Lynk & Co might be an unknown name to all but a few Australians, but it’s a new brand from Chinese car giant Geely and Swedish luxury marque Volvo – and it’s coming to Australia by 2025.
Above: Lynk
& Co 01 mid-size SUV.
China’s
best-selling domestic car maker Geely will revive its assault
on the Australian new-car market in the coming years, with a new
mainstream brand confirmed for launch by 2025: Lynk & Co.
Established
in Sweden in 2016, Lynk & Co is just one subsidiary of
Chinese car giant Geely – last offered in Australia in 2014
through an independent distributor – which also owns brands including Swedish
luxury marque Volvo (and its new Polestar electric spin-off), British sports car
maker Lotus, and electric London taxi builder LEVC.
Headquartered
in Volvo's home city of Gothenburg, Lynk & Co offers a range of small,
mid-size and large cars and SUVs in China and Europe, with the vehicles said to
be “designed and engineered in Sweden”, but built in multiple plants across
China, including the Luqiao facility home to production of Australia’s Volvo XC40 and Polestar 2 cars.
Above: Lynk & Co 02 hatchback.
The
company’s line-up spans from its smallest model, the Mazda CX-30-sized Lynk & Co 06 SUV, to the
recently-unveiled, Volvo XC90-sized Lynk & Co 09 large SUV, with a range
of small and mid-size hatchbacks, sedans, conventional SUVs and coupe SUVs
slotting in between – all except one riding on Volvo’s CMA small and SPA large
architectures.
The Lynk
& Co brand looks to differentiate itself through its sales model, which shuns
dealers in favour of a fixed-price, direct-to-customer online model inspired
by Tesla, along with a subscription model in
Europe allowing buyers to rent a Lynk & Co 01 mid-size SUV for
€500 ($AU770) per month.
Few details
of Lynk & Co’s Australian launch have been outlined, apart from
confirmation the brand will arrive in Australia and New Zealand (among
other global markets) by 2025, in a bid for the wider Geely group to pass
600,000 annual sales in markets outside of its home China.
“Lynk &
Co will expand its global presence by entering Russia, Malaysia, Australia, and
New Zealand among others,” reads a statement in parent company Geely’s ‘Smart
Geely 2025’ strategy, which broke the news earlier this week.
It’s not
clear which of Lynk & Co’s current range of six vehicles will make it to
Australia, with none currently built in right-hand drive – though reports
suggest the mid-size 01 SUV will make its way to the UK next year, some five
years after it was introduced in China.
While a
range of 1.5-litre three-cylinder and 2.0-litre four-cylinder Volvo engines are
available in China, European buyers are offered a choice of hybrid and plug-in
hybrid options; the latter developing 192kW from a 1.5-litre turbo
three-cylinder and electric motor, and offering up to 69km (WLTP) of electric
driving range.
The Mazda CX-5-sized Lynk & Co 01 is joined in China by a
similarly-sized 05 coupe SUV twin, plus a smaller 06 SUV, large 09 SUV (riding
on Volvo XC90 underpinnings), and a small hatch and sedan duo equivalent to
a Mazda 3.
It even
offers performance versions of a number of its cars – wearing '+' branding –
with the 03+ sedan even available in a flagship Cyan Racing model,
incorporating track-focused aerodynamics, brakes, suspension and a 195kW/380Nm
turbo engine inspired by Lynk & Co's challenger in the World Touring Car
Cup (abbreviated WTCR) series.
However,
with Lynk & Co’s first-generation vehicles set to be approaching the end of
their life cycles by 2025, it’s more likely its next-generation vehicles will
launch the brand in Australia – led by the Zero, Lynk & Co’s first electric vehicle, due
on sale in China within the coming months.
Riding on
parent Geely’s dedicated Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) electric
platform – set to be used by future Volvo models – the Zero is a five-door
vehicle targeted at cars including the Kia EV6,
with more than 700km of NEDC claimed range, and a 0-100km/h time of
approximately four seconds.
The Zero
will form part of five new “smart” models – believed to refer to electrified
powertrains (hybrid, plug-in hybrid or all-electric) – coming from the Lynk
& Co brand by 2025.
Above: Some
of Lynk & Co's performance cars: 03+ (yellow), 03+ Cyan Edition (blue) and
05+ (green).
Australian
pricing for Lynk & Co vehicles is yet to be confirmed, however European and
Chinese pricing sees the brand pitched more as a rival for
range-topping ‘upper mainstream’ cars – such as Volkswagen, Mazda and Peugeot in Australia – rather than a competitor
to Audi and Geely’s own Volvo.
In Europe,
a Lynk & Co 01 plug-in hybrid retails for approximately 25 per cent less
than a fully-optioned Volvo XC40 T5 Recharge PHEV, suggesting an Australian
price below $50,000 – yet the same amount in China would only net buyers a
petrol-only 01, powered by a 2.0-litre ‘T5’ turbo-petrol four-cylinder without
hybrid assistance.
The Smart
Geely 2025 announcement that broke the news of Lynk & Co’s local arrival
also makes reference to expanding the master Geely Auto brand in “EU and
Asia-Pacific markets”, though Australia isn’t explicitly named as a region on
the Chinese brand's agenda.
Geely’s
last entry into the Australian market occurred in 2011 through West Australian
dealer and importer John Hughes – known for introducing the Hyundai brand locally in the late 1980s – but the
Chinese marque quietly departed local shores in 2014 following a range of
factors, including safety concerns.
Other
innovations listed in the Smart Geely 2025 roadmap include a plan to introduce
hands-free, eyes-off Level 4 autonomous technology by 2025, new silicon-carbide
battery modules by 2023, and a range of battery swapping stations for its
Chinese-market electric vehicles.
Stay tuned
to Drive for the latest Lynk & Co news.
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