BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group on Wednesday launched its first electric vehicle-focused platform to enable automakers to more efficiently roll out models for different purposes or markets.
As the global auto industry pursues electric and intelligent vehicles, the likes of Volkswagen AG VOWG_p.DE to General Motors Co have introduced platforms for electric vehicles (EVs).
The co-called Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA), will be able to accommodate smaller to larger passenger vehicles as well as light commercial vehicles, Geely said in a statement.
Geely, which sold more than 2 million vehicles last year, will develop vehicles based on the SEA architecture under nine brands including Geely, Volvo and Lynk & Co.
Geely’s chairman Li Shufu said the Hangzhou-based automaker tends to share the SEA architecture with other automakers.
Geely said in the statement it is in talks with other automakers to share the platform. It is already building a car plant of its own using the EV architecture, construction documents on Geely’s website showed.
Geely and Volvo Cars, which it acquired from Ford Motor Co ten years ago, have jointly developed the Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) and B-segment Modular Architecture (BMA) to allow them to develop, design and build different types of compact or smaller cars with similar mechanical layout faster than before – and at lower cost.
Reporting by Yilei Sun and Brenda Goh, editing by Louise Heavens