from Ray Massey
AVOLVO plant in South Carolina in the United States is also planned as part of global expansion. Geely has unveiled a top-of-the-range three-seat Volvo S90 limousine that dispenses with the traditional front passenger seat. Instead there will be a pop-up touch screen to create more room for the VIP in the back.
Li’s growing Chinese car empire began when the entrepreneurial baby-boomer moved into the automotive sector in 1997.
He was part of a fortunate generation of Chinese who were encouraged by the Communist regime’s ‘open door’ policy in the 1980s to adopt capitalist business principles to help their nation catch up with – and then overtake – the West.
Born in Taizhou City in China’s Zhejiang province in 1963, Li gained a BSc degree in management engineering and a masters in mechanical engineering before starting his career in refrigerator and fridge parts manufacturing. He switched to motorcycles in 1993 and four years later moved into car-making.
Zhejiang Geely Holding Group has expanded rapidly over two decades. Li’s Geely group bought Sweden’s Volvo Cars from Ford in August 2010, and Britain’s London Taxi Company out of receivership from Manganese Bronze Holdings in 2013 after a six-year joint venture.
The new generation of green, all-electric taxis, codenamed TX5, officially begins production next spring. The current TX4 taxis were previously manufactured and exported as knockdown kits in Shanghai for final assembly in Coventry.
Last year Geely Auto sold 700,000 vehicles, and it plans to hit 2m by 2020. Volvo sold around 500,000 but intends to increase that to 800,000 by 2020, with up to a third of them built in China.
Volvo sells 44,000 cars a year in the UK but wants to boost that to 60,000 by 2020. That would push the UK up from being Volvo’s fourth-biggest world market – behind China, the US and Sweden – to third place.
Geely has not been without its controversies, especially during its early days when it designed ‘lookalike’ cars. Its Geely GE was criticised for bearing an uncanny resemblance to a Rolls-Royce. The Geely LC was said to look like the Citroen C1.
Li said the past three decades had been a period of unprecedented change in China.
‘But globalisation,’ he says, ‘means the UK and China have closer and closer ties.’
A frequent visitor to Britain on business trips, Li will most likely be back next spring to do the honours at the opening of the London Taxi factory.
‘The UK is a very attractive country,’ he said, lamenting that he never has time for a proper holiday here so only sees what he can during business trips.
But chances are he’ll soon be doing a lot more of those.