Li Shifu, owner of Geely and Volvo, wants the Swedish brand to attack the Germans with bigger cars and bigger engines. Jacoby, Volvo’s new CEO, wants to have noting of it. He wants to focus on vague ‘unique’ Scandinavian values and make a push in the US, not in China.
It is the second time Jacoby speaks in public about how he doesn’t like Geely’s plans for Volvo. Li Shifu did not like it the first time, at all. This might be very well the last time, so good bye to Jacoby? We’ll see the following days…
From AutoCar: Existing Volvo management disagrees with new owners Geely over the direction the company should be taking.
This is according to Li Shifu, president of the Chinese firm Geely, which took control of Volvo from Ford three months ago. At the time of the takeover, he spoke of his desire to push the firm upmarket, building “high-level cars that compete with the Mercedes S-Class and BMW 7-series”.
“Let’s ditch this talk about premium,” said Jacoby. “It sounds like a pricing strategy and it’s got an expensive ring to it. We need to focus on elegant Scandinavian simplicity, our own unique identity, and not copy our competitors.”
Jacoby is targeting 800,000 sales per year by 2020, more than double the 380,000 units that Volvo expects to sell in 2010. He says that re-establishing the firm’s strength in the US market will be a crucial part of his plan.
“We have lost ground in the US,” explained the Volvo chief exec. “We are at the bottom, looking up.”
