There’s a version of this story where Lotus goes all-electric, plays it safe, and quietly fades into the background of an increasingly crowded EV landscape. Fortunately for enthusiasts, that’s not the story we’re telling today. Lotus has just released a teaser for the Type 135, its upcoming supercar, and the headline alone is enough to make any gearhead stop scrolling: hybrid V8, at least 986 horsepower, arriving in 2028. This is not a concept. This is not a pipe dream. This is Lotus announcing, with all the confidence of a brand that just rediscovered its DNA, that it is coming for Ferrari and Lamborghini.

The road to this announcement was anything but straight. The Type 135 codename was originally attached to a fully electric replacement for the Emira, the brand’s current mid-engine sports car. But as global EV sales grew slower than expected and plug-in hybrids surged in markets like China where parent company Geely holds enormous influence, Lotus quietly rethought its approach. The result is the Focus 2030 plan, a restructured strategy that now targets a lineup split of roughly 60% hybrid and 40% pure electric. The Type 135 became the centerpiece of that pivot, shedding its electric-only origins in favor of something far more exciting. A V8. A proper, fire-breathing V8, paired with a hybrid system and pointed squarely at the top shelf of the supercar world.

What Lotus has actually shown is minimal but tantalizing. The teaser video is deliberately dark, but it reveals enough: an ultra-wide stance that commands attention, a pair of large exhaust tips jutting from the rear bumper, and what appears to be a forged carbon diffuser below. Visually, the Type 135 seems to occupy a middle ground between the Emira’s fluid, swooping bodywork and the sharper, fighter-jet aggression of the Evija hypercar. There is also a detail that many spotted buried in the press release file names: one image was labeled with the word “Esprit.” Lotus renewed its trademark on that legendary name back in 2023, and the Type 135 fits the profile perfectly as the first road-going Lotus V8 since the original Esprit bowed out in 2004. Whether the Esprit name comes back officially or stays a wink and a nod remains to be seen, but the symbolism is hard to ignore.

On the powertrain side, Lotus is being deliberately coy for now. What we do know is that the hybrid V8 will produce more than 1,000 PS, which translates to at least 986 horsepower on this side of the Atlantic. The company has hinted it may leverage learnings from the Eletre X SUV’s hybrid setup, which pairs a turbocharged engine with electric motors and 900-volt architecture. For context on where that power output lands in the competitive set, the Lamborghini Huracán successor, the Temerario, runs a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 with three electric motors producing 907 horsepower total. The Ferrari 296’s bigger sibling, the 12Cilindri aside, shows what a well-tuned V8 and trio of motors can do at over 1,000 horsepower combined. Lotus is threading into that exact conversation. Given the brand’s obsession with keeping weight down, the battery size and motor configuration will be critical decisions, and analysts watching closely suspect the Type 135 will lean toward a larger battery pack to maximize output without sacrificing too much on the scales.

What makes this announcement genuinely significant is not just the numbers. It’s the context. Lotus has spent the better part of a decade trying to reinvent itself as a premium British EV brand under Geely’s ownership, launching the Evija hypercar, the Eletre SUV, and the Emeya sedan in rapid succession. Some of that worked. Some of it muddied the brand identity. The Type 135, however, feels like a recalibration back to something pure: a mid-engine, V8-powered supercar designed in Europe, almost certainly built at the Hethel factory in Norfolk that has been Lotus’s spiritual home for decades. CEO Qingfeng Feng framed it clearly, noting that Lotus was born from the rebellious spirit of Colin Chapman, and that Focus 2030 is designed to reset both the brand and the business to stay true to that DNA. A 986-plus horsepower hybrid supercar is a pretty bold way to make that point.

Both the full reveal and the market launch are scheduled for 2028, with additional technical details expected later in 2026. That is a long runway, and a lot can change between now and then. But Lotus has committed publicly, with a specific powertrain, a specific configuration, and a specific target. The teaser alone has reignited conversations about the brand that had gone quiet in recent years. If the Type 135 arrives the way Lotus is describing it, it won’t just be a great Lotus. It will be a legitimate statement car in a segment dominated by Maranello and Sant’Agata, built by a British brand that refuses to stop punching above its weight. We’ll be watching this one very closely.