►The brands’ second car
► Everything we know so far
► To be produced on Volvo’s CMA platform
Lynk & Co has revealed its new 02 ‘sports crossover SUV’ in Amsterdam, ahead of the brand’s arrival in Europe next year. If you’ve never heard of Lynk & Co, the brand has been created by Chinese firm Geely, and its 02 is based on Geely-owned Volvo hardware.
It rides on Volvo’s CMA (Compact Modular Architecture) platform, just like the similarly sized Volvo XC40, and will be available with hybrid or plug-in hybrid 1.5-litre petrol drivetrains with automatic transmissions and a choice of front- or all-wheel drive. A full EV will follow by 2021, and European cars will be produced at Volvo’s production facility in Ghent, Belgium.
More intriguing is Lynk & Co’s business model: it’s targeting city-based Millennials accustomed to on-demand services, and there’ll even be a share-my-car-button, like Air B&B for cars.
‘We’re not a competitor to car companies like VW, Toyota or Audi,’ says senior vice president Alain Visser, ex- of Ford and GM. ‘Our competitors are firms like Uber.’
That means low-commitment lease deals of one to 36 months, and variants reduced to eight fully equipped versions – there’s no haggling or having more choice beyond the 02’s 18-inch alloys. It’s all a bit Daewoo, well, 0.2.
Few pricing or leasing details were provided in Amsterdam, but Visser said to expect a fully equipped premium car for the price of a normally equipped volume car. An online sales model will be key in ‘brutally reducing distribution costs by 10%’.
Much like Tesla, Lynk & Co will have ‘offline stores’ in each capital city in Europe, starting with Amsterdam. In addition, there’ll be 20 pop-up stores staffed by 200 employees and trucked across the Continent, said to be enough for 700 previews throughout Europe per year. It seems likely that you’ll get your Lynk & Co car serviced at a Volvo dealership.