As for why Lotus is going this direction, perhaps they just cannot compete in the global EV market and stand out from the rest?
Why would Lotus need to seriously chase volume? They’ve always been a pesudo-exotic brand at best.
If they get 5,000 sales of the Eletre a year (on par with the Lamborghini Urus), they’ll do just fine.
The biggest challenge is that they have built their customer base on a lower-market car than their public-facing intentions suggest.
The Polestar 3 is positioned just fine, they want to be like Porsche and it’s right in line in terms of size, dynamics, and positioning as a lower-spec Cayenne compared to the Volvo EX90’s more stoic “Audi Q7 feel”. But when your primary seller, the Polestar 2, is positioned to compete with lower-market cars like the Tesla Model 3, it dilutes that brand you desperately want to move upmarket.
Volvo handing off their S40 design to Polestar to use for the 2 was both a blessing and a curse for them.
I suspect Geely is okay with Volvo and Polestar’s Audi > Porsche type relationship because they know that, some day, they’ll be able to get the Geely brand or Zeekr into the North American market to capture that lower-market segment.