"The headhunting company is still digging people, which is more urgent!" On March 24th, Xin Chen (pseudonym), a veteran who works for a joint venture car brand, told the reporter of China Business News, "According to the headhunting company, Geely is setting up a new company and investing heavily to build a brand-new car brand."
But what is puzzling is, what kind of company will this be? What is the relationship between this company and Volvo Cars? And what is the goal of Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group? With a series of questions, the reporter found that the CMA platform product jointly built by Geely and Volvo (a brand-new vehicle platform jointly developed by Volvo Car and its parent company Geely Group) is progressing steadily. In order to make the products developed on this platform put on the market smoothly, Geely is making a final sprint, and Geely’s above recruitment move may be related to this platform.
New products will be launched in 2016
The reporter learned that Geely’s recruitment stems from the fact that before the Spring Festival, the recruiters targeted the personnel of "ABB" and other car companies. The recruitment information released by headhunting companies also involves positions such as human resources director and engineer. In contact with headhunting companies, Xin Chen learned that many senior positions have been finalized on the eve of the Spring Festival.
"(Geely) will not form a new company with Volvo, but it will indeed set up a brand new brand. (This brand) will run in the form of a business unit. " On March 25th, Yang Xueliang, spokesman of Geely Holding Group, told reporters: "The recruitment that Geely is implementing is actually a preparation for CMA platform products."
From this point of view, the reason why Geely accelerated its recruitment at this time is because its new CMA platform product jointly developed with Volvo has entered the sprint stage of production. An insider of Geely Automobile said that the factory producing CMA platform products is under construction, and the new products will be officially launched in 2016, and the products will be launched in the above new brands.
It is reported that in September 2013, Geely-Volvo Joint R&D Center started trial operation in Sweden, which is mainly responsible for the development of CMA modular platform. In the future, the application of the platform can not only realize the modular production of vehicle models, thus reducing the manufacturing cost, but also control the weight of the car body, further achieving the purpose of reducing the weight of new cars. In the future, the CMA platform will mainly produce the models of Volvo brand that are positioned in the compact market, and can be extended to the field of small cars. As the other party to jointly develop the CMA platform, Geely Automobile will also share the platform with Volvo Cars.
According to the information initially disclosed by Geely, the R&D center will recruit 200 engineers by the end of 2014. But by the end of 2014, the R&D center had hired 400 engineers. And the recruitment of personnel is still expanding.
According to overseas media reports, Hanken samuelson, President and CEO of Volvo Car Group, said that the first model of Volvo based on CMA platform will be XC40, which will be launched in 2018. In 2019, Volvo will launch a new generation of V40 hatchback and a new compact car S40 based on CMA platform.
According to the information disclosed by Geely at present, its Geely brand model based on CMA platform will be introduced to the market two years earlier than Volvo brand. Yang Xueliang said that Geely’s products built on the CMA platform will include A-class cars and B-class cars. In 2016, Geely will launch a brand-new A-class car.
Conflict suspense
The upcoming production of Geely’s new products means that Volvo’s technical contribution to Geely Automobile has entered a new stage. However, the outside world has also noticed that Geely and Volvo’s new products originate from the CMA platform. Will this cause conflicts between the two products in the market?
For such questions, Geely and Volvo are actually ready. Earlier, in an interview with the media, Hanken samuelson said that although Geely and Volvo use the same platform, the products made by Geely brand based on CMA platform will be completely different from Volvo. He stressed: "The relationship between Volvo and Geely is like the relationship between Audi and Skoda."
In fact, after Geely acquired Volvo, Li Shufu also constantly stressed that Geely is Geely and Volvo is Volvo. Geely and Volvo are well aware that Geely and Volvo cannot be confused, and independent operation can benefit both brands.
It is based on this definition that after Geely acquired Volvo, Volvo’s brand image in the luxury car market was not hurt. The data shows that in 2009, Volvo’s global sales volume was only 330,000, but by 2014, Volvo’s global sales volume reached 465,900, setting a record high. At the same time, in 2009, Volvo sold 22,000 vehicles in China, and by 2014, this figure has also increased to 81,000 vehicles.
Zhang Zhiyong, a well-known commentator in the automotive industry, believes that with the help of Volvo’s technology, Geely has promoted the establishment of CMA platform and the research and development of brand-new products, and recruited automotive talents around the world to make the team create a more popular brand. This shows that after the acquisition of Volvo, Geely’s development ideas have been very clear.
The market is urgent
"The conditions they open are not like the practices of domestic independent brand car companies!" Xin Chen, who has worked in a joint venture car company for nearly ten years, said, "In order to dig up outstanding talents faster, Geely’s treatment and conditions are even higher than many joint venture car companies."
Obviously, Geely, who is eager to launch a sprint, has been a little anxious, hoping to reserve a good team for the upcoming new models through high salaries.
In 2014, Geely Automobile, which once grew rapidly, encountered a bottleneck in its development. Data show that in 2014, Geely Automobile sold a total of 425,773 vehicles, a decrease of 22.50% compared with 2013. As a car company with the largest year-on-year decline, Geely Automobile directly fell from the second place in the sales volume of independent car companies in 2013 to the fifth place. For Geely, in order to completely reverse the situation, the new Geely model based on CMA platform needs to join the "Geely Legion" as soon as possible.
Zhang Zhiyong said that Geely’s acquisition of Volvo not only promoted Geely’s brand, but also provided opportunities for Geely to acquire some key automotive technologies. It is understood that from the date of completion of the acquisition, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely, began to take a series of measures to promote technical cooperation and synergy between Geely Automobile and Volvo Automobile.
As early as 2012, Geely and Volvo signed a technical cooperation agreement, and the two sides will actively promote the joint development of small-displacement, high-performance, environmentally-friendly series engines, environmentally-friendly small car platforms, and new energy vehicle assembly system technologies such as electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.
With the introduction of Volvo technology, Geely has also begun to taste the sweetness. At present, new models and modified models developed on Geely’s existing platform all use Volvo technology to varying degrees. The new Geely car Borui, which will be launched in April 2015, was jointly developed by the Geely European R&D Center CEVT (Geely -VOLVO Joint R&D Center) and Geely Research Institute, using some Volvo technologies.
Some insiders believe that with the launch of the new CMA platform products, Geely will be in a favorable position in the competition of domestic independent brand models. However, it is not clear whether Geely can get what it wants when domestic independent brand car companies are accelerating their development and their independent market share is gradually shrinking.
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