EUFrom 2028, cars from the Geely Auto portfolio will go into production at Volvo Cars’ European plants. An Conghui, who replaced founder Li Shufu as chairman of Geely Automobile on 17 August, said at the company’s half-year results conference that those plants “will become an important base” for the group’s localisation strategy.
Which plants are in play
Volvo runs two European car assembly plants today. Torslanda in Gothenburg and Ghent in Belgium are each rated at about 300,000 vehicles a year. A third, at Kosice in Slovakia, is an electric-only site with capacity for 250,000 and is due to start series production in early 2027.
Ghent is the plausible candidate, for a reason that has nothing to do with the announcement. It already builds the EX30, EX40, EC40, XC40 and V60, so its electric lines are running now rather than in two years. The EX40 and EC40 are also expected to end production there from 2027, with their SPA3-platform successors going to Kosice, which frees line time on exactly the timescale An described. Ghent was named in July in connection with contract manufacturing, with Belgium offering up to 119 million euros in support.
No model has been confirmed
Geely Auto covers the Geely, Zeekr and Lynk & Co brands, and An said only that the European plants would take “high-end vehicles” from that portfolio. Reporting since has pointed at the Lynk & Co 900 and the Zeekr 9X and 8X plug-in hybrid crossovers, but none of that is official and Geely has not named a car. An Conghui also remains chief executive of Zeekr, which is why the premium end of the group is where the guesses land.
The second European deal
This is not Geely’s only route into European production. In July the company signed a joint venture with Ford covering the Almussafes plant near Valencia, held 66% by Ford and 34% by Geely Auto, which adds two Geely electric SUVs from 2028 alongside three Ford models. Both deals point the same way: building inside the EU rather than importing from China, and doing it in factories that already exist.
