Lynk & Co Europe changed its approach: direct subscription sales exited, and its sibling automaker Volvo became its exclusive dealer

Lynk & Co announced on September 10 that Geely Auto Group and Volvo Cars have signed a final agreement on commercial cooperation for the Lynk & Co brand in Europe, under which Volvo becomes the brand's exclusive dealer in the region from January 2027 and takes full responsibility for its local commercial and brand operations. The agreement follows a non-binding memorandum of understanding the two sides signed on March 30, which first sketched out the plan for Volvo to run Lynk & Co's European business.

The deal does not change any equity structure, since Geely continues to lead product design, R&D, regulatory certification and the overall brand strategy for Lynk & Co worldwide, and it also means the direct sales and subscription model the brand has run in Europe for nearly five years will formally exit next January.

The subscription model was once Lynk & Co's most distinctive label in Europe, launched in September 2020 as the core of its European strategy with monthly payments and flexible usage, an attempt to reshape European car consumption habits with an internet mindset.

By the first half of 2024, Lynk & Co had opened 12 experience stores across 7 European countries and grown its subscription membership past 230,000, but the model always struggled with high customer acquisition costs and low repeat purchase rates.

Actual new-car sales never lived up to expectations, so by the time the Z20 arrived in late 2024, Lynk & Co had already started abandoning the pure subscription approach in favor of traditional dealerships.

Through 2025, with Volvo's channel support, the brand expanded from 11 Club experience stores to 125 retail points and entered new markets including the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland.

The final agreement turns that channel shift from a trial run into an institution, with Volvo opening its mature dealer network and after-sales system to Lynk & Co, which gets scaled market reach on its sibling's infrastructure without building anything from scratch.

The full arc, from trying to change European consumption habits with subscriptions to simply handing sales to its sibling brand, shows how Lynk & Co's idealistic experiment in Europe has finally bowed to reality, and it mirrors a broader retreat by Chinese brands from go-it-alone direct sales in a region where local networks still decide how cars actually get sold.