Geely aggressively expands overseas, rallying friends to catch up with BYD

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（Source: Titanium Media APP）

On the evening of March 30, Geely Auto announced that Lynk & Co’s regional operations in Europe will be managed by Volvo, including marketing, sales, and after-sales services.

In recent years, Geely Holding has not lacked resources overseas. Volvo, Polestar, and smart in Europe; Proton in Southeast Asia; Renault in South America and South Korea. The issue isn’t whether there are overseas assets, but that these resources have been scattered across different brands and companies for a long time, without being consolidated into Geely Auto’s sales and brand accumulation.

For Geely Auto, the urgency of this matter has changed. By 2025, BYD’s overseas sales will reach 1.05 million units, more than double Geely Auto’s; in Europe, BYD sold 190k units in a year, close to the total of Lynk & Co’s performance in the region over the past five years.

Last year, Geely’s independent brand vehicle business returned to the “One Geely” framework, with Lynk & Co handed over to Volvo as the first step under this new structure. This is not just a channel adjustment for a single brand, but the beginning of Geely Holding reorganizing its overseas resources into a system that serves Geely Auto.

Geely rewrites its overseas expansion approach, Lynk & Co is really going to sell cars

In September 2020, when Lynk & Co announced its European strategy, it took a very “non-automotive” approach.

It does not open dealerships but instead sets up “Club” experience spaces in cities like Amsterdam, Gothenburg, and Berlin—more like trendy concept stores with a few cars on display. Consumers don’t need to buy cars; for 550 euros a month, they can use a Lynk & Co 01, and can cancel anytime if they no longer want it.

Over four years, Lynk & Co has established about 11 Clubs in Europe, with around 90k registered members and about 200k subscription members. Brand awareness has reached 15%. For a Chinese brand operating in Europe for only four years, this is not a bad figure.

But as a business, it doesn’t add up. Depreciation, maintenance, insurance, and used car disposal all eat into profits. More importantly, subscription cars are not counted as “sales,” and Lynk & Co’s registration volume in various European countries has remained low for a long time.

By mid-2024, Lynk & Co 01 was temporarily taken off the market for not complying with the EU’s new automotive cybersecurity regulations. When it returns, Lynk & Co will start offering traditional purchase and leasing options outside of subscriptions.

At the end of 2024, the new Z20 model was launched in Europe, and Lynk & Co began shifting away from subscriptions toward a dealer model.

The next question is: where will the dealer network come from?

Almost simultaneously, in November 2024, Geely Holding announced a brand restructuring. Zeekr acquired Volvo’s 30% stake in Lynk & Co. Volvo shifted from being a shareholder of Lynk & Co to a non-affiliated party. Meanwhile, both parties established a joint venture for retail cooperation.

Volvo exited the capital tie but established a deeper commercial connection. Volvo’s authorized dealer networks in Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, and Italy are now open to Lynk & Co. The cooperation involves not only new cars but also used cars, parts sales, and logistics.

Lynk & Co plans to expand from 11 Clubs in 2024 to 125 retail outlets by the end of 2025, relying on this agreement. When entering new markets like Czechia, Austria, and Switzerland, almost every paragraph of the official press releases mentions Volvo—“leveraging Volvo’s local market relationships,” “benefiting from shared infrastructure, including parts distribution.”

Jili Auto Group Senior Vice President Lin Jie is very confident: “We differ from other Chinese brands; in Europe, we still have our ‘brother’ (Volvo).”

The March 30 announcement formalized this “brotherly help” into an official system. Volvo transitioned from “retail partner” to “exclusive importer and comprehensive operator,” with all of Lynk & Co’s import, distribution, marketing, and after-sales handled by Volvo’s business system. Product development and certification remain with Lynk & Co itself, but everything else is managed by Volvo.

BYD, which has built its own system overseas, is already scaling up

At the 2025 financial report briefing, Geely CEO Gan Jiayue said: “In 2026, we will prioritize channeling all group resources into international business.”

To understand Geely’s strategy, it’s helpful to look at what BYD has achieved overseas.

The comparison is straightforward. BYD’s overseas sales will reach 1.05 million units in 2025, while Geely Auto’s will be 420k. BYD’s target for 2026 is 1.3 million units, with Geely’s official goal at 640k. In the race of self-branded overseas expansion, Geely is at least two years behind BYD.

However, there is a frequently overlooked statistical issue.

BYD’s over-one-million overseas sales include all of BYD’s entities’ total overseas sales. Geely’s 420k units only count exports from the listed entities under the Hong Kong stock listing, including Geely China Star, Galaxy, Lynk & Co, and Zeekr.

Geely Auto’s shareholders—Geely Holding—also have overseas sales from Volvo’s approximately 760k units globally, Proton’s about 150,000–170k units in Malaysia, and brands like Polestar, smart, and Lotus sports cars. If all are included, Geely Holding’s actual overseas presence is not weaker than BYD’s.

The problem for Geely isn’t selling less overseas but that it has never focused on consolidating its independent brands.

Volvo running in Europe, Proton on Malaysian streets, smart in European cities—these are increasingly based on Geely’s underlying technology platforms and supply chains. But consumers buy Volvo, not Geely.

BYD’s approach is exactly the opposite.

In 2025, BYD sold 187k units in Europe, with the UK being the largest single market—51k units for the year, making it the sixth-largest brand in the UK. The Seal U DM-i (equivalent to Song PLUS DM-i) won the European plug-in hybrid sales crown with 73k units, surpassing Volkswagen Tiguan and Volvo XC60.

How are these figures achieved? BYD’s answer is: by building itself.

