SAIC's overseas market is shifting gears and accelerating.

From January through July this year, SAIC's exports and overseas base sales reached 876,000 units, up 52.1% year-on-year; of which 7 months sales 142,000 units, up 72.5% year-on-year. In the preceding June, SAIC's overseas sales reached 146,000 units, up 61.2% year-on-year, creating a new single-month historical high. According to the 2.384 million units group total sales disclosed by SAIC for the same period, the overseas market contribution has already approached 37%.

Another number is more intuitive. In 2025, SAIC's full-year overseas sales were 1.071 million units, up 3.1% year-on-year; this year it only took 7 months to complete more than 80% of last year's full-year sales volume.

From consecutive years of overseas annual sales of millions of units to re-entering high-speed growth this year, SAIC's overseas expansion is showing new changes.

In 2025, SAIC released overseas strategy 3.0 — Glocal "Global + Local" strategy, proposing upgrading from product export to value chain export. More than a year later, this strategy began to land beyond sales figures: European Engineering Center activated, overseas direct sales systems increased, hybrid, pure electric products etc. were recombined according to different market needs, European local production also began to enter the substantive promotion stage.

This means SAIC's overseas expansion is crossing a new threshold: from selling more cars globally to truly operating the global market.

Europe is no longer just an export market

Europe is the most suitable market to observe this change.

From January through July this year, MG sold 218,000 units cumulatively in Europe, up 22.8% year-on-year, continuing to maintain a leading position in European sales of Chinese car brands. In 2025, MG's Europe sales exceeded 300,000 units, up nearly 30% year-on-year.

More worth attention than the total volume is that MG began to appear on the European mainstream model sales list.

Data from the UK Motor Manufacturers and Traders Association SMMT shows that in July this year, 2,703 MG HS were registered, ranking fifth among all models in the UK, only behind Ford Puma, Nissan Qashqai, Kia Sportage and Jaecoo 7; cumulatively 19,424 units in the first 7 months, ranking seventh in the UK annual model sales.

The significance of this ranking is that measuring MG's position in the UK market no longer requires setting up a separate "Chinese Brand" coordinate system. It is competing with brands like Ford, Volkswagen, Nissan, Kia that have operated the European market for decades for the same batch of family users.

Europe is also one of SAIC's overseas markets facing the greatest pressure.

Currently, among the additional anti-subsidy taxes imposed by the EU on pure electric vehicles produced in China, SAIC's applicable tax rate is 35.3%. After adding original import tariffs, Chinese-produced pure electric models face obvious cost pressure. At the same time, Chinese car companies like BYD, Chery, etc. are also rapidly expanding in Europe and successively advancing local production. Europe has become one of the most fierce markets for Chinese car companies in global competition.

SAIC's response is not to continue relying on single pure electric products.

In June this year, MG's overseas HEV model single-month sales have approached 27,000 units, doubling year-on-year; in the MG Technology Conference held in London in July, Plug-in Hybrid+ hybrid, SolidCore semi-solid-state battery and smart cockpit and assisted driving technologies were centrally displayed.

A few years ago, MG's most distinct product label in Europe was still pure electric models like MG4. Now, from HEV, PHEV to pure electric, the product portfolio is becoming more complete.

Behind this is actually a change in the overseas expansion mindset.

The initial export logic considered more how products matured in the Chinese market can go overseas; true global operation requires studying in reverse what power forms, what prices, what sizes local consumers need, then deciding what products to provide.

For automobile enterprises, what separates the two is a whole set of local product definition capabilities.

More important than how many units sold is

Rooting deeply locally

This year, a series of actions by SAIC in Europe are further crossing the boundary of "export".

Starting July 1st, MG in Belgium and Luxembourg shifted from agent operation to MG Motor Europe direct National Sales Company, directly responsible for local market operations. Previously MG had already become the largest Chinese car brand in Belgium, in 2025 local registration was about 6,000 units, market share over 1.5%.

On the same day, MG Motor Switzerland GmbH was officially established, the Swiss market also shifted from importer operation to wholly-owned, locally managed direct sales system, MG began to directly responsible for sales, after-sales and brand operation.

This is a change that can be easily masked by sales figures, but very much illustrates the degree of globalization.

