Overseas Target 1 Million Units! Why Did Geely Suddenly Accelerate?

August 17, 2026, Geely Automobile Interim Performance Press Conference announced a figure: overseas export sales in the first half reached 474,200 units, a 158% year-on-year increase. On the same day, Geely announced it will significantly raise the full-year overseas sales target from 640,000 units to 920,000 units, and sprint towards an annual sales volume of 1 million units.

This means Geely is expected to become China's third automaker to break the one-million-unit annual overseas sales mark in 2026.

In the full year of 2025, Geely's overseas exports were 420,000 units. In just the first half of 2026, this figure was refreshed to 474,200 units. Within a year, the overseas sales proportion jumped from 13% to 33%.

More noteworthy is the change in structure. New energy vehicle exports in the first half reached 277,200 units, surging 585% year-on-year, accounting for 58.5% of total exports. June monthly exports first broke through 100,000 units; July continued the momentum, with overseas exports reaching 107,000 units, setting a new monthly high.

Why was the sales explosion so intense?

At the performance press conference on August 17, Geely Holding Group CEO An Conghui revealed the three pillars of overseas production capacity:

The Volvo Europe factory will produce premium luxury models within the Geely system starting from 2028, becoming Geely's European high-end strategic base.

The Proton Malaysia factory is undergoing technical retrofit, with capacity increased from 200,000 to 500,000 units, to be built as a Southeast Asia manufacturing base.

Geely acquired 34% equity in Ford's Spanish subsidiary for 221 million euros, sharing the 500,000 units annual capacity of the Valencia factory. Expected to operate in the first half of 2027, with the first model rolling off the line in 2028, it will produce Geely Galaxy and Lynk & Co products.

In addition, Geely's overseas production bases also include the South American Brazil and South Korea factories cooperating with Renault. According to disclosure, Geely had put 12 overseas manufacturing factories into operation in the first half, with overseas capacity exceeding 650,000 units, expected to exceed 840,000 units by year-end.

An Conghui emphasized that Geely will coordinate resources of all brands within the group and external strategic partners to achieve "joint investment, joint development, shared capacity, and shared local supply chain". Li Shufu also clearly stated that in the new globalization transformation process, "Geely Automobile will not build new capacity, adhering to win-win cooperation with global peers and sharing capacity".

This is a light-asset, high-collaboration globalization path. Not blindly building factories, but through acquisition, joint venture, and retrofit, utilizing global idle capacity "for our use".

However, capacity is just "hardware", market layout is "software".

In 2026, Geely established five key overseas markets: ASEAN, Pan-Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa, and Middle East and Asia-Pacific. ASEAN is sprinting for the 300,000 unit market, Pan-Europe, Eastern Europe, and Latin America three markets sprinting for 200,000 units, Middle East and Asia-Pacific aiming for 100,000 units.

The longer-term goal is the "23456" array: Europe 600,000 units, ASEAN 500,000 units, Latin America and Africa 400,000 units, Eastern Europe 300,000 units, Central Asia and Middle East 200,000 units, totaling 2 million units.

Channel construction is also accelerating. Geely brand sales network already covers 88 countries globally with over 1,200 terminal outlets. In 2026, it is planned to increase Geely brand stores to 1,300, and ZEEKR brand to open 500.

In 2025, Chery remained champion with 1.344 million export units, SAIC second with 1.071 million units, BYD third with 1.0496 million units. Geely ranked sixth with 420,000 units.

But the landscape in 2026 is changing drastically. In the first half, Chery exported 931,500 units ranking first, BYD 769,300 units following closely. Geely overseas sales 474,200 units, firmly in the top three camp.

At the global level, on the 2026 first half International Automotive Group Sales Share Ranking, Geely Group ranked 7th globally with a 4.6% share. Three Chinese automakers: BYD, Geely, and Chery, simultaneously joined the global top 10 in sales.

Conclusion:

An Conghui revealed a detail at the performance conference: the long-term strategic goal that overseas market contributes two-thirds of sales, "proposed by Chairman Li Shufu since Geely's founding, the company has advanced this strategy for 30 years". At that time, this sounded like a pie in the sky. 30 years later, this goal is moving from ideal into reality.

Geely is using a production network spanning three continents to weave an overseas map at the million-unit level. And the destination of this map is far beyond 1 million units.

Geely's million-unit sprint is not just a leap in sales, but a victory of a Chinese automaker's globalization methodology—light-asset, high-integration, multi-brand, systematic. This path may well be the model for Chinese automotive export moving from "quantitative change" to "qualitative change".

Source: Car Observation