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Chinese company Geely Automobile Holdings on Tuesday announced a joint venture with its parent group for electric vehicles and a new brand called Zeekr.
The company also said 2020 net profit fell 32% to 5.53 billion yuan ($ 849.54 million) as auto sales in the world’s largest market were hit by the COVID pandemic. -19.
Geely is the most prominent Chinese automaker in the world due to its investments in Volvo Cars and Daimler.
The automaker sold 1.32 million cars last year, up from 1.36 million units in 2019. It plans to sell 1.53 million cars this year.
Global auto sales in China fell 1.9% to 25.3 million vehicles in 2020, according to industry data.
Geely Automobile and its parent company, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, will invest $ 5 billion in a new electric car battery factory and launch Zeekr.
The first Zeekr vehicles are expected to be delivered in the third quarter of 2021, Geely said in a statement.
Geely sold around 68,000 new energy vehicles last year, or around 5% of its total. That’s well below a target set in 2015 for 90% of sales to be electric vehicles by 2020. Rival BYD, on the other hand, got 44% of its sales from electric vehicles last year. .
Its announcement confirms reports earlier this month that Geely chairman Li Shufu was planning a new brand of electric cars as part of a bid on electric vehicle leader Tesla.
Other automakers have used a new brand to launch their EV units. Geely’s rivals, including Great Wall and SAIC Motor, have rolled out new brands of autonomous EVs.
Geely Holding also aims to become a leading manufacturer of EV contracts and provider of engineering services.
Geely Automobile and Volvo Cars scrapped their merger plans last month, but launched a new entity to combine their powertrain activities and expand cooperation on electric vehicles.
Bloomberg contributed to this report
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