Lynk & Co - what is it?

Hipster-friendly cars trading on Volvo know-how are Geely's big hope for cracking the millennial mainstream

Launching a car brand aimed at people with no real interest in cars is never going to be easy. Fair to say the team behind Lynk & Co - new sub-brand of Chinese firm Geely - is throwing the whole kitchen at it though. The official launch took place in a vast Berlin industrial unit that had been turned into a middle-aged marketing bloke's expensively realised vision of a hipster's paradise. There were dancing cocktail waiters, a human beatboxer, a 17-course lunch of fusion cuisine and the sort of sound system the owner of an Ibiza megaclub would reckon was a bit over the top.

There was also a car, but it was tucked away safely in a room out the back. As the bit to the right of the ampersand in Lynk & Co's name implies, this is a brand that wants to be about considerably more than just boxes on wheels.

"Don't think that 'Co' stands for company," Alain Visser, the former Volvo executive heading up the new brand told us in a keynote presentation with more than a hint of dad-at-the-disco about it. "The 'co' stands for collaboration, for connected and for cool," he continued.

You can stop cringing now. Behind the veneer lies what seems to be a proper car company, albeit one that will operate differently.

Bork bork bork
The milliennial-baiting marketing is aimed beyond Europe and the US too; with it Lynk & Co is gunning for the kudos it needs to succeed in the Chinese market. The problem, as Visser admits, is that Chinese buyers "don't trust their own products yet", so although all of Lynk's products are set to be built in China, for now at least, the company wants to portray itself as being the sort European brand that Chinese punters do want to be associated with. Engineering and design are both being led from Gothenburg, with styling under the control of Geely's overall head of design Peter Horbury, the Brit who formerly had the same job at Volvo and Ford (and who once admitted he modelled the Sierra XR4i's rear window on that of the Porsche 928, for which he deserves undying respect.)

Lynk's first model will be the SUV that you see here, called simply the 01 and shown to us in production-ready guise. This is effectively a sister to the forthcoming Volvo XC40, sitting on the same Compact Modular Architecture that will underpin smaller Ovlovs and Lynk's entire model range. It's certainly distinctive - screw your eyes up and there's something Ferrari-ish about the high-mounted headlights - with this look set to be common across the range. Oh, and it gets a shark fin at the back, close enough in appearance to the DS3 to deserve a strongly worded lawyer's letter from Paris.

Sales will start in China late next year, and in other markets including the UK in 2018. We're told there will be four models, with a sleeker 'crossover' SUV, a saloon and a low-slung four-door saloon coupe that we were also shown in blingy concept form. At least two models will be available from launch, and possibly all four of them. Sales targets are ambitious, to say the least - Visser says the company plans to be selling 500,000 cars a year by 2021, which would make it bigger than Infiniti or Jaguar are at present.

Modular connectivity
Power for the 01 and its sequentially numbered sisters will come from three- and four-cylinder engines spun from Volvo's modular architecture. We're told it's possible all European versions will be either hybrids or EVs, with the a three-cylinder hybrid with a seven-speed twin-clutch gearbox being confirmed as one of the launch engines. Diesel is under consideration for Europe, but it's clear from the company doesn't see it as having much of a long-term future.

It's the '& Co' bit where everything starts to get all wobbly and different. The idea is that all Lynk cars will have data connections and a user-configurable touchscreen interface. There will also be downloadable apps, from Lynk but also potentially third parties as well as a 'sharing' lock system that will enable owners to grant time-limited access to the car for other people through short-range RFID signals. Meaning it will be possible for cars to be shared or even rented out Airbnb style - possibly with similar deep-cleaning costs afterwards. The company's Chief Digital Officer, Brit David Green, says it will even be possible to have cars taken for servicing when the owner isn't present, or for shopping to be delivered so it's waiting for you in the boot.

The most different thing about Lynk & Co isn't the grating use of the punctuation, but the way the cars will be sold. Like Tesla, Lynk is determined to do it without dealers and using only direct sales in most global territories, including Europe. Cars will have generous equipment as standard with few options beyond colour choice and according to Visser this simplification will enable Lynk to offer very competitive purchase and leasing costs.

Direct sale
"We will be a price advantage, absolutely for sure," Visser told PH. "Our distribution model takes out about 50 per cent of our distribution costs, and the average distribution cost in the car industry is about 25 per cent - and that's conservative. With our model we will take out half so we can offer a top quality well-equipped car at a level of a volume brand."

There's one fairly obvious issue to breaking through to cash-strapped hipsters in the UK - the CMA platform is flexible, but it's not going to be able to create something much smaller than a Golf or a Focus. That means Lynk won't have a car in the supermini segment any time soon. Visser admits smaller cars are an ambition, but not one that's going to be addressed any time soon.

"The world doesn't need another car brand," says Visser, "that was the starting point for everything we've done... we think we've done something totally different."

So, who wants to drink this delicious Kool-Aid?