“E Choke for Tesla:” Geely, an automotive company in China, is set to launch its new premium Electric Vehicle brand.
China’s Geely plans to roll out electric vehicles under a new marque, a new branding and sales strategies. It looks to take on its main electric vehicle rival Tesla by producing higher-end vehicles.
The brand, which will be called “Zeekr”, will be housed under Geely’s to-be-launched EV entity Lingling Technologies.
Rolling out their EV models will be a new attempt to go up the market by Geely, which is a long-held ambition of Chairman Li Shufu to make premium cars “like Mercedes-Benz” in a bid to take on EV leader Tesla Inc.
Geely will open showrooms, or “hubs”, in city centres to sell cars at a fixed price, a major departure from the sale of cars by dealership (a marketing tactics pioneered by Tesla), which last year saw sales expand quickly in China, the world’s biggest car market.
Geely largely compete with entry-level and mass-market manufacturers like Volkswagen and Toyota. P.S: Electric Vehicle maker Nio Inc sells cars with higher prices and counts BMW as a rival.
It also plans a broad array of sales and marketing strategies to seek deeper relationships with the EV buyers. It will open lifestyle lines for clothing and accessories and launch a car owner’s club (A tactic used by Nio)Zeekr is also considering rolling out a share ownership plan that allows customers to become shareholders of Lingling, which management hopes will boost sales and the relationship between brand and customers.
Shares of Geely’s Hong Kong-listed company Geely Automobile fell 3% on Friday as Chinese equities dropped after a rise in global bond yields prompted selling in high-priced consumer and material stocks.
China’s government has heavily promoted new energy vehicles (NEVs) — such as battery-powered, plug-in petrol-electric hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell cars — in response to chronic air pollution and a warming climate, spurring interest from technology companies and investors alike.
Just so you know, China forecasts NEVs will make up 20% of its annual auto sales by 2025 from around 5% in 2020.
