What is Lynk & Co?

This is a question I am sure many of you car guys out there have pondered since the reveal of a new brand called ‘Lynk & Co’. They appear to have spawned out of nowhere recently, and that is basically exactly what they have done too really. The immediate interest around the company has been quite great. But will they follow with the path to stardom that Tesla have taken, or will they soon hit the ground and be as successful as Chris Evans’ Top Gear. Either way, I am sure there would be less shouting than either of those. In this article I wish to answer everything you may wish to know about this mystery company. So strap yourself in and prepare for a long article.

So who exactly are Lynk & Co?

Lynk & Co is a new car brand that has been launched by Geely, and is claiming to be the most connected car company in the world. Its a refreshing new car brand which hopes to change the world by reshaping the entire automotive market.

Wait, who are Geely again?

I find that I often hear a lot about Geely but don’t really understand who they are or what they do either. They are a relatively new company, founded in 1986, which began by producing refrigerators. This then transformed into a company selling cheap products in China, before beginning manufacturing motorcycles half way through the nineties when they bought a failing business. As the company expanded, they began to create small cars and showing their vehicles in motor shows. Their cars were seen by the rest of the world to be rather like the refrigerators and cheap goods that they had sold prior to vehicles. There was about as much interest for them in Europe as there are ice cream sales on Antarctic. They were very cheap, but relatively poorly finished, and no one in the western world would be happy to say they drive a ‘Geely’. Its the sort of word which makes you awkwardly grin when saying it. When times got rough with Ford and Volvo, Geely were seen as the main prospective buyers of Volvo, and in 2010, they completed their purchase.

And what is Volvo?

Seriously? If you need to ask that then I don’t think this blog is correct for you.

What makes this brand different to the rest?

As cliche as it sounds, when buying a car from Lynk & Co, you are buying into a lifestyle. Just watch the trailer and you will see. Buy one, become a hipster basically. As a new brand too, they have a completely fresh start to try new things and become completely innovative, which is something that is lacking in a lot of the more traditional brands.

I thought this was a car brand? Why aren’t there any cars in that trailer?

Well yes, it is a car brand because this is CarDesignIMHO that you are reading. But this is why Lynk & Co are different to the rest.

Handy link to trailer here.

They are so highly focused on connectivity and technology that they seem to have completely forgotten to make a car. But that isn’t true. They have made the ingeniously named 01, designed by Peter Horbury, and this is what it looks like.

So what actually does their first car look like?

I’m confused.

Take a look at it from a different angle.

I’m still confused.

Yeah, I think a lot of people get that when they first look at the car, but I have to say that I don’t think it looks bad or anything. Theres a lot going on with the design though, with some not-so-subtle hints of Porsche Cayenne, Kia Sportage, Jag and Citroen Cactus, but overall it works. There is a lot going on however, almost as if the company is trying that bit too hard to be cool and they just stuck on anything and everything that they could. The only one piece of the design that I can see is completely new to the brand is the red detail line alone the roofline, which I think is stunning… Then again, I love contrasting roof schemes and using black as a wraparound material so I am gonna be a bit biased towards that.

Trying too hard to be cool is sometimes seen as cool by the ‘hipsters’ that I mentioned earlier. The brand isn’t aimed at people like Jeremy Corbyn, its aimed at the urban environment and the people of now. First (or second) time car buyers are almost always going to be young, and basically every young person that I know likes technology. They own an iPhone or a games console or any other of the latest technological gadget, so to be able to own the vehicular equivalent of this is ‘cool’. The brand is perfectly aiming their sights on this target market so to grab them whilst they are young and to buy them into the lifestyle which they never want to leave, so obviously more sales for Lynk & Co, less for the rest.

Wouldn’t this then remove sales from the sister company Volvo?

If you think of Volvo, I don’t expect your first thought of their drivers are that they are young. Stereo-typically Swedish in every way, Volvos are made for architects (it could actually be their design persona). These are people that prefer style and sculpture, and the only time they would use the world ‘cool’ is to describe at what temperature they require their champagne flutes. They have been clever to try and make sure that the sales that Volvo lose are minimal, and they still come to Geely as the customers merely go via Lynk instead.

