The Story of GeeSpace
Plus a Jielong-3 Sea Launch 🚀 Chinese space companies out in force at World Defense Show in Riyadh 🇸🇦 and more
Dear Readers,
Happy Leap Day, and a Happy Thursday to those who celebrate. Brief admin note: apologies for having mistakenly disabled comments except for paid subscribers on the last 1-2 posts. Comments are now enabled for all, have at it folks!
This month was relatively quiet with the Lunar New Year falling smack in the middle, but we still saw few launches, some interesting announcements about laser comms, international lunar payloads, and more. Before we get into any of that, though, a deep-dive into the history of GeeSpace, Geely, and the person arguably most deserving of the title of “China’s Elon Musk”.
GeeSpace Making Headlines
One of the launches we saw this month occurred on February 3rd, when a LM-2C sent 11 GeeSpace satellites into LEO from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. This was the second batch of satellites launched by the space subsidiary of automotive giant Geely, with the company having sent 9 satellites into orbit back in 2022. With 20 satellites on-orbit, GeeSpace has deployed nearly 1/3 of their 72-satellite first phase “Future Travel Constellation” (未来出行星座). At the most recent launch, the company reiterated plans to have the first phase completed by the end of 2025 for “global real-time data communication services”, and a 168-satellite second phase by an undisclosed date to achieve “global centimeter-level positioning services”.
And there’s likely plenty more where those two batches came from. The GeeSpace satellite factory in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, is completed. It’s not 100% clear whether the first image below is a photo or CGI, but what is 100% clear is that the second image is the same factory on Google Earth, and the factory appears built.
GeeSpace has rather quietly reached this impressive point. With a parent company that builds millions of cars per year for sale across the world, GeeSpace might know a thing or two about manufacturing, and they might have a decent anchor customer/use case for their constellation: millions of cars. Within 5-10 years, GeeSpace could conceivably have a constellation of satellites connecting all Geely cars in a very interesting example of vertical integration (actual use cases pending)
The person behind GeeSpace’s aspirations to become a space power is arguably the closest thing that China has to its own Elon Musk. While not a rocket builder nor a centa-billionaire, Geely founder Li Shufu is worth about $16B, and he did revolutionize the Chinese automotive industry. And he has a history of working extremely well within the Chinese system, getting the right support from the right governmental patrons, and maintaining those relationships by delivering results.
Geely Backgrounder: Origins of an Automotive Giant
If GeeSpace has a chance to become a Chinese space power, it is because their parent company, Geely, became a Chinese land power first. One of the country’s leading private automakers, Geely generated 2022 revenues of >$20B by selling more than2M cars, making them one of the largest companies in the highly developed province of Zhejiang. But it wasn’t always this way for Geely, or for Chairman Li.
Li Shufu was born into a peasant family Taizhou, Zhejiang in 1963. He went into business by the early 1980s, founding Geely in 1986 and originally making refrigerator parts, before moving up to full refrigerators and scooters. All the while, Li was eyeing cars, and in the mid-1990s with economic liberalization he got his chance, buying a former prison turned government-run car factory turned private car factory, largely because it had a license to make cars, which was very hard to get in China at the time.
When first building cars, Li took what could be called a somewhat Muskian view of the task. Li allegedly dismissed critics who pointed to his complete lack of experience building cars, and to the fact that China lacked any kind of industrial base to build mass-market cars. Said Li, “they’re just four wheels and two sofas”. Early vehicles were of dubious quality, but eventually they got it right.
In the ensuing 3 decades, Geely has become one of China’s largest automakers, and likely its most internationally active. In 2010 Geely acquired 100% of Volvo Car Corporation, and in 2013 they acquired the London Taxi Company (maker of the city’s iconic cabs). In 2017, they acquired 49.9% of Malaysian automaker Proton and 51% of Lotus. And Li personally is the largest shareholder of Daimler with ~9% ownership.
In short, Li Shufu has grown Geely from nothing to one of the world’s most successful automakers in a few decades, becoming a titan of the Chinese automotive industry in the process. And now, with ownership stakes in a variety of global automakers, Li has turned his attention to space.
Geely’s Space Vision
The origins of Geely’s space ambitions are a bit murky, but apparently Li Shufu has been talking about satellites for at least ~6 years. Allegedly during meetings soon after he became the largest shareholder in Daimler, Li Shufu “floated his idea of using hundreds of proprietary mini, low-orbit satellites as a more accurate global positioning system for self-driving cars”, this according to Geely CEO Daniel Li.
And it’s no coincidence that these comments came up during meetings with Daimler, one of the world’s largest automakers and the owner of, among others, Mercedes Benz. Li and his lieutenants have advocated for years for automakers to band together and co-invest in the hugely expensive new technologies of the future: autonomous vehicle networks and all the supporting infrastructure. In 2021 we heard Daniel Li state that “If traditional OEMs…didn’t invest in new technologies, we would die. But if each OEM simply made huge investments by itself, we would also not survive”.
And in Li Shufu’s mind, one of these technologies is a satellite constellation to enable high precision location data, real-time (or very low latency) communications, and all the other technologies we need to have cars that can safely drive themselves.
These satellites will presumably connect to Geely’s lineup of vehicles, and may initially also connect to the cars of Geely subsidiaries. If they prove the use case and develop the technology using this infrastructure, then as per Li’s vision, Geely is likely going to start selling autonomous car software coupled with all the connectivity needs using their constellation, with the first step being to get the satellites in orbit.
