On a recent trip to Paris, we needed to get from the City of Light to the Pop Culture Museum about 30 minutes away. Scrolling the transportation options, we discovered a Budget rental car location in the city offering a Lynk & Co Co 01 plug-in hybrid crossover. We don’t write much about Lynk & Co anymore, I’d forgotten about them until I kept seeing the shapely, full-figured Co 1 driving around Paris.
The backstory: Geely completed its purchase of Volvo in 2010, then created Lynk & Co in 2017 to fill the MSRP gap in China between Volvos and Geely-branded cars. Lynk & Co adopted names similar to Polestar, with the Co 01, Co 02, shareable Co 03 concept that turned into a different and record-breaking Co 03 concept, and Co 05 getting press, then disappearing from the auto news cycle. The automaker only offers the Co 01 in Europe at the moment. In the home market, there are the 01, 02, 03, 05, 06, 07, 08 and 09. In another similarity to Polestar, the lineup didn’t launch in numerical order, so it’s not clear what kind or size of vehicle each number represents without clicking all over the web site. We hope Polestar doesn’t do this.
We’ve been hearing about Chinese automakers launching operations in Western markets for more than a decade. That’s surge has begun to take off with electric cars in Europe, the Financial Times reporting earlier this year — before the tariff situation escalated — that Chinese brands could account for 25% of Europe’s EV market in 2024. Recent tariff questions haven’t been answered yet, though, and frankly, neither has the near-term EV question, so be ready for surprises from all directions.
The Lynk & Co Co1 PHEV could skirt the political hubbub by being a hybrid. It skirts every other hubbub by being as innocuous as it is pleasant to use for the metropolis commute. We’d call it the automotive equivalent of a brown leather belt; almost no one is going to notice it — not even the wearer — but if they do, the belt is fine enough, it suits its surroundings, and it does its job effortlessly. Lynk & Co’s former European chief, Alain Visser, put it more succinctly when he told a reviewer, in the reviewer’s words, “the company’s products are aimed at the approximately 15 to 20 percent of European motorists who are not at all interested in superfluities like performance, horsepower, and handling. They just want a vehicle that can comfortably and safely get them from place to place.” Mission accomplished.
The Co 01 sits on the same platform as the XC40 and Polestar 2. Dimensions of 178.8 inches long, 73.1 inches wide and 66.7 inches tall on a 107.6-inch wheelbase make it four inches longer than our XC40 Hybrid but two inches narrower, its roof 1.5 inches higher, its wheelbase an inch longer.
A sufficient amount of power comes from a turbocharged 1.5-liter three-cylinder making 178 horses and 195 pound-feet of torque, helped by an electric motor that can turn out 81 hp and 118 lb-ft. Lynk gives total output at 257 horses and 313 lb-ft, all of it sent to the front axle through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox. With the help of a 17.6-kWh lithium-ion battery (14.1 kWh usable), the Co 01 can go an estimated 54 miles on the WLTP cycle on pure electric power. When the 11-gallon fuel tank is filled, driving range can reach the far side of 500 kilometers (310 miles).
The Co 01 never feels as potent as the numbers suggest, taking eight seconds to reach 62 miles per hour. The Hyundai Tucson PHEV is within inches of the Lynk’s dimensions and a few pounds of the Lynk’s 4,142-pound curb weight. The Hyundai makes 261 hp and 258 lb-ft, various reviewers getting it to 60 mph in anywhere from 7.1 to 7.6 seconds. That’s not far off the Lynk, but we suspect the Co 01’s power delivery is more nuanced than the spec sheet suggests. Still, the result is reasonable, innocuous acceleration, exactly on brand.
Let’s get the rough edges out of the way. The strangest of these is the rearview camera image, which looks like the view through a paper towel tube. On top of the incomprehensible limitation, the camera’s steep downward angle prevents the kind of wider picture you want when assessing what’s behind you. This is nothing that turning one’s ahead and paying attention can’t fix, the way you’re supposed to reverse even with a camera. It’s just bizarre to see this kind of garbled implementation on a modern back-up camera, especially when the surround-view image is exactly what you would want.
The driver assistance systems could use refinement. The lane-keeping system tugs on the steering wheel when you’re holding the wheel, then wanders a bit in the lane if you relax your grip. The powertrain switch from the combustion engine to the electric motor is smooth enough, the soft brake pedal and the switch from regen to mechanical braking beg for polish. And when the Co 01’s sensor suite detected an invisible object it decided to panic brake for, the powertrain needed a couple of seconds to restore full power.
Aside from those nuances, the Lynk & Co Co 01 is a respectable tool with an enigmatic barcode name. The plastics are fitting, the textile arrangements on the comfy seats and a few other design features show intention. The panoramic roof came with a sunshade, and the front roof panel opens. The digital gauge display is mostly monochrome with a few color accents, all its presented information crisp and bright. In-car navigation was easy to figure out, Android Auto integration was seamless. The engine burble under regular effort won’t offend anyone, nor will tire noise from the Bridgestone Turanza 235/45 rubber on 20-inch wheels. The back seats were the kind of cozy I expect for my 5’11 frame, still roomy enough for my head and legs for me to have no qualms taking the second row on a trip.
Lynk’s unique propositions are a subscription service and car sharing. In 2022, the company pushed subscriptions over sales, someone able to get into a Co 01 for €550 ($608 U.S.) per month with insurance and maintenance covered. The price is now €600 ($664 U.S.) per month, 11 months the maximum tenure before needing to sign up again. Subscribers and owners can also share their vehicles, setting up a single-car Turo operation through the Lynk & Co app. Lynk even covers the insurance for the borrower if the arrangement is set up through the automaker’s app.
Buyers in our market haven’t taken to those opportunities. If Lynk sanded out some of the Co 01’s burrs and fixed that rearview camera, there’s no reason the crossover couldn’t find buyers here. It would just need to be priced like a hungry newcomer, undercutting models like the $40,775 Hyundai Tucson PHEV, $42,145 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and $45,085 Toyota RAV4 Prime by enough thousands to make it worth the risk. That’s not exactly Lynk’s model in Europe, though. The Co 01 starts at €44,500 in France ($49,267 U.S.), the Tucson PHEV at €47,200 ($52,256 U.S.), the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross PHEV at €42,990 ($47,595 U.S.), the Toyota RAV4 PHEV at €50,450 ($55,854 U.S.). More importantly, home-market competitors like the Renault Symbioz E-Tech start at €34,900 ($38,638 U.S.), the Peugeot 3008 PHEV at €40,390 ($44,717 U.S.).
So we don’t see a Lynk & Co Co 01 in our domestic future. But we had a fine time in it, and when we’re in Europe again, we’ll be on the lookout to get into one again.