Okay, we are ready to move on to our next presentation. Please welcome to the stage CFO of Lotus Technology, Dr. Wang.
Thanks a lot. Thanks for the invitation. It's my second time coming here. Last time was May, and I'm so happy to see so many familiar faces, and actually, I'm no longer so nervous. Anyways, thank you so much for coming. Taking this chance, I see I only have 25 minutes to talk about the company with a 78 year history. It's kind of very limited time. That means I will not be able to give you all the aspects of the company, and everything I talk today, especially for the presentation, you can see this from our website, in the Nasdaq website. Anyway, I'm from Lotus, and most of us, you don't know me, but you know the company, and you know the name very well. We are working in this highly competitive industry, and we are a legendary name with a long history.
I think the industry itself, there are so many interesting things still happening. Today, what I can tell you is about, of course, I will let you know where we were from, briefly, and where we are now, and what's going to be the future look like for us, and what's my understanding to the industry and to the challenge we are having. First of all, I think it's, yeah, my presentation may be kind of boring, but the reality, the industry is not. I think if you know the story, of the Roadster from Tesla, it's what they do. They're having flying cars. It's super amazing. We're kind of really looking forward to happen in a few years, but not yet, so you have to wait. Yeah, we have to wait. I have fully respect to what they have been doing.
That's going to tell us what's going to be the future and tomorrow for our industry. I'm not very sure when it's going to happen, but you'll see so many pioneers making it. We want to be part of it as well, although we are kind of experienced and an old name in this industry. I think we are working together for this. Speaking about Tesla, it's better for a lot of people to know our brand. You know that Roadster, the first generation, that's actually inspired by the Lotus cars. At least and engineered by the Lotus engineers as well. You see the connections.
I still want to, yeah, to tell you the first level, still want to talk about the name of this company was born in 1948, and we had a very glorious history for the Formula 1 and later on for the sports cars. Everywhere I go, I went to the taxi because I'm driving, however, wearing the Lotus T-shirt, so they always know me. So gave me a lot of inspiration. I mean, of course, it's also responsibility for us to be able to run this company through another 20 years, or 100 years. But the Lotus, we have a very good reputation in the Formula 1 and in the racing cars.
But since the 1980s, when our founder, Colin Chapman, passed away, the company, of course, went through some tough time, changing the hands, for the different shareholders, including General Motors, Toyota, and Proton in Malaysia, and also finally in 2017, in the hand of Geely. So we have the year what we call the starting the journey, we call the electrification. So since then, we have the two pillars. One pillar is a traditional one. It's the ICE car, sports car, made in U.K., selling all around the world. Another pillar is what we call the emojis. It's designed and produced in China, sold across the universe as well. So that's the basic story. And starting here is highlight some of the achievement we have. And since then, we expand our sales network to cover over 60 markets, and with over 300 dealers across the universe.
And we currently have the five platform models, five existing models, including the sports car, ICE. We have three electric cars produced in China and U.K. as well. And also, we have one car developing. It's a next generation sports car. It's going to be the hybrid. And also, we have a PHEV just releasing this year. Currently selling in China, and we are going to deliver this in continental Europe in November. So basically, I think in the first half of the year, we make a kind of achievement. Year-on-year basis, we increase our deliveries almost 40%, and our gross margin improved from a single digit to over 10%. And also, we narrow greatly, dramatically, narrowed down our net loss by over 60%. So this is basically what we have for the highlights from the investment perspective.
But today, I think I'm not here to tell you about this. Most of you still want to know what the Lotus was, is, and will be. The Lotus has been the philosophy of everything is made for the drivers. That has been the philosophy from day one until now. And in the history, Lotus made a lot of contributions to the industry. We are the first to launch the concept of aerodynamics and also we are keeping the philosophy for the car to be lightweight. We strive for the durability. That means good handling. I think it's the soul for every Lotus cars. So we have been insisting this for years, we never change. Of course, I just imagine we go through the time up and downs, but we never change our philosophy about the car making.
And also the pioneers who implemented the Formula 1 technologies to the mass production, to the lifestyle cars. That means innovation is something we keep in our heart. They say the car brand is a history. I think I do not have to repeat too much, but we were really still remembered in this Formula 1 and the sports car circles, although actually quit the Formula 1 since 1980s. Starting from the 2020s, we have the new energies and about our new energy cars, we keep in our philosophy of lightweighting. You will see the portals, you will see the aerodynamics, you will see very good handlings. This is what we say we keep the brand consistent and very unique actually as well. Also through the years of operation, we know the market change. The market will always evolve. Our users, they evolve.
