Lotus Technology Innovative Limited having its trading address at 151 Wardour Street, London W1F 8WB, registration number 13337498 (“LOTUS”) is the subsidiary UK entity of Lotus Technology Inc. This privacy policy relates to LOTUS. LOTUS respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit www.lotuscars.com (referred to as “our website” or “the website” in this privacy policy) (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
1. Important information and who we are
Purpose of this privacy policy
This privacy policy aims to give you information on how LOTUS collects and processes your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website when you purchase a product or service.
This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.
It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.
Who we are
LOTUS CARS LIMITED is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as “LOTUS”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy).
We have appointed a data privacy committee that is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the data privacy committee at LTIL.Legal@eu.lotuscars.com.
E-mail is our preferred method of communication as it allows us to respond to queries faster, but if you would rather send us a letter then please address it to Legal and Compliance, Lotus Technology Innovative Limited, 151 Wardour Street, London W1F 8WB.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes
We keep our privacy policy under regular review. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
Third-party links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.
2. The data we collect about you
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:
- Identity data such as first name, last name, username or similar identifier, title.
- Contact data such as billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
- Financial data such as bank account and payment card details.
- Transaction data such as details about payments to and from you and other details of products you have purchased from us.
- Technical data such as internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
- Profile data such as your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
- Usage data such as information about how you use our website, products and services.
- Marketing data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.
We may also put your personal data into aggregated and anonymised form. Once anonymised, that data is no longer your personal data. However, if we combine or connect that anonymised, aggregated data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this Policy.
We do not, via the website, collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.
If you fail to provide personal data
Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you, and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with goods or services). In this case, we may have to cancel a product or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.
3. How is your personal data collected?
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:
- Direct interactions. You may give us your data by filling in forms on our website or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
- apply for our products;
- create an account on our website;
- subscribe to our publications;
- request marketing to be sent to you;
- enter a competition, promotion or survey; or
- give us feedback or contact us.
- Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for further details.
- Third parties or publicly available sources. We will receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
- analytics providers such as Google based outside the UK;
- providers of technical, payment and delivery services such as Stripe.
- We may record all calls made to or from our customer service telephone number.
4. How we use your personal data
We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.
Note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.
| Purpose/Activity | Lawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest |
|---|---|
| To register you as a new customer | Performance of a contract with you |
| To process and deliver your order including: (a) Manage payments, fees and charges (b) Collect and recover money owed to us | (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to recover debts due to us) |
| To manage our relationship with you which will include: (a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy (b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey | (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services) |
| To enable you to partake in a prize draw, competition or complete a survey | (a) Performance of a contract with you (b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them and grow our business) |
| To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) | (a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise) (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation |
| To carry out incident investigation and management. | (a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, to keep our records of such incidents updated to ensure efficient resolution and management of incidents) (b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation |
| To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you | Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/services, to develop them, to grow our business and to inform our marketing strategy) |
| To use data analytics to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences | Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant, to develop our business and to inform our marketing strategy) |
| To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services from LOTUS (including but not limited to service packs), or goods or services that may be of interest to you (including but not limited to, paint protection, tyre protection, extended warranty, and gap insurance) from third-party providers, intermediaries, sales agents and any other providers set out in Annex A as amended from time to time | Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business) Consent |
Marketing
You will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods from us and you have opted in to receiving that marketing.
We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any third party for marketing purposes.
Opting out
You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages at any time by managing your options in your account settings.
Where you opt out of receiving these marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a product purchase.
Cookies
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this website may become inaccessible or not function properly. For more information about the cookies we use, please see our cookie policy.
5. Disclosures of your personal data
We may share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table Purposes for which we will use your personal data above.
- IT service providers, providing system administration, hosting and support services;
- Third party analytics companies;
- Payment service providers, such as Sripe;
- Third party customer support services;
- Third party product and service suppliers e.g. Lotus dealers and authorised repairers;
- Our delivery partners;
- LOTUS group companies;
- Sales agents, such as third-party companies who act as sales agents delivering cars to customers who do not want home delivery, or authorised repairers undertaking warranty repairs (together “Lotus Centres”);
- Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors, vehicle warranty providers, intermediaries and insurers who provide consultancy, banking, legal, warranty cover insurance and accounting services;
- Third parties to whom we may choose to sell, transfer or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your personal data in the same way as set out in this privacy policy;
For job application purposes, you will be referred to our job application portal which we share with our Geely parent company. This is subject to our separate Applicant Privacy Policy.
6. International transfers
We may transfer your personal data to countries outside the UK or the EU. A transfer of personal data to a country outside the UK or EU may occur only to the extent necessary to perform services for you, if required by law, or where you have given consent.
Please note that not all countries have a data protection level recognized as adequate by the ICO or the European Commission. For data transfers to countries outside the EU or the UK, we will ensure that the recipient has an adequate level of data protection before transferring any personal data. (e.g. through an agreement with the recipient containing the so-called “International Data Transfer Agreement” issued by the ICO, the “EU standard contractual clauses” of the European Union or other appropriate safeguards). You can obtain further details of our safeguards by contacting us.
7. Data security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
8 Data retention
How long will you use my personal data for?
We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
9. Your legal rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Please click on the links below to find out more about these rights:
- Request access to your personal data. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
- Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data in certain circumstances.
- Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
- Object to processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
- Request restriction of processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.
- Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
- Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us via LTIL.Legal@eu.lotuscars.com
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
10. Annex A: List of Third-Party Processors
- CA Auto Finance UK Ltd T/A Lotus Financial Services
- Drivalia Lease UK Ltd
- Cox Automotive Inc
- Autoprotect (MBI) Ltd
- Car Care Plan Limited
- Motors Insurance Company Limited
- GardX Protection Ltd
- British Car Auctions Limited
- Lotus Centres
- Stripe Payments Europe Limited (and its subsidiaries Stripe Payments UK Limited and Stripe Technology Europe Limited)