Your Next Volvo Might Actually Be a Geely, Built in a Volvo Factory From 2028

Speaking at Geely Auto's interim results conference on August 17, An Conghui laid out an overseas strategy built on pooling group brands and external partners for joint investment, shared development, shared capacity, shared local supply chains and shared sales channels.

The headline item is that Volvo's European factories, which span Gothenburg in Sweden, Ghent in Belgium and Kosice in Slovakia, will start building Geely's premium and luxury models in 2028, with Zeekr and Lynk & Co widely seen as the likely candidates.

When it comes to building cars in Europe, Volvo is not the only card Geely holds. Its joint venture plant with Ford in Valencia, Spain carries the same 500,000-unit capacity and will roll out Geely Galaxy and Lynk & Co models from 2028 under a structure where Ford holds 66 percent and Geely 34 percent.

Zoom out further and Proton's Malaysian plant is being upgraded into a 500,000-unit Southeast Asian hub, Renault's facilities in Brazil and South Korea are on the map too, and Geely already runs 12 overseas plants with capacity above 650,000 units, set to top 840,000 by year-end.

Capacity is following sales. Geely moved 474,000 vehicles overseas in the first half, up 158 percent and already above the whole of 2025, with June and July each topping 100,000. Group revenue reached 173.6 billion yuan (about $25.8 billion), up 15 percent, and core net profit rose 46 percent to 9.68 billion yuan (about $1.4 billion), while An's long-term goal is for two-thirds of sales to come from outside China.

The group is reaching further still, with hiring underway in Canada since April for a market entry run by Zeekr International. Building in Europe neatly sidesteps EU tariffs on Chinese EVs, though a 2028 start date leaves tariffs, EU scrutiny and local appetite for the Zeekr badge as live variables, and sharing lines with Volvo without blurring the brands will be delicate work.

The funny thing is, Geely is doing exactly what Volkswagen and Toyota did in China decades ago, just from the other side of the table. Whether Europeans actually buy in is anyone's guess, but nobody thought Geely could turn Volvo around sixteen years ago either, and look how that went.