Cumulative Users Break 100 Million! SAIC Motor Leads Another Chinese Automotive Milestone

The long road is hard as iron, yet today we stride anew from the beginning.

The development of China's automotive industry, amid the backdrop where numerous global brands have already developed for decades to a century, has crossed numerous "iron passes" and paved a road of self-reliance: By the end of May, the Chinese automotive industry is about to cross a new milestone — SAIC Motor is about to deliver new vehicles to its 100 millionth user globally. This is a milestone as the first company in the history of China's automotive development to cumulatively produce and sell over 100 million vehicles, and has also become the eighth automotive group globally to achieve over 100 million in production and sales.

From "Crawling" to Leading

Today's "Made in China", which everyone is proud of, was not achieved overnight. SAIC Motor, the first to break the 100 million production and sales milestone, is also a microcosm of the history of China's automotive industry development — the accumulation of Chinese automotive enterprises all started from the most primitive tools. Taking SAIC Motor as an example: Calculated from the unveiling of the Shanghai Internal Combustion Engine Parts Manufacturing Company in 1955 to the successful trial of the first Phoenix sedan in 1958, it relied on automotive industry predecessors hammering out "handmade cars" in the most rustic alley workshops with hammers.

As the internet slang says, many things are "easy to understand from videos, but fail in practice". A car has tens of thousands of parts, relying solely on hammers and set squares is definitely not enough. By 1983, riding the easterly wind of Reform and Opening-up, SAIC pioneered the era of automotive joint ventures in China — Shanghai Volkswagen (predecessor of SAIC Volkswagen) assembled the first domestic Santana.

Of course, the current SAIC Volkswagen has entered the joint venture 2.0 era this year. The first range-extended flagship ID.ERA 9X, combining "German quality and Chinese wisdom", achieved a new "legend" of delivering 2,326 new cars in just 5 days since launch. But looking back, SAIC Motor went from nothing to something, from weak to strong, from "following and learning" to "innovation and leadership", over more than 70 years... The "process" is often not as exciting as it looks when the "result" explodes, but "excitement" without a "process" appears very thin due to lack of accumulation.

Today, SAIC Motor has built a global business landscape covering the entire industry chain. Vehicles, parts, mobility and services, finance, international operations, and innovative business major sectors are developing synergistically. Products and services are distributed across more than 170 countries and regions, entering the Fortune Global 500 21 times. It owns independent brands such as Roewe, MG, IM, Shangjie, Wuling, Baojun, Huajing, MAXUS, Yuejin, Sunwin, Hongyan, and IVECO, as well as joint venture brands such as Volkswagen, Audi, AUDI, Buick, and Cadillac, forming a full-domain product layout where passenger and commercial vehicles advance together, self-owned and joint ventures drive with dual wheels, and domestic and international markets progress side by side.

From Leading Domestically to Focusing Globally

The origin of Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs is very close to Shanghai, so actually Shanghainese love "eating crabs" more. Among Chinese automotive enterprises, SAIC Motor is a representative of "loving to eat crabs" — pioneering joint ventures, pioneering independent brands, pioneering overseas exports, pioneering overseas bases... Today, after eating so many "crabs", SAIC Motor has become a "crab-eating expert" — innovative leadership, and bearing fruit time and again: Production and sales have always led the domestic market, independent brands form a powerful growth pole, and "Going Out" allows the world to know Chinese cars.

In the just passed April, SAIC Motor achieved 328,000 unit total vehicle sales, continuing to be the sales champion among Chinese automakers. Under the relatively sluggish market in the early part of this year, SAIC Motor's cumulative sales in the first four months reached 1.302 million units. Among them, the independent brands performed exceptionally well. SAIC Motor Passenger Vehicles' sales surged by 40.4% in the first three months, IM Motors sales jumped by 96.9%. The proportion of independent brands under SAIC Motor in new car sales reached 67.6%, becoming the main growth pole. While leading in sales, SAIC Motor's Q1 2026 gross margin increased by 4.7% year-on-year to 12.83%; operating revenue was 138.52 billion yuan, up 0.61% year-on-year; net profit attributable to parents was 3.03 billion yuan, up 0.09% year-on-year; net cash flow from operating activities reached 31.99 billion yuan, surging by 699.67% year-on-year — the positive flow of benign cycle, reflecting that SAIC Motor is currently in a state of high-quality healthy development.

As one of the earliest Chinese automotive enterprises to "go out", since achieving passenger car exports for the first time in 2001, the current SAIC Motor's products and services are now distributed across more than 170 countries and regions, with cumulative overseas deliveries exceeding 7 million units.

More importantly, SAIC Motor has over 100 parts production bases and over 3,000 dealer networks overseas. Not only has it built 3 major R&D innovation centers including London, but it has also established 4 production manufacturing centers in Thailand, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan, as well as China's largest and globally leading self-operated vehicle logistics fleet.

In 2025, SAIC Motor officially released the overseas "Glocal Strategy", i.e., the "Global + Local" combination strategy. Relying on comprehensive and deep accumulation of new energy and smart connectivity technologies including solid-state batteries, it creates a full series of new overseas vehicle models, covering global mainstream sub-markets, and further building a global automotive brand and localized system ecosystem.

SAIC Motor's move is "eating crabs" again, wanting the world to know Chinese cars. Not only continuing to strive in total vehicle exports — 459,000 units in the first four months of 2026, surging 50.2% year-on-year. It also wants to achieve rooting in various important global markets like other global brands.

Taking another angle, it is not difficult to see from this year's Beijing International Automotive Exhibition that Chinese cars and Chinese technology have already caused a massive change in the entire automotive industry globally. Once "learning to walk", Chinese cars, precisely because of enterprises like SAIC Motor with deep accumulation and willingness to innovate, have already emerged in the global automotive industry.

The delivery of SAIC Motor's global 100 millionth new vehicle at the end of this month also adopts a global perspective: Shanghai North Bund World Living Room main venue as the origin, live signals will cross multiple continents, connecting delivery sites in multiple domestic cities and multiple foreign countries. At that time, brands under SAIC Motor will also make their full debut, becoming 1/100,000,000 of this historical moment... This is a historical milestone for China's automotive industry, and more importantly, a brand new beginning for "striding anew from the beginning"!

Author: Liu Jungang