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Geely Signals Serious U.S. Intentions for Its Premium Brands

The United States remains the automotive world’s most tempting prize—and one of its most difficult. For Geely Holding Group, the sprawling Chinese conglomerate that already owns Volvo, Polestar, and Lotus, the next act may finally involve putting its own newer brands on American roads. If the plan comes together, Zeekr and Lynk & Co could be built and sold in the U.S. before the end of the decade.

That’s the message coming from Geely insiders, who are now openly discussing America not as a hypothetical but as a question of timing and execution. And crucially, Geely may already have the infrastructure to pull it off without tripping over tariffs: Volvo’s factory in South Carolina.

Speaking with Autoline, Ash Sutcliffe, Geely Holding Group’s head of global communications, made it clear that the U.S. is very much on the company’s strategic radar—even if no firm commitments have been signed in ink yet.

“Right now, we’re looking at all global markets where we can expand,” Sutcliffe said. “We’re currently very strong in China. We’re developing strong in Southeast Asia. Europe is very stable. But the big question for us is when and where will we go to the USA?”

That hesitation isn’t surprising. The U.S. market has become increasingly hostile territory for Chinese-built vehicles, thanks to steep tariffs, political scrutiny, and tightening regulations. But Geely’s ownership of Volvo gives it a potential workaround: local production. Building vehicles in South Carolina would allow Geely to sidestep import penalties while presenting its products as “American-built,” at least in the regulatory sense.

Sutcliffe pointed specifically to Zeekr and Lynk & Co as brands that could resonate stateside. Both sit above mass-market offerings, aiming squarely at the premium space—an area where American buyers have shown a growing appetite, particularly for tech-heavy electrified vehicles.

And that appetite matters. While Geely declined to lock in a production timeline, Sutcliffe suggested that clarity may not be far off. An official announcement, he said, could arrive within the next two to three years.

That window aligns neatly with broader industry shifts. By the late 2020s, EV adoption in the U.S. is expected to be deeper, charging infrastructure more mature, and consumers more comfortable with brands that didn’t exist on American soil a decade earlier. Tesla cracked that psychological barrier. Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis blew it wide open. The door isn’t closed—it’s just guarded.

“From what we’re seeing so far, there’s strong demand for affordable, premium, and luxury vehicles,” Sutcliffe said. “So I think we’re in a good place to offer the American consumer something very different.”

“Different” is doing a lot of work there. Zeekr, for example, leans heavily into minimalist design, high-end materials, and aggressive electrification—think Scandinavian restraint with Chinese tech ambition. Lynk & Co plays a slightly funkier card, blending youthful styling with subscription-friendly ownership concepts that could either feel refreshing or confusing in a market still wedded to traditional buying habits.

Still, Geely isn’t coming in cold. Volvo has spent years rebuilding trust and prestige in the U.S., while Polestar has already tested American waters with mixed—but instructive—results. If Geely applies those lessons, Zeekr and Lynk & Co could arrive better prepared than most newcomers.

For now, everything remains conditional. No production lines have been assigned, no dealer networks announced, and no vehicles confirmed. But for the first time, Geely isn’t asking if it should come to America—it’s asking how.

And in today’s auto industry, that shift alone is worth paying attention to.

Source: Autoline

News

Ford Mustang Still Dominates the American Sports Car Market

Sports cars have never been about mass appeal. They’re indulgences—loud, low, occasionally impractical statements made by people who still care about steering feel and redlines. But even by those standards, 2025 was rough. Sales across the sports-car landscape largely collapsed last year, with only a handful of bright spots punctuating what looks like a slow retreat from the enthusiast market.

The Ford Mustang remains the genre’s immovable object. America’s best-selling sports car didn’t just hold the line—it improved it, posting a modest but meaningful 3.0-percent sales increase to 45,333 units. In a market where “up” is now an exotic concept, the Mustang’s resilience speaks volumes. Whether it’s brand recognition, accessible pricing, or the fact that Ford still bothers to market the thing, the Mustang continues to do what it’s always done: sell.

That success only highlights the pain elsewhere. Chevrolet’s Corvette, once a reliable counterweight to the Mustang’s dominance, fell hard. Sales dropped 26.4 percent year over year to 24,533 units. That’s a steep decline for a mid-engine car that still looks like it escaped from a Le Mans paddock. Supply constraints, price creep, and the fading novelty of the C8 layout likely all played a role. The Corvette is still aspirational—but aspiration doesn’t always translate to signed paperwork.

Dodge’s situation is less subtle and far more dramatic. With the two-door Challenger officially discontinued at the end of 2023 and replaced by new Charger variants, Dodge effectively reset its performance lineup. The result? Charger and Challenger sales collapsed by more than 80 percent year over year, falling from 61,810 units to just 9,562. That’s not a slump—it’s a reboot hangover. Whether buyers eventually warm to the new Charger’s mission remains to be seen, but the old-school muscle crowd didn’t follow immediately.