In terms of channels, BYD initially relied on importers. In 2022, the Swedish Hedin Group handled BYD’s import and distribution in Germany and Sweden. But the German market underperformed, with only about 4,000 units sold in 2023.

After May 2024, BYD changed tactics—acquiring Hedin’s distribution business in Germany and establishing BYD Automotive GmbH to directly control pricing, inventory, and dealer relationships.

The same pattern repeated in the Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium. BYD reclaimed distribution rights from partners and managed it independently.

In the UK, BYD bypassed the importer layer from the start, directly connecting with authorized dealers like Arnold Clark and Pendragon. By the end of 2025, the UK’s dealer network reached 125 outlets, with 38 partners—almost all negotiated one by one by BYD itself.

In manufacturing, BYD invested €4 billion in Hungary to build a factory, which began trial production in Q1 2026; invested $1 billion in Turkey; and is building or commissioning factories in Brazil, Thailand, and Indonesia. BYD even built its own ocean-going transport ship, the BYD Shenzhen, with 9,200 standard vehicle spaces—one of the largest auto transport ships in the world.

In terms of branding, BYD only promotes one name. Sponsoring the European Cup, deploying fast-charging stations, building a dealer network—all efforts serve the “BYD” brand. Every vehicle sold is an effort to build recognition for the same brand.

Of the 420k units Geely’s own brands exported, only 120k are new energy vehicles, meaning the actual overseas “Chinese new energy brand” image is still weak.

BYD has proven with results that overseas expansion is not optional; Geely Holding can no longer let its brands operate separately. Handing Lynk & Co over to Volvo is the first major move in unified overseas management.

Unified overseas management, returning focus to Geely Auto

Geely Holding already has a scattered set of overseas resources. Moving forward, these resources will be more clearly directed toward Geely Auto.

On March 18, during the financial briefing, Geely Auto set a 2026 overseas sales target of 640k units, a 50% increase over 2025’s 420k. Management also mentioned that group resources will be prioritized for international business.

For Geely Holding, overseas used to be a collection of different companies and brands pushing their own agendas. Now, it’s becoming a project that requires unified group coordination.

Lynk & Co was the first brand integrated into this coordination system, with Zeekr and Geely Galaxy also accelerating.

In 2026, Zeekr plans to enter France, the UK, Italy, and Spain, expanding its European dealer network from about 30 to around 100 outlets. It is no longer satisfied with just Scandinavia and a few pilot markets but is moving into mainstream Western Europe. Globally, Zeekr aims to establish 500 overseas stores this year.

Geely Galaxy’s goal is directly tied to sales—raising the share of overseas new energy vehicle sales from 29% to 70%.

The entire Geely Auto has adjusted its overseas product strategy, beginning to introduce plug-in hybrid models into Europe and globally. The reason is very practical: overseas markets are not shifting directly from fuel to pure electric as some years ago. BYD’s sales figures prove this.

Geely is trying to turn its technological compliance capabilities into a group-shared resource.

On March 13, Geely’s G-ASD intelligent driving assistance system received EU regulatory certification, becoming the first Chinese-developed assisted driving technology to obtain such approval.

By March 26, Geely had integrated several dispersed European R&D centers, planning to double the number of vehicle projects managed by 2027, supporting the expansion of Geely, Zeekr, and Lynk & Co, and reducing the time to bring new Chinese vehicles into Europe to under six months.

Beyond technology and products, Geely is increasingly leveraging partner resources. Volvo is the retail and service interface in Europe; Renault is the manufacturing and distribution interface in Brazil.

In February 2025, Renault and Geely announced expanded cooperation in Brazil, with Renault Brazil providing manufacturing and distribution for Geely. In June of the same year, Geely and its parent company acquired a combined 26.4% stake in the Renault-led joint venture in Brazil.

All these arrangements point to one thing: Geely has chosen not to rebuild systems from scratch in every market but to prioritize integrating existing factories, channels, and service capabilities.

The benefits are clear: first, speed. For Lynk & Co and Geely brands entering new markets, they avoid the full channel-building cycle.

Second, cost. Local sales, after-sales, warehousing, logistics, and compliance systems already exist; Geely’s main investments are in products and branding.

Third, lower risk. Volvo in Europe, Proton in Malaysia, Renault in Brazil—all have mature local relationships and operational experience. Geely can leverage these systems to reduce trial-and-error costs in unfamiliar markets.

Of course, resources are not free. Lynk & Co’s car sales through Volvo involve profit sharing, and brand image is limited by Volvo’s showroom environment; customer data largely remains with Volvo.

When the brand front-end connects to partner systems, sales can grow faster, but brand assets may not quickly accumulate under the “Geely” brand.

Unlike Geely’s approach, which involves alliances, channels, and factories, BYD pursues full control over its overseas assets. BYD’s self-built channels are slower and more expensive, but each investment is building its own assets. Every car sold reinforces the “BYD” brand recognition.

BYD is using the most cumbersome, costly, and slowest method to build its moat. Geely has chosen a shortcut—moving fast, with lower risk, but the moat may not be as deep.

BYD keeps factories, ships, channels, and brands mostly in its own hands; Geely is more like weaving Volvo, Renault, European R&D centers, main product lines, and new logistics capabilities into a large network.

In May 2025, Geely’s first self-operated roll-on/roll-off ship, “Jisu Fortune,” set sail for Europe, indicating it is also strengthening its foundational capabilities. Moving forward, the changes in Geely’s overseas strategy will likely follow this path—continuing to utilize partner resources, strengthening group coordination, and gradually building its own capabilities.