In the middle of nowhere, a hi-tech Chinese car company takes on the world
Lynk & Co’s SUV plant in Zhangjiakou relies on a legion of robots to weld, glue and bolt vehicles together
While car workers in Germany and South Korea fight to save their jobs, one of China’s youngest car brands is gearing up to build sport utility vehicles at a new factory with digitally connected robots and a fresh workforce of 1,800 people.
A three-hour drive from the Chinese capital Beijing, the Lynk & Co plant in Zhangjiakou combines technology and manufacturing know-how from the Geely and Volvo Cars units of Chinese car giant Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.
The 12 billion-yuan (US$1.89 billion) investment is a bright, freshly painted example of the challenge confronting long-established car factories in mature industrial economies.
As carmakers adopt a new generation of manufacturing technology, industry officials are confident that they can deploy the same packages of robots, assembly line designs and digital quality control systems anywhere in the world – and train people to do the tasks robots cannot yet perform.
Plant manager Tong Xiangbei is in the vanguard of a tech revolution that enables carmakers to put new factories in remote places like Zhangjiakou, a city of 4 million people in Hebei province and far from many of Geely’s parts makers.