Mike Johnstone, Lotus’s commercial vice president and the brand’s most senior executive in Europe, is leaving the company, Autocar understands. Johnstone is officially still the firm's commercial boss, responsible for all products and reporting directly to China-based CEO Qingfeng Feng, and is simply on a leave of absence from the business, but his departure will be announced in due course.
These revealed a loss of close to £600 million in 2023, and showed that the firm is barely 5% of the way to its sales goal of 150,000 units in just four years time. The firm's share price has halved since the IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in late February. Qingfeng Feng is rarely seen or heard in public, and Johnstone has been positioned as the main face of the brand since his appointment, including a recent wide-reaching interview with Autocar.