Geely is a Chinese multinational automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Its principal products are automobiles, taxis, motorcycles, delivery vans, engines, and transmissions. It sells passenger cars under the Geely and Volvo brands and taxis under the London Taxi brand. Delivery vans are sold under the brand Emerald. Geely has owned the Swedish passenger car maker Volvo Cars since 2010, when it acquired the company from Ford. It has owned the British taxi maker The London Taxi Company since 2012. Founding Geely in 1986 as a refrigerator maker with money borrowed from family, Li Shufu transformed the company into a success selling inexpensive products to Chinese consumers.
After the purchase of a failing, state-run firm, Geely manufactured motorcycles in the mid-1990s. Small van production began in 1998, and a year later, it received state approval to manufacture automobiles. Car production began in 2002. The company had its IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2004. The company had a booth at the 2005 Frankfurt Motor Show and a 2006 showing at the Detroit auto show. Geely approached Ford in mid-2008 about a possible takeover of Volvo Cars. On October 28, 2009, it was named as the preferred buyer of Volvo by the American automaker. A deal was reached in late March and completed in early August, 2010.
Geely sells passenger cars under two marques: Geely and, through its Swedish Volvo Cars subsidiary, Volvo. Many of Geely's early products were based on the Xiali, a variant of the 1987 Daihatsu Charade. Models such as the Haoqing, Merrie, Uliou and Urban Nanny have Charade bases, but feature a more prominent chromed grille. A sense of humor imbues the names of some Geely vehicles. One sedan is called the "King Kong", and an early model was named You Li Ou, a play on words that means "better than the Tianjin Xiali or the Buick Sail", two of its competitors. Geely has sold cars under at least three separate brands and may have continued to use the brand name of a purchased company for a short time. The Emgrand, Englon, and Gleagle names were phased out in 2014[46] alongside efforts to reduce sprawl and the Shanghai Maple brand name was discontinued in 2010.
In 2010, Geely surpassed its projected 400,000-vehicle sales target for the year selling 415,286 units of its 680,000 units/year production capacity prompting the company to set its 2011 sales target at 480,000, a 16% increase. That year, 15,596,100 units (7,793,600 passenger vehicles) were sold in China, giving Geely a 2.66% market share. Geely has announced its ambitions to double its market share in China to 5.8% by 2015. Geely is also marketed in Lebanon, through the Rasamny Younes dealership network. Cuba's government has purchased a considerable number of Geely vehicles, and they are pressed into service as police patrol cars or tourist taxis throughout Havana.
