is a major hit.

They might want to see what happens to the sales/deposits numbers go and to see if how many cars are being sold used and what price people are getting. If used prices are dropping because there's alot of people just not wanting the car after they get it expect production to stay low. If the price stays high & demand at dealers is good maybe we'll see production ramp up.

With a smaller company like Lotus a failure could mean a lot of trouble. They might not want to count their chickens until they have hatched, reproduced and evolved a semi-democratic self goverening society.
 
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