Geely Will Build Cars in Volvo’s European Plants From 2028. Here’s What It Means

Chinese EV production in Europe is something I’ve covered more than once, and from 2028 it could involve another major player. Geely, or at least some of its brands, is preparing to build cars here. The group’s portfolio is wider than many readers realise, with Volvo Cars, Polestar, Lotus, Zeekr, Lynk & Co, Smart (a joint venture with Mercedes-Benz) and the Geely brand itself. Proton in Malaysia and Galaxy in China complete the range. Geely Holding sold about 4.12 million vehicles worldwide in 2025, making it the world’s ninth largest carmaker. With a group of that size moving more production to Europe, the balance between established European manufacturers and Chinese brands could start to shift.

The story starts with Volvo. At its strategy update in September 2026, Francesca Gamboni, Volvo’s chief procurement and supply chain officer, said the company had more production capacity than it needed. A month earlier, An Conghui, the new chairman of Geely Automobile, told a results conference that Volvo’s European plants would be an important base for Geely’s localisation, with the group’s higher priced models set to be built there from 2028. The two statements point in the same direction. Volvo has spare capacity, and Geely needs European production. No brands, models or plants have been confirmed, while Košice, Volvo’s third European factory, is due to begin series production in 2027.

Ownership matters here. Volvo Cars belongs to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, the private parent company. Zeekr and Lynk & Co sit within Geely Automobile Holdings, a separate company listed in Hong Kong. My question is how Geely could use Volvo’s footprint to build more of its pricier EVs locally, fill Volvo’s lines and strengthen its position in Europe. I think the most plausible starting point is Ghent, Belgium, if the tariff and local content sums work.

Which Plants Get Which Cars

Every Geely model in the table is my own projection unless it is marked as announced. The capacity column mixes rated, actual and planned figures, so please don’t add them together.

Volvo’s decision is narrower than some headlines suggest. Only two of its seven plants, Ghent and Chengdu in China, are meant to build cars for other brands, inside the Geely group or outside it. The other five stay dedicated to Volvo, with one platform per plant to keep production simpler. Gamboni said several brands were interested in Ghent, although she didn’t name them. The plant also has government backing. Belgium’s federal and Flemish governments have offered up to €119 million, conditional on Volvo delivering the investments it has promised.

That makes Ghent my leading candidate. It already builds the EX30 on Geely’s SEA architecture, which is also used by the Zeekr X and Lynk & Co 02. The cars aren’t identical, though. The Zeekr X is 4,432 mm long, compared with 4,233 mm for the EX30, so I would expect some supplier changes and homologation work before one could roll off a Ghent line. There are also signs that the plant’s future is being discussed. A taskforce was set up early this year to consider its options, although that alone doesn’t tell us which brands or models might be involved. My suspicion is that several possibilities are on the table behind closed doors.

Ghent was meant to build Lynk & Co cars before. In 2018, Volvo announced that it would build the brand’s cars there from late 2019, but the plan never materialised. Lynk & Co’s then boss, Alain Visser, said in 2019 that strong demand for the XC40 meant the plant couldn’t give Lynk & Co the allocation it needed. The cars were built in China instead.

I rank Torslanda and Košice lower, because none of the sources I found identifies either plant as available for contract manufacturing, and Volvo’s plan to dedicate one platform to each plant points the same way. Torslanda is ramping up the EX60, while Košice is being prepared for the next generation of Volvo models. There is one exception worth watching. Polestar and Volvo plan to build the Polestar 7 at Košice from 2028 under a memorandum signed in July 2025, subject to final agreements. Polestar is another Geely group brand, and the car is expected to use Volvo technology. Geely has referred to Volvo’s European plants in the plural, so I wouldn’t rule out other locations entirely.

Who Waits for Them in Showrooms

For anyone considering a Volvo EX30, the prospect of a Zeekr X built on the same production line raises an obvious question. The two models occupy similar price territory in Europe and share Geely’s SEA platform, making them direct competitors. The Lynk & Co 02 sits in a similar part of the market, with cars such as the Renault Scenic E-Tech, built in France, among its potential rivals.

Their interiors offer one way to tell the brands apart. Volvo’s design chief, Thomas Ingenlath, told investors in September that customers and journalists had criticised the emphasis on screens, and that the company wanted a better balance with physical controls. I would expect future Volvos to move towards more practical cabins with more physical buttons, while the Zeekr X is likely to keep its tech heavy, touchscreen focused approach.

That overlap creates an interesting challenge for Geely. The EX30 and Zeekr X compete in the compact premium electric SUV segment, so some customers will inevitably consider both. If the Zeekr offers more equipment or performance for a similar price, it could attract buyers who might otherwise have chosen the Volvo. The question for Geely is whether Zeekr brings in new customers or mainly shifts existing Volvo buyers between its own brands. Dutch registration figures for the first half of 2026 offer little evidence of significant cannibalisation so far. The EX30 recorded around 1,800 registrations, against roughly 70 for the Zeekr X. Those numbers show a substantial gap in sales, but they cannot tell us whether individual customers considered both cars before making a choice. As Geely brings more of its brands into European production, it will need to make shared platforms, factories and purchasing power work without leaving customers wondering why they should choose one badge over another.

Distribution is already taking shape. From January 2027, Volvo Cars becomes Lynk & Co’s exclusive distributor in Europe, using its retailers and service network under an agreement finalised on 10 September 2026. Lynk & Co already has more than 140 partner operated sales points across 25 European markets, some shared with Volvo retailers. The agreement covers Lynk & Co alone and says nothing about where cars are built, while Geely keeps design, development, certification and brand strategy.

