Dialogue with Lingke Zhou Xing: Lingke must break out of homogenization.

Author | Zhou Zhiyu

Station wagons are losing their sense of rarity.

In the past, categories like station wagons, shooting brakes, hardcore off-road vehicles, and performance cars carried their own distinctive labels. They weren't the largest segments in China's auto market, but they were recognizable enough to help brands break out of the red ocean of mainstream sedans and SUVs.

But new energy vehicles have rewritten that logic.

As price wars, configuration wars, and smart driving wars in the mainstream market become increasingly crowded, automakers are collectively shifting toward more niche segments. NIO ET5T, Denza Z9GT, Zeekr 007GT, and Xiangjie S9T have pushed station wagons and shooting brakes into the new energy narrative; meanwhile, brands like Fangchengbao, Tank, and Mengshi have turned hardcore off-road vehicles into a new battleground for plug-in hybrid and electric drive technology.

Niche segments are starting to replicate the overcrowding of the mainstream market.

This is also the challenge Lynk & Co faces with its "expansion" strategy. It needs to enter more categories to support its new energy transformation and sales growth. But if it simply follows the market to fill out its product line, the brand risks being swallowed by homogeneity.

On June 30, Zhou Xian, Deputy General Manager of Lynk & Co Automobile Sales Company, pointed to "homogenization" as the issue in a conversation with Wall Street News.

"As new energy in China gradually moves into a situation of increasingly severe homogenization, how can we stand out in the new energy field with more personalized and exciting products?" Zhou Xian said.

The Lynk & Co 07 GT is one move in response to this question. For Lynk & Co, the station wagon is an experiment. The real issue is that after nearly two years of "expansion," as the product line widens and the number of categories grows, can sportiness and individuality still serve as its most stable identifiers?

Niche Segments Are Also Getting Crowded

The 07 GT is not a product Lynk & Co hastily launched to chase the station wagon trend.

Zhou Xian stated that Lynk & Co is inherently a global brand. The 07 GT's design was co-created by Chinese and European design teams, and station wagons are already very mature and large in overseas markets. Therefore, this car was developed from the start as a global model, expected to officially launch overseas in the first half of next year.

In other words, the 07 GT is not just a station wagon to fill a gap in the domestic market; it is part of Lynk & Co's global product lineup.

But the domestic market it faces is no longer the niche station wagon market it was a few years ago.

A few years ago, station wagons in China were more tied to European car culture, "wagon" sentiments, and high-end imported car imagery. Users discussed style, aesthetics, and nostalgia, and automakers faced a market with small demand but a clear customer base. At that time, making a station wagon itself was distinctive enough.

In recent years, the logic of this market has changed.

Station wagons and shooting brakes have been repackaged: they can be high-end pure electric, luxury plug-in hybrid, integrated with smart cockpits and advanced smart driving, or positioned for long-distance road trips, family outings, and performance expression. The category's boundaries have been opened, and the number of entrants has increased.

This is not entirely good news for Lynk & Co.

If the 07 GT had appeared a few years earlier, it might only have needed to answer "Lynk & Co finally made a station wagon." But today, it must answer a much harder question: When many automakers can produce station wagons, what makes Lynk & Co's station wagon different?

The Lynk & Co 07 GT is equipped with the EM-P intelligent electric hybrid system, with a maximum combined range of 1,422 km. It is also one of the few station wagons in its class to feature MRC magnetorheological suspension. According to Lynk & Co's plans, the 07 GT will compete in rally racing in the third quarter of this year.

The pre-sale price places the 07 GT in the mainstream new energy competitive range of RMB 160k-200k; the plug-in hybrid and 1,422 km combined range address long-distance travel scenarios; the magnetorheological suspension and rally involvement pull it back from being "a sedan with a bigger trunk" to the sporty narrative Lynk & Co wants to emphasize.

The limited edition of the 07 GT sold out within 3 minutes of pre-order opening; Zhou Xian said that based on this feedback, the current pre-sale price meets user expectations.

Lynk & Co does not want the 07 GT to be an ordinary station wagon.

