Geely Auto is not sold in America so the on-off (mostly on, though) trade war between Trump and the country of China should not impact them, right? Not exactly, if you take into consideration the size of Geely Group.
For example, back in February Geely Group formed a collaboration with American tech-giant Qualcomm to assist in the development of 5G and C-V2X products based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 5G platform together with another firm, Gosunc. The platform will be the basis of an upgrade from Geely’s Level 2 autonomous driving capability to Level 3 services by 2021.
However, Topgear.com.my is told that the trade tensions between the two countries have not changed this arrangement, unlike how Huawei was inconvenienced by the forced pull-out of Android from dealing with the Chinese tech company.
But what does concern Geely is Volvo. The Geely-owned company now has a USD1.1 billion manufacturing plant in South Carolina which was always planned to be a production hub for the S60 and next generation XC90 models. Bringing these cars into China now will be a problem.
It goes the other way around as well. Based on numbers from the middle of last year, roughly 21 per cent of Volvo cars are made in China so there are concerns about escalating costs for those exported to the US. To make matters worse, America is also penalising Volvo cars made in Europe where it also has facilities.
Geely and Volvo are certainly weighing their options now. Would changing their global production strategy be the right move? Or just wait it out?
