You remember Lynk & Co, right? The Geely-owned company that shares platforms with Volvo and shoves food into your mouth unbidden on press events and wants to sell you cars on a subscription plan? Well, they just showed their first battery-electric vehicle concept, and they’re saying it’ll go into production in 2021 and have an impressive 435-mile range. It looks pretty good, too! It’s called the Zero Concept, which sounds like it has or is no concept at all, which it, um, isn’t. Because it is? A concept?
There are more kinda confusing names in here, the deeper you did. The electric platform it’s built on is the one Geely is planning to use for all of the group’s EVs, and is called the Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA), which is a weird name for an automotive platform. Sustainable experience? That sounds like a euphemism used in the body copy for an erection pill ad more than a car.
The SEA platform looks to be very much like most modern EV skateboard platforms: batteries forming the floor in the middle, drivetrains possible both front and rear, and it looks like room for cargo areas in front and rear as well.
The concept was designed in Gothenburg, Sweden, at Geely’s design studio, and maintains the Lynk & Co design language we’ve seen before: a very distinctive face with high-mounted dual DRLs that provide the “eye” locations, with the actual headlamps (all eight of them) tucked into a lower, full-width grille and de-emphasized visually.
Also, have we all just decided that all EVs need flush door handles that pop out on command? Is this an aero thing, or a thing because Tesla did it and now everyone has to? Be honest.
The hood slopes down, almost Porsche-like, and everything keeps the clean, unfussy look we’ve seen on other Lynk & Co cars. The rear maintains the full-width heckblende taillights seen on the other cars, and the proportions emphasize the wheels and fenders, with minimal overhangs.
I like Lynk & Co’s fundamental design language, and I think it works very well here. This looks like it would be able to compete, at least visually, with anything from Tesla or newer upstarts like Lucid.
Lynk & Co is claiming a 435-mile range per charge and also less than four seconds to go from no miles per hour to over sixty of them, so that’s pretty quick, but rapidly becoming what’s expected for modern EVs.
There are not many interior photos, but I’d guess there’s a front trunk as well as a hatch at the rear.
What’s going on with the dash there? Is that some kind of illuminated dash material? That seems like concept car materials-masturbating. It’s cool, but I wouldn’t expect it to make production.
If this makes it to market next year with these specs and this look, I think it could be a real competitor in what is rapidly becoming a very competitive fast, nice EV sedan space.
There’s no word on pricing yet, or if it’ll be coming to America, so I guess we’ll just have to see what happens. Lynk & Co is supposed to be coming here soon, or so they keep saying? Time to put up or shut up, fellas.
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