Geely has been hard at work lately teaming up with various tech powerhouses in order to better position themselves in the automotive sector going forward.
Just this month they joined forces with Chinese search giant Baidu in order to build electric vehicles, before forming a joint venture with Foxconn that will allow them to build cars for other brands. As for their next move, it was announced yesterday.
The Volvo parent company, which also happens to own 9.7% of Daimler, signed an agreement with Tencent to develop smart vehicle interiors and autonomous driving technologies, as per Reuters.
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Through this latest partnership, Geely aims to jointly develop smart car cockpits that specifically feature more mobile and mobility service applications. Tencent meanwhile is also an investor in EV makers such as Tesla and Nio.
So then what would a future Geely “cockpit” look like? A near-term answer would be for us to look at the Preface sedan, unveiled last year. It features a modern dashboard with a lot of soft surfaces and loads of stitching. It sort of resembles a previous-gen Audi dashboard, and even comes with a fully digital gauge cluster and a free-standing rectangular infotainment display.
As for something a bit more futuristic, the Preface Concept from 2019 could be a good place to start. Its interior had a cleaner aesthetic than that of the production model, with fewer buttons and a free-standing gauge cluster.
Of course, key to any future design will be the “smart” factor, so expect better hardware and complex software solutions made simple.