In order to meet the demand of the customers, we also evolve as time goes by and so we develop. We are not only a sports car maker, we also produce lifestyle cars which meet the demand of our Lotus fans. We embrace the new technologies. We embrace, for instance, for the powertrain, for the autonomous driving. That is currently what we are. We are producing whatever the clients they need. This is a current product positioning. Brand positioning for us, we are in line with mostly the Porsche. Also we are the pioneer in terms of the technology advancement, especially for the new energy adoptions. I do not have to put up much. Aerodynamics and lightweighting has been the symbols of Lotus.
Starting when we have the new electrification journey, we have developed the 800V and 900V electrical architectures, plus our classic chassis capabilities. So we are really making some pioneer work, especially for the high-end luxury end markets. This is our new technology. I will call it X-Hybrid. It is the new generation of the PHEV plug-in hybrid. These are some of our classical images of the Esprit. It is the Evija, and also the current model you see in front of the doors, it is the Emira. This year, we can make some of the improvement for the Emira. We call the 420. That means the horsepower is 420, so 20 more than the normal Emiras. This is electric cars produced in China and sold all over the world. This is a GT sedan. This is a PHEV.
As I said, part of the image of our customers, we do have the Lotus fans, especially in Europe and also in United States. Also through our lifestyle car, we also identified the new generation of Lotus fans. They are tech savvy. They are high net worth people and especially younger people. Also you even see the difference in China. The age is 10 years younger than the United States people here and the European people. But all in all, I think we have always something in common. All the Lotus car, the users, they have one things in common. They like drivings. Not only just a car, they like the driving the car. So that is the essence of the philosophy and also it is in line with our customer demand. This is longer the past and first half of these 2025 numbers.
I think this is the first number we released after we released our Focus 2030 strategy in May. Actually, last time I joined this conference, I gave the concept of Focus 2030 strategies, including we are flexible in terms of the powertrain because we see the demand for our clients. They not only need the ICE, not only the battery, they want the PHEVs to adapt to the different geographies, different working conditions. Secondly, what we say when something will never change regarding our understanding to the cars. So, this I would say, especially through the half year's operations until since May, I think it's a way understand even more clearly because I know we have the Greek saying that "To know thyself." That means to know yourself is very difficult. We know this.
I think now we know much better because even this, we always have the era of the autonomous era of the new technology AIs. We do embrace AI, and we apply a lot AIs in our operation. We also have a robotics company. So we do AIs. But we also ask question, if everybody use AI, use autonomous driving, at the end of day, people would like to still how to emphasize on the drivability of our car. So our standing is kind of clearer now today. If everybody is relying on autonomous driving, then the companies who has a deep culture and a deep understanding for drivability is going to be even more important. Because I think it's for the within the human natures. For instance, today, this morning, I went from hotel to here. There's a big traffic.
Of course, I will say, "Oh, how good if I don't have to drive," right? I rely on the machine, and I don't have to drive. It's good. But if every day your only highway is autonomous driving, you don't have to drive. All the cars is so you don't drive. As a human being, I think we will say no, because it's our nature to feel about the world through the wheels. Also, it's very important for us people to have this kind of perception of control, right? We want to perceive, we want to control. So if you face every day the autonomous driving, you will have the day you want to even drive. You have the motivation to drive. So that's for the human natures.
We have to do something that feel existence of ourselves and be able to interact and also to control the outside, these circumstances. So that's what we call this. If everybody use AI, use autonomous, we do the same, but I think we will put in more efforts on to making the car more drivable. So that's our understanding, say, okay, for the brand, to be in essence, our brand is equivalent to drivabilities, to the engineerings behind the cars. So I think it's the second pillar for our autonomous strategy. Of course, the third, I thought with how the market is. Reason why we can't do this, first, we have our own accumulation through years. We have the support from the China, our shareholders, Geely. They have very good R&Ds and also the manufacturing, whatever the capabilities for the new energies.
They say solar in China is really so competitive. That means you have to play very hard to survive. I think that we have the support from them. We are able to combine and lower our cost and making more deliveries and increase the revenue as well. It is happening now because I think we have synergies across all the functions, research, and also logistics, manufacturing, and also the supply chains. In terms, for instance, I will give you example, right? For the manufacturing cost, we are able to lower the cost by 50% this year compared to last year because we co-share the assembly lines with the Geely, one of the model of Geely. Then the third, of course, the most importantly, we call the fourth pillar.
We are going to make the company financial more beautiful because we had a hard time in terms of financials because you see we have a very high debt ratio and we are making loss. But if we keep doing this, we will never be able to survive. That is the reason why before Geely took over the company, the company has only sold 1,000 or 2,000 cars per year. It is never. Of course, we are a very good car company, but you are never able to survive if you keep doing this. We tell the markets, if we follow our guidance through the five years, we are able to make the turning a positive in terms of the profitability so that we can survive on our own.
