Until quite recently, Geely has been something of an automotive shadow in the UK, a background entity known mainly for its ownership of a number of familiar car makers.
Volvo, Polestar, Lotus and LEVC are among its portfolio of brands, and they have received substantial investment (with varying degrees of success). But in China, Geely is a prominent firm in its own right it has been making cars there since 1998, and it appears to have more resources at its disposal than some small countries.
Geely Auto launched in the UK at the tail end of 2025, aiming itself squarely at the mass market with a two-pronged BEV and PHEV approach. The UK business is currently building itself up, but back in China its HQ in Hangzhou employs 6000 people alone and is a hive of activity. Geely has a huge spread of brands covering luxury, budget, sport and even motorcycle sectors.
Having so many fingers in so many pies means the firm has bases of operation all over the world in Sweden, Italy, Germany, the UK and more that can be used for design, engineering, development and manufacture.
In China its factories are many and they're huge. It might not come as a big surprise that a car firm's manufacturing facilities are extensive, but there's large, and then there's what Geely has going on. A tour of its Linhai facility was mindboggling: the massive plant has an annual output of 300,000 cars and room to expand if desired, and its job is solely to build the Starray EM-i. It's all hustle and bustle, but it's not necessarily humans that are busy - the automation on display is eerie.
It's not a huge stretch to imagine that the human element of the Geely construction equation will be mostly gone in the not-too-distant future.
To put its scale in perspective, Geely sells more than 50,000 EX2s (badged locally as the Xingyuan) per month in China alone, with more going elsewhere - soon to include the UK.
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