Geely plan to double Volvo sales

Geely has big plans for Volvo if its $2 billion bid succeeds

Volvo buyer Geely has plans to double Volvo sales, open production in China and add new models above the current range.

Geely – Ford’s preferred bidder for Volvo – has big plans to turn round the Swedish car maker, according to reports. Central to these will be the building of a new plant in China to produce cars for the Chinese market, with an annual capacity of 300,000 cars.

This makes sound sense for Geely, but they also appear to be planing to enhance the Volvo range with two or three new models sitting above the current Volvo offerings, potentially pushing Volvo firmly in to Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar territory.

Despite the plans to produce cars for the Chinese market in China, Geely intend keeping development and engineering in Sweden, and have no plans to cut production there. In fact they intend to increase production in total to around 1 million cars over the next five years which would see Volvo production outside China almost doubling from the current 400,00 units.

There are still obstacles to the purchase of Volvo from Ford, with issues over the transference of Ford derived technology to Geely and agreement on what Volvo technology Ford can take away from the sale. But these issues should be solvable as there is clear intent to do the deal.

It looks like a plan and a done deal. Just the ‘tees’ to cross and the ‘eyes’ to dot. Probably.