Poland’s first electric car partners with China’s Geely to supply platform

A Polish state-led venture to produce the country’s first home-grown electric car – known as Izera – has signed a licence agreement with Chinese company Geely – owner of the Volvo and Lotus brands, among others – to supply the platform for the vehicle.

On Thursday, ElectroMobility Poland (EMP), announced that the Izera will be built on a rear-wheel-drive Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) platform, which is already used by Smart, Lynk&Co and ZEEKR. Izera is, however, the first direct external user of SEA outside Geely’s own portfolio.

“Cooperation with Geely provides EMP with first-class know-how in the industry, as well as additional business opportunities,” said the EMP’s CEO, Piotr Zaremba. “In the long term, this technology partnership enables us to grow, to involve local suppliers more and to implement the project within the assumed business framework.”

Izera’s lineup is planned to consist of up to three C-segment models: a compact SUV, a hatchback and a station wagon. The vehicles will be equipped with 51 and 69 kWh batteries, have a range of 340 to 450 km (WLTP), and can accept electricity from a 150 kW DC charger.

The Izera project – named after a set of mountains on Poland’s border with the Czech Republic – unveiled its first prototypes in 2020. Since then, however, it has been hit by delays.

Construction of the Izera plant in Jaworzno was meant to start in 2021, and the first cars were supposed to be available in 2024. But work on the factory has, in fact, not yet started and planned production of the cars has been pushed back to the last quarter of 2025.

Some of those problems were related to issues facing the industry as a whole, reports industry news outlet Auto Świat. However, the project has also been hampered by difficulties with the acquisition of land in Jaworzno.

Funding for the plans also remains in question, reports the Rzeczpospolita daily, particularly in view of the worsening economic environment and suggestions that some state-led projects should be scaled back. The State Treasury owns almost 83% of EMP, with the rest held by state energy companies.

Poland’s government announced plans in 2016 to make Poland an electromobility powerhouse, including an aim to have one million electric vehicles on Polish roads by 2025.

Those ambitions were later scaled back, amid low take-up of a scheme to subsidise the cost of purchasing electric vehicles and delays in plans for a Polish-made electric car.

In 2019, after only 1,324 electric cars had been registered in Poland the previous year, the government lowered its target to having 600,000 electric and hybrid vehicles by 2030. By the end of July this year, there were still only around 52,000 electric vehicles on Polish roads.

Poland has, however, become a major production hub. In 2020, it became the EU’s largest exporter of electric buses, with Solaris – a Spanish-owned Polish manufacturer – Europe’s largest producer of such buses.

In July this year, SK Nexilis, a South Korean manufacturer of copper foil used in electric-car batteries, inaugurated the construction of a 3 billion zloty factory in the southeastern Polish city of Stalowa Wola.

Last year, it was announced that Poland will host the first facility in the European Union and one of the first in the world for processing used car batteries and other types of waste from electric vehicles.

Main photo credit: Izera press kit

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.