The Lynk & Co project team mentioned in discussions that the choice of a plug-in hybrid route for the 07 GT is because station wagons naturally correspond to complex scenarios like long distances, highways, road trips, and continuous mountain roads. During long periods of high-speed cruising, the energy consumption of pure electric and range-extender models increases; on remote road trip routes, users also don't want to turn the journey into a "charging station check-in tour."

Behind this explanation is Lynk & Co's renewed understanding of the "station wagon": it is not just a body style, but a usage scenario.

More critically, Lynk & Co did not make the 07 GT into a sedan with more space; instead, it focused on handling. The Lynk & Co R&D team mentioned that the 07 GT features magnetorheological suspension, and through multiple rounds of tuning, it maximizes the difference in feel among Comfort, Standard, and Sport driving modes. Additionally, by integrating the steering system, body rigidity, chassis strength, and suspension support, the yaw rate lag time is reduced to 28 milliseconds.

These technical details ultimately point to the same question: Lynk & Co wants the 07 GT to be valid for both "travel" and "sportiness."

Station wagons themselves are no longer rare; Lynk & Co cannot break through relying solely on body style. It must reconnect the station wagon to its own brand DNA. Otherwise, the 07 GT is just another new car in a crowded segment.

Expansion Cannot Become Spreading Too Thin

Lynk & Co's keyword over the past two years has been "expansion."

Zhou Xian said that under the "One Geely" strategy, Lynk & Co bears the mission of developing "toward breadth." From the GT concept car unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show, to the Z10 pure electric model, and then the 07 GT, Lynk & Co is transitioning from a fuel-dominated to a full new energy brand, while simultaneously broadening its product lineup and launching a series of new category products.

This statement contains both opportunities and risks for Lynk & Co.

The opportunity is that Lynk & Co can no longer stay within its fuel-era product structure. As new energy penetration rapidly increases, if the original brand personality is not carried forward by new products, it will quickly become a historical label.

The risk is that expansion can easily become spreading too thin.

Lynk & Co's own transformation has reached a stage where it must redefine its brand. Data from July 1 shows that in the first half of 2026, Lynk & Co sold 144.2k units, of which new energy models accounted for 93.6k units, or 65%. In June, monthly sales were 19.1k units, with new energy comprising 81% that month. This means Lynk & Co's "expansion" is not about filling product lines in the fuel era, but about reaffirming its position within the Geely system after new energy has become the mainstay.

This step is not easy.

For today's Chinese automakers, entering more categories is no longer the hardest part. The maturity of platforms, three-electric systems, intelligence, and supply chains has significantly accelerated the development of new categories. Category recognition that once required years of accumulation can now be quickly established by a new energy brand with one or two models.

But the more products there are, the easier it is for the brand to become diffuse.

If Lynk & Co merely fills in station wagons, pure electric sedans, and plug-in hybrid SUVs one by one, it will end up as a brand with more products but a weaker personality. This is the risk all "expansion" brands face: appearing to have broader coverage, but actually having their identity diluted.

Zhou Xian provided a boundary. He said Lynk & Co will not take absolute sales volume as its core goal.

"In the past, every brand wanted to create volume models, and volume products mostly leaned toward cost-effectiveness—high volume and good value," Zhou Xian said. If every brand within the group does this, there will be high overlap, technical investment and product planning will be highly similar, leading to internal friction.

This is the real contradiction of Lynk & Co's "expansion."

Lynk & Co needs more products to support sales and new energy transformation, but it cannot solve the problem simply by expanding the product line. Expansion is not just about entering more markets; it is about repeatedly proving in more markets why these cars all belong to Lynk & Co.

This answer was pointed by Zhou Xian toward sportiness.

When discussing rally racing, Zhou Xian mentioned that Lynk & Co has mainly participated in track races like TCR in the past few years, winning nine championships in seven years. Next, Lynk & Co hopes to try participating in China's rally races with new energy models, with the 07 GT as the debut model to take on the challenge, ultimately aiming to represent China in the World Rally Championship competition.

This is not a simple marketing move.

Zhou Xian said that track races mainly test acceleration, handling, and chassis, while rally races face more complex road conditions, providing a more comprehensive test of vehicle safety and quality systems. For the 07 GT, the rally offers a real-world verification ground for this sporty station wagon.

