- Feng Qingfeng to succeed Jean-Marc Gales as Lotus Global Chief Executive Officer
- Jean-Marc Gales to become Chief Strategic Advisor to Lotus Chairman
June 4th 2018, Hangzhou, China. Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (Geely Holding), China’s leading privately-owned automotive group, announced today that Mr. Feng Qingfeng, vice president and chief technical officer of Geely Auto Group, has been appointed to succeed Jean-Marc Gales as chief executive officer of Group Lotus effective immediately. Mr. Jean-Marc Gales has chosen to leave for personal reasons and will become Chief Strategic Advisor to Lotus Chairman, Daniel Donghui Li.
Geely Holding, which acquired a controlling stake in Group Lotus in 2017, thanked Mr Gales for his contribution to the company over the past four years.
Daniel Donghui Li, chief financial officer of Geely Holding and Lotus Cars Chairman, said: “Jean-Marc has stabilised and turned Lotus to profitability for the first time in the iconic brands history with new industry leading products and unique business models since joining the company in 2014. Lotus is poised for the next phase of growth under Feng Qingfeng’s leadership, where its expertise in lightweight materials and sport cars-engineering will form part of the wider expansion of Geely ‘s automotive portfolio. At the same time I will welcome Jean-Marc‘s Council as Chief Strategic Advisor to myself and the Board of Directors.”
Geely acquired a majority holding in UK-based Lotus – a world leader in high-performance lightweight sports cars – as part of its agreement last year to acquire 49.9 percent of the shares of PROTON from HICOM Bhd (DRB) of Malaysia, Lotus’s former parent.
Feng Qingfeng (Mr. Feng) said: “I am honoured to have been appointed to lead this iconic British sports car group. With Geely’s global synergies and total support I am confident that Lotus has an exciting opportunity to achieve its full potential as a luxury sports brand, based around its engineering legacy and its future product pipeline.”
In 2017 Group Lotus sold 1600 sports vehicles, an increase of 10% versus 2016, produced at its plant in Norfolk, England. In 2017 the company showed a profit for the first time in history.
- Geely designers from around the world join artists from East and West to exhibit their vision of mobility in the year 2100
- Lead by Executive Vice President, Peter Horbury, Geely Design present three different compositions in Paris
- Parisian artistic duo Ben Creac’h & Julia Gaudard Creac’h present their composition: ‘Quantum Automobile’
- Chinese artist Yaya Chan presents her composition: ‘Transported’
- The event marks the arrival in Paris of five Geely ‘Bo Yue’ SUVs, which have embarked on a journey from China to the UK to celebrate 500,000 sales
2018 June 4th, Paris. Geely Design welcomed the arrival of six Bo Yue SUVs on Thursday 31st May, with a special evening of art and design in one of Europe’s most creative and cultural cities.
Geely Auto delivered its 500,000th Bo Yue earlier this month, meaning that in just 25 months since its launch, more than half a million customers are now proud owners of this brand’s flagship SUV. Following this milestone, Geely embarked on a trip covering 18,000 km from Xi’an in central China to Goodwood on the UK’s south coast, in an epic drive that will take around four weeks to complete. Paris marks the third official stop on this epic drive, the first being Moscow, followed by Hamburg and the home of Shell research and development – Geely’s global partner and supporter of this China-Europe journey, and tonight, the fleet arrives the French capital.
To mark the team’s arrival in Paris, Executive Vice President of Geely Design, Peter Horbury, along with two representatives from his Shanghai studio – senior interior expert, Justin Scully (from Wales), and exterior design director, Brandon Pan (from China) – hosted an evening entitled: Where East and West Meet in Art & Design – A Vision for Mobility in 2100. The Geely car designers were joined by French artists Ben Creac’h and Julia Gaudard , and Chinese-American artist, Yaya Chang.
Peter Horbury said:
“It is wholly appropriate that we are here in Europe’s artistic capital working together with artists and car designers from east and west to envision what the future of mobility might look like. I am very excited about the results, and what we have done for the Geely Design compositions is to envision multi-layered mobility in the next century, blending the legacy and the future. We look at how humans and mobility will interact and even have a guess at what our destinations might look like as well. A ticket to Mars might indeed be a possibility in the future, and the question may not be how we get there, but rather, where else can we go? Whatever the answer, as a designer, I can say absolutely and confidently that envisioning the future is about as exciting and interesting a job as there is.”
Speaking about their artworks, the artists said:
Yaya Chang:
“I have named my work ‘Transported’. Mobility is changing so we individuals don’t have to. While we are being transported and as technology evolves, it allows our minds to be transported even more, to have more time to let our minds wander and dream.
With this painting, Yaya Chang wanted to capture this intimate space that mobility of the future will enable, depicting a female in a seemingly domestic space in front of a large window. She does not notice that she is moving at tremendous speed, passing different worlds. While being transported, she is deeply focused on the letter she is reading which captivates her mind and becomes the only universe for her as she travels through many kilometres. Where she is going, where she came from, where she is , is not clear, but it does not matter. Travel is timeless.
The painting is an oil on canvas with large Chinese brush strokes.”
Ben and Julia:
“We are honored to work collaborate with the prestigious Geely company. We wanted to create a dynamic piece, resolutely oriented towards the future. We’ve named it ‘Quantum Automobile.’
The mixed techniques (painting and collage) raises the question of entanglement and multiverse by asking which world are we going to create for 2100 and which car will we drive?
We wanted to blur the lines between organic structures and Design /Technology, the influences of the past in metamorphosis.
If we could travel time in the quantum reality, the car would not move. This is what the painting represents – a meta-car traveling in a dematerialized universe.”
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About Geely Auto Group
Geely Auto Group is a leading automobile manufacturer based in Hangzhou, China and was founded in 1997 as a subsidiary of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. Geely Auto Group sells vehicles under the Geely Auto brand and holds a 50% stake in the LYNK & CO brand.
The company employs more than 30,000 people, operates 12 plants and manufactures vehicles under the Geely Auto brand. Geely vehicles are sold through a network of over 850 dealerships in China and some 350 sales and service outlets in overseas markets. The company, listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, saw its sales volume increase to 765,000 units in 2016 with 2017 sales goal initially set at 1 million units and later revised to 1.1 million units. In 2017, Geely Auto Group sold a 1,247,116 units, an increase of 63% from previous year and beating their revised 2017 sales target by 12.7%. For 2018, Geely Auto Group has set their annual sales target to 1.58 million units, an increase of 27% from the previous year.
The controlling shareholder in Geely Auto is Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (ZGH), which is also the parent company of Volvo Cars in Sweden, London EV Company, Lotus, Yuan Cheng Auto, and Terrafugia as well as a 49.9% minority stakeholder in PROTON. Geely Holding Group is committed to world-class research and development in the auto industry. It has established the Geely Automotive Research Institute in Hangzhou and the world-leading Geely Research Institute in Hangzhou Bay, Ningbo to focus on development of vehicles, engines, transmission and vehicle bound electronics. Other facilities include Design Centres in Barcelona, Gothenburg, California and Shanghai, and the China Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT) in Gothenburg.