Geely is going out of use with the plan for a new EV unit: stores

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China Geely plans to set up a company to explore new approaches to product design, marketing and sales of electric vehicles (EVs), sources said, moving away from business practice where EVs are marketed and sold alongside traditional cars.

The plan is Geely’s latest push to work differently after announcing several links last month, aimed at turning the automaker into a major contract maker EV and engineering service provider, in its fight against Tesla Inc. director EV attack.

Volvo Cars owner and 9.7% Daimler AG will set up Lingling Technologies this year to lead models based on its EV open source chassis base, which was announced in September and was named Sustainable Knowledge Architecture (SEA). ), said three.

The unit will also take over the marketing and sale of SEA-based EVs under the Geely’s Lynk & Co brand – starting with the Zero model – as well as those under their Wholesale Geometry market, they said, ‘refused to be identified as the private plan.

Geely declined to comment.

Geely’s flagship company, Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd, sold 1.32 million cars last year. However, sales of electric vehicles, petrol-powered hybrid vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles and drivers saw the conversion to conventional petrol-powered cars as well as competitive EVs with longer drive ranges.

The executives understood the need to develop, market and sell EVs in a different way to conventional cars and so decided to set up a separate company, the people said.

The new entity has not yet been registered and a formal name has not yet been decided, the people said.

It will research and implement updates for SEA-related technology that are independent of conventional vehicle segments, and will find market data in a different way to develop EV models accordingly, they said.

It will have an independent sales team and will open showrooms in town centers, some with vendors and some autonomous areas where it will have direct control over prices and inventory, two of the people said.