This line is critical. Without racing and handling, the 07 GT is just another station wagon after Lynk & Co's expansion. With rally racing and sporty tuning, it becomes a car that Lynk & Co uses to prove its brand direction.

In other words, the 07 GT is not a branch of Lynk & Co's expansion; it is an attempt by Lynk & Co to use "sportiness" to pull the expanded product lineup back together.

Lynk & Co cannot expand for the sake of expansion. It needs a sufficiently stable identifier so that pure electric, plug-in hybrid, station wagon, and SUV models do not each tell their own story.

A Sharper Lynk & Co

The biggest change for Geely in the past few years is not having added several new energy brands, but shifting from expansion to integration. After the 2024 Taizhou Declaration, Geely began to emphasize reducing duplicate investment, improving operational efficiency, and clarifying brand positioning. Subsequently, adjustments to Zeekr and Lynk & Co's equity structure, and Galaxy's integration with Geometry, all point in the same direction: Geely is moving from multiple brands operating in parallel to stronger group synergy.

This is the backdrop of "One Geely."

But group synergy does not mean turning all brands into one approach. Quite the opposite: the stronger the synergy, the clearer the brand boundaries need to be.

The latest sales figures make this clearer. In the first half of 2026, Galaxy sold 519.8k units, with June single-month sales exceeding 100k units, taking on the scale task of the mainstream new energy market. Zeekr delivered 178.4k units in the first half, up 97% year-on-year, continuing to probe upward into the high-end luxury market. Lynk & Co, standing at 144.2k units with 65% new energy in the first half, continues to expand.

All three brands are growing, but their growth missions are different.

Galaxy must hold the larger mainstream new energy market. Its price range, product rhythm, and user coverage determine that it is closer to Geely's new energy scale foundation. Zeekr takes on the high-end task, using higher average prices, stronger technology labels, and a luxury product matrix to continue raising Geely's brand ceiling.

If Lynk & Co, in the middle, only pursues scale, it can easily overlap with Galaxy; if it only raises prices, it will approach Zeekr's narrative. It must find a more difficult position to replace.

Zhou Xian mentioned that after returning to group coordination, each brand has its own mission. Lynk & Co certainly hopes for higher sales, but it will not pursue pure cost-effective products just for absolute sales volume—at least not for now.

This statement carries more weight when viewed within the Geely system.

"One Geely" must solve not only resource efficiency issues but also brand division of labor. The larger the group, the more likely similar products, similar price ranges, and similar user groups will appear internally. Without boundaries, synergy becomes new overlap.

Lynk & Co must prove its irreplaceability within the group.

The 07 GT's debut of magnetorheological suspension technology, followed by verification in the rally system, essentially supplements evidence for Lynk & Co's sporty label. Geely does not distribute all technological assets equally to every brand; instead, it needs different technological assets to serve different brand mentalities.

For Lynk & Co, sportiness is not a packaging word; it is its way of striving for irreplaceability within the Geely system.

Lynk & Co's challenge lies here.

Words like sportiness, youth, and personalization sound easy, but are truly difficult to achieve. They cannot be built by a single launch event, a station wagon, or a rally race. Especially after new energy vehicles have entered full homogenization, many brands have started talking about individuality, lifestyle, and culture.

When everyone is talking about being different, being truly different becomes harder.

Therefore, the sales of the 07 GT are certainly important, but its greater value is in verifying whether Lynk & Co can maintain the same direction after "expansion." Station wagons, pure electric sedans, and plug-in hybrid SUVs can all be Lynk & Co products in the future, but they cannot each speak their own language.

"One Geely" does not need a Lynk & Co that does everything; it needs a Lynk & Co with clearer boundaries.

In this sense, Lynk & Co's breakout from homogenization relies not on a wider product line, but on making sure that after becoming wider, outsiders can still recognize who it is at a glance.

The 07 GT is just a sample pushed to the forefront. Next, Lynk & Co must replicate this logic across more new energy products: design must maintain recognition, powertrain routes must serve real scenarios, handling and racing cannot stay only at the communication level, and overseas markets must also verify whether this sporty station wagon narrative holds up.

This will be a longer verification cycle than a new car launch.

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