For buyers, production in Ghent could bring practical benefits. Local assembly would remove the countervailing duty on the finished car, although there is no guarantee that Geely would pass the savings on through lower prices. For someone buying a Chinese brand for the first time, a car built in the same factory as a Volvo might also offer some reassurance.

Three Different Roads to European Production

Three roads lead to a European factory, and Geely is on two of them. The first runs through Volvo, using existing group capacity, employees, suppliers and infrastructure. Volvo says about 80% of its suppliers are shared with Geely, with the figure expected to reach 90%. That overlap can help control costs, although Geely can only use the capacity Volvo makes available, and Volvo spent half a year making contract manufacturing at Ghent economically viable. As I explained in my piece on Chinese carmakers buying European car plants, spare capacity at existing factories is becoming a big part of the story.

The second road goes through Spain. On 23 July 2026, Ford and Geely Automobile announced a joint venture at Ford’s plant in Valencia, with Ford owning 66% and Geely 34%, subject to regulatory approval. Operations are expected to begin in the first half of 2027, with three Ford multi energy models and two Geely electric models planned from 2028. Geely would hold a minority stake in a plant it doesn’t control, whereas at Volvo it can draw on lines within its own corporate group.

The third road belongs to Leapmotor and Stellantis, which Geely isn’t on. Leapmotor uses an established European carmaker’s factories through a joint venture in which Stellantis holds 51%. My Leapmotor B03X launch article covers the compact crossover planned for Spain.

Tariffs and Local Content

Tariffs are a major reason Geely wants European production in the first place. A battery electric car exported from China by a Geely Group company covered by the EU regulation faces an 18.8% countervailing duty on top of the standard 10% customs duty, bringing the combined rate to 28.8%. The standard duty applies to imported cars generally, while the additional charge is meant to offset subsidies. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2754 has applied since 30 October 2024 for five years, and I set out each manufacturer’s rate in my overview of the EU’s tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Exporters can also offer price undertakings, following Commission guidance issued on 12 January 2026, but the only accepted offer so far was Volkswagen Anhui’s for the Cupra Tavascan.

Building a car in the EU would remove the import duties on the finished vehicle. It wouldn’t exempt every component from other trade measures, and European content requirements are coming too. The Commission proposed the Industrial Accelerator Act on 4 March 2026. For electric vehicles, the proposal would require assembly in the EU and at least 70% of component value, excluding the battery, to originate in the EU. Separate battery provisions would require at least three main components to be of EU origin and the cells to be made in the EU. The conditions would apply to public procurement and public support schemes, and Transport & Environment reads the draft as covering company car incentives too. The Act remains a proposal. Parliament and the Council are still negotiating it, and the law firm Skadden does not expect adoption before mid to late 2027.

For Geely, assembling imported kits in Ghent wouldn’t be enough to meet the proposed 70% threshold on its own. A Zeekr X assembled in Belgium from Chinese components could avoid the finished car duty and still fall short of the local content requirement. Geely’s shared supplier base with Volvo could help, but a supplier shared by the two companies isn’t necessarily based in Europe. My reading is that SEA cars were designed around a supply chain that is heavily Chinese today, batteries included, which makes the proposed rules a bigger challenge than final assembly alone.

My Verdict

The biggest risk in Geely’s plan is competition between its own brands inside Volvo’s ecosystem. Volvo describes Lynk & Co as a new segment at a lower price point, with clear brand differentiation. That distinction will need to hold up in practice, because the EX30, Zeekr X and Lynk & Co 02 share an architecture and occupy overlapping price territory. Volvo sold 75,169 EX30s worldwide in 2025, while Ghent built 21,845 in the model’s first year of production, so there is real volume at stake if customers start seeing three versions of essentially the same compact SUV.

Running several brands through one factory would also add complexity at a plant Volvo wants to simplify. In June 2026, a strike at bumper supplier Plasman halted final assembly at Ghent for several days and put about 4,000 workers on temporary unemployment. Belgian unions welcomed the July support package with cautious optimism, and one union official said production volume mattered more than the badge on the car. At a plant supporting more than 6,000 jobs, keeping the lines busy is a priority. If union sources are right that Volvo’s next 40 series models will move to Košice from 2027, Ghent will need other work to fill the gap.

There are reasons to doubt my reading. In early October 2026, Volvo withdrew its short term outlook. It needs Ghent to secure contract manufacturing work, and reports suggest its core 40 series models could leave Belgium. If the plant becomes a bargaining chip between Volvo and Geely, the arrangement could end up serving neither company particularly well. Even so, Volvo’s production network looks like Geely’s most practical route to local manufacturing in Europe, and Ghent is where I expect the story to begin, probably with SEA based models close in size to the EX30. The arrangement would give Volvo’s underused plant more work, remove the 28.8% combined import duty from the finished car and give Lynk & Co access to an established European retail network.

The local content rules are the part I’d watch most closely. If the Industrial Accelerator Act survives in something close to its proposed form, assembling cars in Ghent won’t be enough, and Geely would need a deeper European supply chain, including for components and batteries.

Brand identity will take longer to resolve. Putting Volvo, Zeekr and Lynk & Co under the same production and retail umbrella makes commercial sense only if each gives buyers a reason to choose it. If the differences become hard to explain, Volvo’s premium positioning could be the first casualty. I wouldn’t expect Geely’s first cars from Volvo’s European plants to transform the market in 2028. A small number of models from one plant would be a more realistic starting point. The bigger prize for Geely is finding out whether it can make several brands work side by side in Europe, with shared costs and infrastructure but distinct identities.