Elsewhere, the Japanese brands delivered the most interesting surprises. The Nissan Z quietly had a banner year, with sales jumping an impressive 73.4 percent to 5,487 units. That figure nearly doubles Toyota Supra sales, which themselves rose a respectable 12.9 percent to 2,953 cars. Even more interesting is the context: the Supra is mechanically related to the BMW Z4, which barely moved the needle at all. BMW sold 2,113 Z4s in 2025, down less than one percent from the year prior. Toyota outsold BMW by roughly 500 units—a reminder that badge engineering only works when the badge resonates.

The Mazda MX-5 Miata also did what the Miata always does: quietly succeed. Sales climbed 7.7 percent to 8,727 units, making it one of the few sports cars besides the Mustang and Z to post a gain. Lightweight, affordable, and blissfully unconcerned with horsepower wars, the Miata continues to thrive by sticking to fundamentals.

Not everyone was so lucky. Volkswagen’s hot hatches took a hit, and pricing is the obvious culprit. Golf GTI sales fell 24.4 percent, while the Golf R dropped 20.9 percent. Tariffs pushed the R past the $50,000 mark, while the GTI now starts near $36,000—roughly $6,000 more than it cost in 2020. That’s a tough sell for cars once defined by attainable performance. Enthusiasts noticed, and many walked.

Subaru had an especially rough year. WRX sales plummeted 41.1 percent to 10,930 units, a decline Subaru attributed to production priorities at its Gunma Prefecture plant, where Foresters—particularly the Hybrid—took precedence. Translation: sedans got sidelined. The BRZ didn’t fare much better, with sales down 13.8 percent to just 2,881 units. Subaru even raised the BRZ’s starting price by nearly $1,000 for 2025, offering a new Sport mode for manual cars as consolation. Buyers weren’t impressed. Toyota’s mechanically similar GR86 sold nearly three times as many units despite its own 13.0-percent decline.

Step back, and the picture becomes clear. Sports cars aren’t dead—but they are shrinking. Rising prices, shifting manufacturing priorities, and a market increasingly obsessed with crossovers have squeezed a segment that already lived on the margins. The winners are the cars that either offer something truly unique (Miata), carry massive cultural weight (Mustang), or hit the sweet spot between nostalgia and modernity (Nissan Z).

Everyone else is fighting gravity.

For enthusiasts, that makes every surviving sports car feel a little more precious—and every sales report a little more sobering.

NEW CARS

Kosmera Nebula 1 Is a 1,876-HP Electric Sedan

If you squint at the Kosmera Nebula 1 long enough, you might forget that it comes from Dreame—a company better known for keeping dust bunnies in check than for chasing lap times. But here we are, at CES in Las Vegas, staring at a low-slung, four-door electric concept that looks less like a tech demo and more like a serious shot across the bow of the established performance-EV elite.

The Nebula 1 still wears a dramatic silhouette, but the overdone hypercar cosplay seen in earlier teasers has been dialed back. What’s left is something leaner and more athletic, with proportions that feel closer to a modern Lotus than a sci-fi prop. Yes, there’s a hint of Bugatti-like drama in the C-pillar kink, but the nose is far more Ferrari F8 Tributo than Chiron horseshoe. Importantly, it doesn’t read as a copy of any single car—which, in today’s copy-paste concept landscape, is a small victory in itself.

Despite having four doors, the Nebula 1 screams supercar more than sedan. The roofline is low, the stance is wide, and the carbon-fiber lower aero package looks ready to scrape a pit lane apron. A motorsport-style wing perched on the trunk lid suggests that Kosmera isn’t shy about its track-day ambitions, even if this thing is still very much a concept.

Those ambitions are backed up by some appropriately unhinged numbers. The Nebula 1 packs a quad-motor electric drivetrain producing a claimed 1,876 horsepower (1,399 kW). Zero to 62 mph (100 km/h) allegedly takes just 1.8 seconds, putting it squarely in the same performance bracket as China’s growing list of electric heavy hitters, including the Yangwang U9 and Xiaomi SU7 Ultra—and, frankly, faster than anything most legacy European brands are currently selling.

Things get a bit murkier when you zoom out. Alongside the Nebula 1, Kosmera teased two additional four-door cars at CES. One appears to be a close relative—possibly another flavor of the Nebula concept—while the third has a longer dash-to-axle ratio and two visible filler flaps. That detail strongly suggests a front-engined plug-in hybrid, which would mark a notable departure from the Nebula 1’s all-electric bravado.

For now, the Nebula 1 remains an exterior-only concept, with no interior shown and plenty of unanswered questions. According to company leadership, production is planned for later this year, potentially at a facility in Berlin, not far from Tesla’s Gigafactory. Final specs, equipment, and—critically—pricing are still up in the air.

But if Kosmera manages to deliver something close to what it’s promising here, and prices it in the same neighborhood as the SU7 Ultra, the Porsche Taycan could be in for an even rougher time than it’s already having. It’s a strange world when a vacuum cleaner company is building a four-door electric missile—but then again, the EV era has a way of sucking up old assumptions.

Source: CarNewsChina via YouTube

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