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- Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, one of the biggest automakers in China and the owner of Volvo, is launching a new electric-vehicle brand named Zeekr.
- Zeekr is intended to compete in the premium-EV segment in China, particularly against Tesla.
- The Chinese market for electric vehicles has been booming in recent years and is anticipated to continue that trend.
The electric-vehicle market in China is quickly growing, and Geely is responding. The Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, one of China’s biggest automakers and the owner of Volvo, is launching a new electric-vehicle brand to stake its claim in the premium segment of the market. The brand, Zeekr, will take on Tesla’s increasingly dominant position among high-end EV buyers, and the company said its first product will go on sale later this year.
Reuters reported on the plans this week, detailing the brand’s aim to go after Tesla and to sell electric vehicles with a quality “like Mercedes-Benz,” according to Geely’s founder and chairman, Li Shufu. Zeekr will ride on the Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) platform that Geely unveiled last fall.
Other Geely brands, including Volvo, will also eventually ride on the SEA; this architecture is underpinned by a battery from Chinese battery-maker CATL. Last fall, Geely said that this battery will have a life span of two million kilometers, or roughly 1.2 million miles.
Similar to Tesla, Zeekr will open showrooms to sell its vehicles at a fixed price, according to Reuters. Geely said that Zeekr will initially only be for China, but the automaker will look elsewhere to sell the vehicles depending on demand.
The electric-vehicle market in China has become one of the biggest in the world, in part due to government subsidies and government investments in charging stations. It is projected that EV sales in China will reach 1.8 million this year, up 40 percent from last year, and by 2025 will reach six million vehicles, according to Xu Haidong, deputy chief engineer of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
The growth in the market has prompted many new entrants to vie for their own corner of the market, including the likes of Nio and Xpeng. Tesla built a factory in Shanghai in 2019 and now builds the Model 3 and Model Y there. With an estimated 140,000 China-made Model 3 sedans delivered last year, according to the South China Morning Post, that investment has begun to pay off.
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