Volvo is looking for a partner in new car platform development

[Korean]

Volvo seeks small car partner - FT.com

Volvo seeks small car partner
By John Reed, Motor Industry Correspondent

Stefan Jacoby told the Financial Times that the Swedish brand, whose current C30 small car is based on technology developed by its former owner Ford Motor, was looking for another carmaker to share platforms and components for forthcoming small models.

“We are open for partners,” Mr Jacoby said. “We are open for collaboration in a win-win situation for sharing platforms, for sharing engines, and for a general higher scale of economics.”

So Volvo is looking for a new partner to share the cost and engineering effort of a new platform because the cut-off date for Ford platform usage is approaching?

Is Geely's financial health so dire(up $9.3 billion in debt in just two years and rising fast) that Volvo has to seek another partner because Geely couldn't fund? It can't be an engineering issue because Volvo has a decent inhouse engineering team.

But getting a deal done with another European automaker would be difficult because of the fear of the technology leak to Geely.

 

[Korean]

So who will buy Volvo when Geely(unable to fund Volvo's operation due to a heavy debt load) collapses? Another Chinese automaker? The outcome would be the same and the Swedish government should just nationalize Volvo.