The first half of this year, I do not want to go into the details for the numbers, but I told you that we are kind of really on the right way of what we have been envisioning, right? We are making good expansion in terms of revenue, in terms of delivery, and obviously we significantly narrowed our profit loss, net loss. Of course, later on, this year and a few years, and you can keep following us to see whether we really can abide, follow our guidance. But it is not a strict guidance for the single year. It is guidance as for the next five years plan. Another big story for us in between last time and now is about the incorporation between the Lotus UK and the Lotus Technology. Lotus UK is a pretty traditional car maker based in U.K.
Lotus Technology is a Nasdaq-listed company, and mostly it is rooted in China. It is a management team in China. In this August, we finished the incorporation between the companies. Basically, the Lotus Technology, we bought, acquired the stake of the Lotus UK so that we can better align the brand and also the operations in terms of manufacturing and other aspects of the operation. I told you we are kind of covering the other major markets. In the States, specific for this country, I think we have much bigger potentials. Currently, we are only selling the sports car. Of course, we can sell the SUVs, the BEV, because we made homologation. But because of the tariff, I think it is mass manufacturing and production here, and also the sales here, mass product is kind of very difficult, and it is not our objective to sell at such high price.
We even didn't make any promotion for this, our capability to sell in the States, but we do have the potentials, and we are still the only one in the high-end market makers for our SUVs from China. We really hope this kind of barriers can be lowered so that we can immediately respond so that our very good quality car can be sold here as well, just as in the case in Canada. This is the products pipeline. For the next generation, our understanding, the markets have a lot of very good sports cars already. We are going to provide a new edition. It's a PHEV. It's going to be V8 plus motors. It's going to be more than 1000] horsepowers. It's our next generation sports car that's going to be released in 2028.
We received already a very good reception from our dealers and also some of the users who are using the sports car right now. This is, I just told you the story, if we can make the 30,000, between 20,000 and 30,000 deliveries annually, and our target gross profit margin is 20%, and we're able to achieve the EBIT positive. We hope this turning around is going to happen before 2030s. That's basically our dealers distribution network. I think I still have a few minutes time. Good. Thank you. And I told you our understanding, for today, even compared to five months before in May, I think I understand the company better.
That's really important because we have so many voices saying, "Okay, Lotus, what are going to be our future?" You have so many competitions and then what are we going to do? It looks like we are changing from time to time. I think now we'll be able to respond to the market well. We know ourselves much better than before. That's the reason why you compare to last year, when we do the earning release, we also gave the roadmap for our products. It's kind of a little bit different, but it's kind of determined. We know what we do, and even especially, as I told you, we are very adaptive. We are tech-savvy as well. We embrace the new technologies. And also we are part of it. We are pioneer of it.
For instance, if you look at parts of my activities, I even go to some of the crypto conference. I'm not crypto enthused or whatever, but I think some of the blockchain technology we are using, and we are adaptive to that. And some of the users, they want to pay in terms of crypto. It's okay, right? Crypto coins. We try to set up their connection so that they can pay in whatever they like. We are there where we really embrace new technologies, but still, the more new technology is coming, and you see the herd, herding behavior. We had herding behaviors, right? We see in China, this first half a year, over 300 products, new models coming out from the markets. A lot of them very good products, but you cannot imagine, right?
So yes, this is not going to last because that's not the way the automotive have developed. Especially when we have this kind of competition pressures, especially in the Chinese environment. What you think about yourself is more important. Can you still keep what you were? Can you keep what you are? I think for Lotus, I want to tell through this, you guys, and also we were the one who really want to keep Lotus unique. I think what we want to do really make the cars. As far as the car, even it's autonomous driving, safety, durability, is always the essence. We're making all the efforts to make it happen, no matter it's a sports car, it's a lifestyle cars. That's the information I want you to know. And especially, currently I told Scott is my partner.
I said, my son is applying for the college. And because now it's so easy, not easy to tell which major he wants. Because I told him, to accumulate knowledge is not important at all, not like before, because you can get knowledge in one minute, one second from the AIs, right? So accumulating knowledge is not as important as before. But what is important, if you are a person who has methodology, who has systematic thinking, that may differentiate you from the others. Otherwise, it's going to be very hard if you rely on the knowledge itself. For Lotus, the same. I think we keep all the best to make our cars different, unique, and really, we don't want to embrace everybody, right? Please everybody. But we want to please every car drivers who want to drive the cars. That car group is never going to vanish.
If they have this group of people, I know it's going to be there. Thank you so much for today.