Volvo, Geely, Lotus, Proton, LEVC and Lynk & Co to develop and share ICE engines

Volvo and Geely are merging their ICE development and production, making the same ICE engines available to Volvo, Geely, Lotus, Proton, Lynk & Co and LEVC.

Governments across the globe are pushing car makers in to delivering electric cars instead of ICE cars, but that’s going to take some time, even if there’s a looming intent to ban sales of new ICE cars at some point, a point varying between 2030 and 2040.

But even the earliest date of 2030 means there’s at least another decade of ICE engines needed, and it would be daft for car makes to simply stick with what they have, especially if the uptake of EVs is far slower than they all hope.

But if EVs make any sort of significant impact on sales, then the cost of developing new and improved ICE engines is going to get proportionately more expensive as their development cost is spread across the production of fewer units.

So Volvo and Geely have announced that they are to merge their ICE operations in to one new business which will develop ICE engines for use across not just Volvo and Geely itself, but across other Geely car makers like Lotus, Lynk & Co, Proton and LEVC. Which is a move it’s hard to argue with.

With Volvo expecting half their cars to be fully electric by the middle of the next decade, it will still need ICE engines for its hybrid models, so spreading development costs across a wider base is eminently sensible, especially as Lynk & Co, in particular, are already using Volvo engines.