China's Silicon Valley is revolutionizing the car industry: Geely shows the EU the way from regulations to innovation

In 2010, a boss in Hangzhou asked a subordinate to buy him a Volvo for the company. And an overmotivated employee bought him the entire Swedish factory.

And this is still happening in China. In addition to Volvo and Polestar, the Geely concern also acquired Lotus, or the company that produces London taxis, they also own half of Smart, a tenth of Mercedes, or roughly a sixth of Aston Martin, in which they are the largest investor with the Saudi Arabians. For fans of Chinese technology, Geely is of course also Zeekr and the slightly more mainstream Lynk&Co, but also a company developing flying cars.

The Geely headquarters is located in China's "Silicon Valley", Che-Tiang Province, which, by the way, is a partner region of the Pilsen Region. In addition, Alibaba Group, DeepSeek or Unitree (the company for humanoid and dog robots) are based here. Also a top university called "Cambridge of the East" where I gave a lecture. And yes, even this province is run by communists

Since Geely is also a European company (it employs 30,000 employees in Volvo alone, and unlike the You-Know-Which concern, their factory in Belgium did not close, but on the contrary accepts), we should be interested in what they plan next and what they fear in European legislation. The absolute worst thing for any business is chaos and uncertainty, making it impossible to plan, as well as difficulties in navigating complex and often contradictory European regulations. The task of inter-university cooperation, which we also talked about in Hangzhou, is to try to analyze the regulations and find some sense and order in them (it will be difficult...). In any case, I think that cooperation can only benefit us, and we, the Czechs, have an open door here.

As for the cars - part of the visit to Geely was also a short tour of the model ranges. My opinion? Sure, the luxurious 1,000-icon Zeeks or Lotuses, which reach 100 km/h in less than three seconds, are great, but a little too much for normal use. I was much more interested in their hybrid van, which could, at an affordable price, be a replacement for the missing MPVs, or a better and significantly cheaper alternative to overpriced Multivans or V-classes. And, to the astonishment of the bosses, I was also very interested in the three-meter micro-car, but it was so well thought out that I sat in it "by myself". Converted to a hundred thousand, able to drive a hundred and travel over 200km. If the Gryndylists wanted to do something for the overcrowded European cities, they would let the common people buy it for this money, not instead of, but next to the family ships. More detailed reviews inTo be clear