Geely is Raising the Bar For Being a Functional Auto Manufacturer
China's first private auto maker is still led by its founder. It has successfully pivoted to electric vehicles and is making unusual technical bets, revealing the new bar for auto makers everywhere.
With around $65 billion in combined automotive revenues, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group is the third-largest Chinese automobile conglomerate by revenue after BYD and SAIC.1 In addition to its own brands like Geely (pronounced “jee-lee”) and Zeekr, the company has over the past decades acquired or invested in a number of notable Western auto makers, including Sweden’s Volvo, Germany’s Smart, and the United Kingdom’s London Taxi Company. Geely was the first privately-owned Chinese company to produce consumer automobiles in China, as well as the first Chinese automobile manufacturer to purchase a major Western vehicle brand. Today, Geely is one of a few key competitors in the rapidly-growing and changing electric vehicle industry. In December 2024, Geely was the fourth-best-selling electric vehicle brand in China, the world’s largest electric vehicle market.2 Like Xiaomi in smartphones, Geely claims to have automated vehicle manufacturing so intensively that its factories can run in the dark without human intervention, and it is also one of a few Chinese companies making an attempt to compete with SpaceX in satellite internet services.