Everything keeps … going well … at Geely
- Geely safety technology wins major award
- No more “cheap cars; low quality”
- Geely has new mission: creating the safest, most environmentally-friendly and most energy-efficient cars
Things are going extremely well when it comes to Geely, now one of the major Chinese players in South Africa.
The latest good news was that Geely’s safety technology project titled “Geely Car Safety Technology R&D and Industrialisation” was awarded the first prize by the Chinese Society of Automotive Engineers.
This award is not only the highest accolade in China’s booming automotive industry, but it was also the first time the industry honoured a specialised technology rather than a specific model. This is proof of the fact that after Geely’s acquisition of Volvo in 2010, the Chinese manufacturer has broken clear of the “cheap cars; low quality” approach of Chinese car manufacturers.
In recent years Geely has made huge indents into safety technology. Various Geely products, including the Geely LC, Geely EC7 (coming to South Africa in May 2013) and the Geely GX7, have recently received four and five star ratings in official Chinese and European crash tests. These high rankings can be attributed to the safety technologies the company has been rewarded for in December – including its Blow-out Monitoring and Brake System which reduces blowout-caused risks. Geely will in future apply more active safety technologies such as ABS, EBD and ESC as well.
Dr. Frank Zhao, Vice President of Geely Holding Group and Director of Geely Research Institute, said the company has adopted a new mission: “creating the safest, most environmentally-friendly and most energy-efficient cars”. Dr Zhao visited South Africa in 2012 when he met the local media and shared his company’s new direction.
“In order to achieve this mission, the Institute has given top priority to safety and put its research findings into practice regarding both active and passive safety,” says Zhao.
Today the company boasts a safety Research and Development team of over 500 engineers, including a team at Geely’s South African head office in Midrand, Gauteng, for local research and development of new models to be launched on local soil.
“Having set up a world-class safety centre, Geely has achieved the capacity for testing all the car models under both the Chinese and European evaluation systems,” according to Zhao.
They have also built a comprehensive R&D flow for safety systems to evaluate safety performance, cost and quality control in the course of car development, and established the Geely Total Safety Management (GTSM) system to ensure overall safety performance from concept car design to after-sales service.
- Geely has over the years received nearly 20 state, provincial and industry awards and obtained more than 400 patents in the field of safety technology since 2008.