Where can I go to buy one?

Well that kind of a difficult one, there won’t actually be any dealerships for you to go and buy the car. This cuts out a huge cost for Geely, they don’t need to buy land, make the dealerships, fill the showrooms with cars, staff the showrooms and run them too. Before thinking about it, a dealership might seem vital, but then after realising the costs behind it, its actually a good thing to get rid of. This will inevitably lose a small amount of customers that tend to buy a vehicle in the moment by just walking into a showroom, but are these the people that Lynk want to purchase the vehicle?

So what do I do seen as though there aren’t any dealers?

If you wish to test drive a Lynk & Co 01, you will simply have to book it online and a car will be delivered to your door for you to drive. If you then wish to purchase one, this is done completely online with a fixed pricing bracket, and the car will then be delivered to your door or preferred location. Of course the car will need servicing, and you guessed it the car will need to be taken from one location and brought to a Volvo dealership (the cars will simply be the Volvo platform), and once serviced or repaired, it will then be dropped back to the location of your choice.

What if I can’t be there to hand over the keys for the car to be taken away?

This is where things get a bit hit and miss for me. The car doesn’t come with any type of physical ‘key’, its digital. The cons to this are obviously that I feel it could be hacked quite easily, or fail at any moment due to a connection issue. However the pros are that you can distribute the keys to whomever needs the vehicle at that moment in time. So if your other half happens to need to use the vehicle, you can remotely allow access for them to drive, and of course if the car needed to be serviced, then a driver would get to the location and be able to remotely get in the car and drive it away, before locking it away from being used by anyone else. All of this is done via one of the many apps that run on the cars operating system.

Apps? Are they trying to go all Apple on us? The next thing you’ll be telling us is that there is an App Store specifically for the car…

Funnily enough, that is actually very true. There is an app store for the vehicle. Not the sort of App Store that will allow you to catch imaginary monsters or click on a cookie for infinity, but instead it will come with pre-installed apps that add to the experience of driving and owning the car. And like with other app stores, anyone will be able to make their own apps. This means that the car can constantly get Tesla style updates, but if anyone has an incredible idea that they can develop, it could then get installed into a car for a hint of customisation. Right now I can’t think of what apps in a vehicle would really be of any use, but I expect if you had asked someone 20 years ago what would they want on a mobile phone to develop the experience, they could never have expected what is available to download now. The possibilities are endless for apps, and by bringing the connected world into a car, that many things are needed that you don’t even know you want. At the end of that day, that is what design is. As designers, we are designing things that people don’t yet know they want.

I have just had a brainwave moment.

Yes?

The name ‘Lynk & Co’. They’re wanting us to link to collaborate. Its all about connection.

That is very correct, this is of course meant to be the most connected car of all time.

But will it all work?

Right now, no one knows. What is for sure however, is that the brand as a whole has gained a lot of attention. The cynics have instantly hated the car because they judged a book by its cover. They’ve then read further into it and seen words like ‘social’, ‘connected’ and ‘technology’ and been instantly turned off because it isn’t the norm for a car. But the likelihood is that those people will never own a car like this. Instead someone that is likely to buy a car like this has been interested in the hype and understands what the company is doing to try and change the world. I personally hope that they can get enough global support to grow as this definitely holds a potential for a new experience of owning a vehicle. It would be incredible just to see how the network forms and works and if it does bring the experience that they promise. It feels like it could maybe be the step that we need before the incoming wave of autonomous vehicles ‘take over the world’. That seems like a step too far at the moment, but Lynk & Co could be the midpoint between the two. Electric vehicles are also round the corner if they get enough momentum going, with 02, 03 and maybe also 04 ready to be showed.

If you are a hater of this type of vehicle, give it time. It might not be what you want, but it is what others do want. And you never know, one day it might appeal to you and you could buy into that lifestyle. I can almost guarantee that the reason you own an Apple iPhone or any other smartphone is to follow a trend. Someone did it first and you followed because it was new, different, and it worked. If enough people buy the vehicle, and it works, then why not jump on the band wagon and go along with it? It is the way the world is heading, because technology and connection is just to big to avoid right now.