Geely Technology Group

History

2021: Obtaining a license for commercial production of satellites

At the end of February 2021, the Chinese industrial company Geely received a license for the commercial production of satellites, which will ultimately be used to create a network of smart cars interacting with each other and road infrastructure through wireless connection (Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) 5G in the evolution of cars).

China's National Development and Reform Commission has given the company the green light, and satellite production is due to begin in October 2021. The plant, located in Taizhou in Zhejiang Province, will produce more than 500 satellites per year.

Geely received a license to manufacture satellites

Geely claims that the new plant is the first of its kind production site in Chinese territory. It uses modular technology and will provide both mass assembly and testing of new satellites. The Geely Technology Group Technology Center, also located in Taizhou, will be engaged in research, development, production of basic components, measurement and control tools, as well as the creation of aerospace materials and cloud services.

Geely sees the new project as an opportunity to create a production chain of its own satellite network. The first satellites launched will allow the company to deploy a positioning system that determines the position of drones with an accuracy of a centimeter, and launch the AI platform OmniCloud. The latter is a cloud system that controls the operation of all kinds of online services - from managing a fleet of car sharing to communicating cars with infrastructure facilities and among themselves.

Geely Technology Group CEO Xu Zhihao noted that satellite production is critical for the entire satellite industry, and the Taizhou plant will meet all the requirements of this fast-growing industry, including reducing microsatellite development cycles, faster technology upgrades, and expanding functionality.^[1]

Notes