On May 5, Spanish media revealed that Geely (吉利汽车) has reached an agreement with Ford to acquire the long-idle Body Shop 3 at the Almussafes plant in Valencia.
Although the workshop has been out of production for years, it features a high level of automation, requiring only 100 employees per shift to operate. Geely’s (吉利汽车) move is intended to utilize existing advanced production lines to circumvent potential high tariffs imposed by Europe on Chinese-made electric vehicles and to accelerate its global manufacturing footprint.
Regarding product planning, Geely (吉利汽车) will use this production line to manufacture a mysterious model codenamed "135". The vehicle is built on Geely’s (吉利汽车) latest Global Intelligent New Energy Architecture (GEA) and is expected to offer three powertrain options: hybrid (HEV), plug-in hybrid (PHEV), and battery electric (BEV). Foreign media speculate that this car is highly likely to be the compact electric vehicle codenamed EX2 (length 4,135mm, wheelbase 2,650mm). Notably, reports also mention that Ford (福特) may launch a successor to the Puma based on Geely’s (吉利汽车) GEA platform, forming a deep "technology-for-capacity" partnership.
Currently, the annual output of Ford’s (福特) Valencia plant has shrunk to less than 100,000 units, far below its design capacity of 400,000 units. If Geely (吉利汽车) successfully moves in, it is expected to help the factory recover to its pre-pandemic level of 300,000 units per year, thereby securing the livelihoods of over 4,000 local workers. While a spokesperson for Geely Europe (吉利欧洲) stated they would "not comment," industry sources say the agreement is essentially finalized. This marks Geely (吉利汽车) as the latest Chinese automaker, following Leapmotor (零跑), GAC (广汽), and XPENG (小鹏汽车), to break through trade barriers via collaborative production in Europe.