For an export enterprise, the core question is how many cars sold to overseas dealers; for an enterprise truly operating the local market, it also needs to directly face terminal prices, inventory, channel efficiency, after-sales service, brand building and user relationships.

Greater changes are happening at the manufacturing end.

In June this year, the plan for SAIC to build its first EU automotive production base in Ferrol, Galicia, Spain surfaced. According to information disclosed by Reuters, the project is expected to invest about 200 million euros, planned to start construction in 2027, operate in 2028, subsequent planning annual capacity up to 120,000 units, and will support logistics and local parts procurement.

Building factories in Europe certainly has practical considerations of reducing trade barriers and logistics costs, but the significance is not limited to this.

When vehicle production truly enters Europe, enterprises need to handle local suppliers, employees, regulations, government, channels and consumer relationships simultaneously. Cars are gradually shifting from "Made in China, Sold in Europe" to "European R&D Adaptation, European Production, European Operation".

This is also the truly difficult part of "Local" in the Glocal strategy.

In the past few years, SAIC has formed an overseas R&D, manufacturing, sales and logistics network. The existing system includes overseas R&D innovation and design centers, production bases such as Thailand, Indonesia, India, as well as parts, sales service and self-operated RoRo transport system.

If these layouts built SAIC's global operation chassis, then Europe is becoming a pressure test field for verifying this system's capability.

In a market possessing local giants such as Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, while also possessing strict regulations, mature consumers and trade barriers, relying on export price advantage can win for a period of time, but it is difficult to win a long-term market.

In the end, it is a contest on who can truly integrate in.

From an MG prototype

Turn into group-level global capability

MG is still SAIC's most mature piece of overseas expansion, but SAIC's overseas growth no longer comes entirely from MG.

SAIC-GM-Wuling overseas exports have exceeded 30,000 units consecutively for 4 months, this year January-7 months cumulative breakthrough 200,000 units; SAIC Maxus July overseas sales 14,000 units, up 69% year-on-year, products entered global 100+ countries and regions. Recently, SAIC Hongyan also signed 1,000 new energy heavy truck orders with Thai customers, and carried out vehicle and charging, maintenance system local adaptation for local high temperature, rainy, heavy load environment.

From MG passenger cars, to Wuling small cars, to Maxus light commercial vehicles, pickups and new energy heavy trucks, what SAIC tries to replicate is no longer a certain "global blockbuster", but a group-level global operation system.

This road did not start this year.

In 2001, SAIC began passenger car exports; in 2012 cooperated with CP Group to layout Thailand, subsequently advanced local vehicle production; in 2019 India vehicle base put into production; by 2025, SAIC formally proposed Glocal strategy. Now, SAIC products and services have entered over 170 countries and regions globally, overseas cumulative sales exceeded 7 million units.

In more than 20 years, Chinese car exports themselves have also changed.

Earliest competition was whether there were products that could be exported; subsequently competition was who could reach 100,000, 500,000, 1 million units scale first. Entering today, when more and more Chinese car companies cross the 1 million unit export threshold, pure export quantity is becoming increasingly difficult to decide the final result of global competition.

The next stage, the contest is another set of capabilities: can we define products according to different markets in Europe, Southeast Asia, Middle East, Latin America; can we establish local R&D and manufacturing; can we directly operate channels and users; can we adapt to local regulations, supply chains and even industrial policies.

In other words, Chinese car exports are moving from "Trade Globalization" to "Operation Globalization".

From this perspective, the significance of 876,000 units has also changed.

It is first of all a sales report card, but more importantly, this round of growth appears in the stage where European local production, direct channels, technical local adaptation and global supply chain are promoted synchronously.

True global automobile enterprises were never global enterprises because of large export volumes. Toyota, Volkswagen, GM became multinational automotive groups because they can R&D, produce, organize supply chains, operate brands and serve users in different countries.

For SAIC which has continuously sold millions of units overseas for many years, the next question has also changed from "how many more units can be exported" to "in how many markets can it truly take root".

Europe is giving the first answer. What SAIC wants to prove is not only that Chinese cars can be sold globally, but also that Chinese car enterprises have the capability to become part of the global automotive industry.