I don't know all the details, but Lotus was making things a lot by hand, and not in the high speed mass production game.
They still are hand made, with no robots at all in the plant. The Elise and Exige go down the same line, the Evora down a separate one.
The mats in my car have "Handmade in England" embroidered into them, which is quite neat. (Though I suspect in part aimed for the Japanese market, where Lotus were well on their "Britishness").
Having done the Lotus factory tour, it's nice to see such passion amongst the employees, and I have to say my most current one (a 2015) it does show through in the fit and finish. The paint work and trimming are stunning. (But then the prices are creeping up with the highest spec Exige now costing >£100k)
From what I could tell they worked a contract with Tesla for some number of gliders over time, and then extended it slightly near the end.
And there was the whole situation with the Lotus airbags being an old style only sellable by a low volume manufacturer under some exemption and Tesla was running into those regulations so had to stop selling them because they no longer qualified for that exemption.
It is a bit of a shame they didn't build a few more for Europe, where even to this day the Elise is still sold and that style of airbags are still allowable. Lotus have had to add traction and stability controls, but that was done by going to Bosch and buying such a system off the shelf.
Will be interesting to see what Lotus themselves do under Geely ownership. There might be some space under the Polestar brand to bring back something electric on the back of the next gen Elise tub. It might fit in more under the "Sportscar" than "Hypercar" bracket I'd be looking for. (As much for applicability as affordability.)
I guess even if Tesla don't bring the car to market, it's good at least we can imagine others filling in the gaps, something I can't of imagined 5 years ago!
