Lynk & Co: From Zero to EV hero in less than three months

The Lynk & Co Zero battery electric vehicle has begun validation testing less than three months after its global debut at the 2020 Beijing Auto Show on September 23.

In its first dynamic track testing at the Yan Cheng test facility in China’s Jiangsu Province, the Zero’s controllable air suspension, performance and high-speed handling capabilities all got a work-out.

Lynk & Co’s parent, Chinese auto giant Geely, says the Zero achieved a sub-four-second 0-100km/h time during the testing, underwent ‘Moose Testing’ for high-speed large object avoidance and chicane handling tests.

Geely claims the Zero’s handling is aided by the low centre of gravity the battery pack positioning delivers and a 50:50 weight distribution.

Further physical testing, including wind tunnel, and cold and hot weather testing is expected to continue over the remainder of 2020 and into early 2021, with the final model being confirmed for production in mid-2021.

Under the current schedule, customers will receive the first Zeros in the last quarter of 2021. Currently, Lynk & Co only sells in a few selected markets outside China and is yet to come under serious under consideration for Australia.

The Zero is underpinned by Geely’s all-new Sustainable Electric Architecture (SEA) that will also be used by other members of the auto group, such as luxury brand Volvo.

SEA is open source, which means external third party brands will also have the opportunity to use it to develop electric vehicles.

Geely says the Zero is intended to have a 700km range between recharges and an 800-volt battery pack that has no power degradation for the first 200,000km of its targeted two-million-kilometre lifespan.

The Zero was designed with the idea that vehicles can continually evolve after leaving the factory through the use of firmware over the air updates which will be a core part of the SEA operating system, and also with input from third-party application development to keep SEA-based vehicles up to date.

“The speed at which we have taken the SEA based ZERO EV from concept to production-ready is really amazing,” Kent Bovellan, the Chief Engineer for the SEA Architecture at Geely Auto Group said.

“Today, we are gathering real-world data that matches our early estimations for SEA and for the Zero EV. We are creating a new type of electric vehicle that matches performance with quality, and quality with technology.”