Now Lotus says it's got an SUV in the pipeline

Lotus boss Jean-Marc Gales (Lotus)

2020 may seem like a long way off at the moment but for the motor industry it's just around the corner as new models take years to bring to fruition. With that in mind, Lotus has revealed it will be bringing two new sports cars to the market in 2020, and an SUV will be following them in either 2021 or 2022. For the sports car brand this is quite an ambitious program as they will be the first all-new vehicles the brand will have launched since it brought us the Evora back in 2009.

The news about the new models was revealed in an interview in CAR Magazine with Lotus CEO Jean-Marc Gales. The Lotus boss confirmed one of them will be a replacement for an existing model, while the other is likely to be a limited-edition, track-focused model that will assume a place in the company's portfolio above the Evora. The less expensive of the two models will be based on the manufacturer's bonded aluminum chassis, but the other will be built on an all-new carbon-fiber chassis that will help it become the company's new performance flagship model.

Geely, the Chinese owner of Volvo, purchased a major stake in Lotus last year, which it's hoped will bring a much needed degree of stability and investment to the brand after years of ownership changes. So, unlike the last group of ambitious concepts the company came up with, which included new versions of the Esprit, Elite and Elan models, Geely's investment should ensure the new cars the CEO is touting now actually make it to the production line.

It's also been revealed that production of the 3-Eleven is going to come to an end, and there's a very strong possibility going by what Gales has said in the past that a new Elise could be one of the cars coming in 2020.