Geely moves the design team to New Hub in Sweden
The design department within Geely Auto Group, Geely Design Global, officially moved to Gothenburg, Sweden, with the opening of Geely’s new design center. Hundreds of designers from around the world will now be housed in a giant black box in a building, where they will design Geely’s next generation vehicles.
It is available together with a number of Geely brands, especially CEVT (China-Euro Vehicle Technology), Lynk & Co, Ecarx and Geely Group Motorsports. All are housed in Geely’s Uni3 campus, which is part of Lindholmen Science Park.
Geely Design Center officially opens in August 2022, after the Swedish summer break.
Introductory comments
At the center’s opening ceremony recently, Stefan Sielaff, Head of Global Design at Geely, greeted participants who included other designers from various industries as well as colleagues in the automotive industry.
“Since the acquisition of Volvo Cars in 2010, Gothenburg has benefited greatly from the growth of new brands and companies belonging to the Geely family, which makes the city an innovation hub,” says Sielaff. “The Geely Design Center further strengthens us in Northern Europe as a mecca for designers who are fixated on transforming the automotive sphere.”
Design Center focuses on two brands
The new design center will initially focus on the urban lifestyle brand Lynk & Co. and Geely’s luxury EV brand Zeekr. However, the carmaker acknowledges that the five-storey design complex can accommodate many brands. The building’s interior has an open concept to facilitate the collaboration between the design teams Zeekr and Lynk & Co.
Geelys Gothenburg’s design staff currently employs around 550 people who perform everything from exterior and interior design, to physical and digital modeling, color, materials, finishes and human-machine interfaces. While the new design center was built to accommodate the current staff, the new facility also has a virtual and augmented reality unit. The company admits that the mix of old and new design methods will involve an influx of new talent.
Currently, Lynk & Co. operating in China and a handful of European countries. Zeekr is only sold in China and further plans to introduce it to the US market are still unclear.
Geely sells cars in the state
Geely, Volvo’s parent company, has not been shy about international expansion beyond its legendary Swedish brand. Polestar, the second brand that Geely sells in the US, is also headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, on Volvo’s campus. Its research and development facilities are located in Coventry, England and other parts of Europe. Globally, Polestar has 1,100 employees.
Stateside offered the brand two vehicles here, the Polestar 1 plug-in hybrid, built at its factory in Chengdu, China, and which recently left production. It currently offers Polestar 2 all-electric crossover commercial vehicles manufactured at the company’s facility in Luqiao, China.
It uses Geely’s CMA architecture used in the Volvo S40 sedan and XC40 crossover. Currently offered with twin electric motors and four-wheel drive, it generates 408 horsepower, 487 pound-feet of torque and a range of 249 miles.
Geely revealed 2023 Polestar 3 last month, ahead of its production launch in October. The new model competes with such high-quality battery-electric vehicles as the BMW iX, Audi e-tron and Jaguar i-Pace. The first version of the Polestar 3 will use twin engines, giving 372 miles per charge. But it is based on the European WLTP standard, which will probably mean a rating of about 300 miles based on the stricter EPA test cycle.
Two other models will follow, the Polestar 4 and Polestar 5.
Consumers around the world bought 29,000 Polestars in 2021. The carmaker hopes to increase it to 290,000 by 2025.
Not Geely’s only European outpost
Geely has also owned the British sports car manufacturer Lotus since 2017. New products and platforms, a new head office, increased electrification and a digital sales strategy are all part of Lotus’ future.
This is most obvious with the debut of the Lotus Emira, a mid-engine sports car that replaces both the Lotus Elise and the Exige. Emira comes with an AMG-based four-cylinder engine that provides 360 horsepower or a supercharged 400-hp Toyota 3.5-liter V-6 that is currently offered in Evora. Manual, automatic and dual couplings will be available
Lotus also plans to build Eletre, a brand new, all-electric Hyper-SUV designed in the UK but built in China. The power starts at 600 hp and has a 0-62 mph time of less than two seconds.
But the continued expansion of Geely and its many brands reveals a company that wants to be the next General Motors, Toyota or Volkswagen Group.