Which takes us back to GeeSpace’s launch this month, which again, represents # 10-20 of the Future Travel Constellation, with another ~52 satellites coming over the next ~22 months. These satellites will be built at the company’s Taizhou factory, and are likely to incorporate a variety of instruments. On the most recent batch of 11, we saw some interesting ones, including some high-resolution cameras from ArgoSpace.
Putting the project in perspective, it seems that the first batches of satellites are being used to iterate technologies and take baby steps. This is not a guarantee that the project will be a long-term one, but it seems to indicate that Geely isn’t in this as a fly-by-night operation. In addition to a bunch of money from Geely, the project is almost certainly benefiting from government help, not least of which from the city of Taizhou, Li Shufu’s birthplace and the location of GeeSpace’s satellite factory.
In October 2021, the city published their 14th Five-Year Plan for Major Construction Projects, which included a provision to “construct a satellite information network”, and also to “promote Geely’s commercial space project”. At a district level, the Taizhou Bay New Area published similar support for GeeSpace’s satellite factory in April 2021. In short, GeeSpace and Li Shufu have a reasonably well-developed, and very politically and financially well-supported constellation project.
The Future for GeeSpace
No one knows how successful or not GeeSpace’s constellation will be. The use cases are too far-out, and the cost structure too hard to fully wrap one’s head around, at least not without granular, NDA-protected info from everyone involved. But like most Chinese commercial space projects of this magnitude, we can be pretty sure that GeeSpace and their Future Travel Constellation have enough steam to continue for at least a couple more years in a purely/largely R&D phase. Longer-term, it’s unclear how soon real revenues would need to be generated by the constellation, or whether Li and Geely would subsidize it for many years in an effort to see out their vision.
In any case, the best one-liner about Li Shufu and his capabilities might have come all the way back in 2010, when Geely bought Volvo. At that time, a senior executive with a Chinese state-owned auto group was quoted as saying “Li is indeed a man with vision. He is someone that shouldn’t be underestimated. I think he has a big chance to make it because he has the Chinese government and…the huge Chinese market behind him”.
And in Other News this Month
Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), aka Yuanxin Satellite, announced the biggest funding round in the history of Chinese commercial space on 1 February, raising ¥6.7B (US$930M), with funding coming from a variety of Shanghai government entities, national-level funds, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a handful of private investors. The money is going to be used to deploy the G60 constellation, also known as Qianfan (千帆星座), a LEO broadband constellation. For a deep-dive profile of SSST and their strategic implications based on our January 2024 on-the-ground visit with the company and desk research, contact us for pricing and more info.
On 3 February, a Jielong-3 launched from a sea launch platform off the coast of Guangdong Province, carrying 9 satellites into LEO orbit. Payloads included a couple of Weihai satellites carrying laser comms payloads, 3 Xingshidai satellites for ADASpace including one that involved interesting collaboration with China Mobile, and yet another Sino-Egyptian satellite, the NexSat-1, described as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 🇪🇬 🇨🇳 🛰️ This represents a decent win for China Rocket, the commercial subsidiary of CALT (itself a subsidiary of CASC), in the development of its Jielong-3 commercial rocket.
An article that sheds a bit more light on the Starpool constellation from Ellipspace. The company launched 4 satellites in 2023 and plans to launch more than 100 in the constellation’s first phase. Starpool is an integrated remote sensing, communications, and navigation constellation, which may be another way of saying they don’t know exactly what they want to do.
News from the hilariously-named HiStarlink, one of about 10 commercial Chinese companies developing laser communication terminals. During the month, the company launched its 2nd-gen terminals on the Xingshidai-20 satellite, sent to orbit on the above-mentioned Jielong-3, while also announcing big plans in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, to build a factory with a capacity of 100 laser terminals per year, within 2 years. The Wuxi project calls for an initial investment of ¥200M (~US$30M).
A deep-dive piece from the WeChat account of CASIC’s CCAF conference on the Beijing space ecosystem. Among other things, the article highlights the city’s rocket cluster in Yizhuang, as well as the handful of commercial companies in the city developing NGSO constellations or related technologies (Galaxy Space, Guodian Gaoke, etc.)
CNSA announced opportunities for domestic and international payloads on the Chang’e-8 mission, set to launch around 2028. Selection for payloads will take place between February and August 2024, with proposals due on 30 June 2024, and final results published in September 2024. The mass available for all international projects combined is 200kg, and a single project cannot call for >100kg of mass.
From December 2023 but recently discovered, a symposium in Beijing for China SatNet (the operator of China’s main “response to Starlink”) that included a number of government entities, and a smaller number of commercial companies. If anything, the event seemed to indicate all that is suboptimal at SatNet. A bunch of primarily old Han Chinese men with decades-long Party careers were in a room talking about how much they will be cooperating and complementing one another’s resources. Meanwhile, the semi-commercial competitor in Shanghai just raised a billion dollars, and China SatNet has a handful of satellites in orbit having been established 3 years ago. And in case you haven’t heard, Huawei might be entering the game too. In short, it’s going to be an interesting 5-10 years in the Chinese constellation space.
And finally, a handful of Chinese commercial space companies attended the World Defense Show in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this past month. The ones we found included Galactic Energy, Magic Cube, Emposat, Orienspace, and ADASpace, but probably there were more. With impressively large space budgets, a hunger for cutting-edge technology, and political openness, the Middle East is seen as a lucrative market for Chinese commercial space companies. More to come in this space.
Thanks for reading, and see you next month. Until then,
Blaine