SAIC Motor’s sales still drop in Sept., but self-owned PV arm gains evident growth
SAIC Motor posted the 13th-month-in-a-row year-on-year sales downturn as of September, 2019, according to the company's latest sales report.
Last month, the Chinese biggest automaker sold 549,999 vehicles, down by 9.94% from the year-ago period, while up by 12.97% over the previous month. Year-to-date sales still represented a decline of 14.23%, versus 14.81% year-on-year decrease in Jan.-Aug. sales.
Apart from SAIC-IVECO Hongyan Commercial Vehicle and Shanghai Sunwin Bus Corporation, the other subsidiaries all attained growth compared with August.
The top 3 subsidiaries by September sales—SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM-Wuling and SAIC-GM—all suffered year-on-year decline. In terms of Jan.-Sept. sales, the growth of the three companies still remained negative.
SAIC Motor PV, the group's self-owned PV arm, saw its sales rise 9.65% to 57,025 units. However, its year-to-date sales still represented a decrease of 7.34%.
On September 28, SAIC Motor formally completed the construction of the Ningde base, its fourth manufacturing base for self-owned PVs following the facilities in Lingang of Shanghai, Pukou of Nanjing and Zhengzhou.
The MG eHS plug-in hybrid SUV, the first model produced by the Ningde plant and the third NEV model of MG, came off the production line at the same time. After launched in China, the new model will go westward into countries like the UK, said SAIC Motor.
Among subsidiaries whose Sept. sales surpassed 10,000 units, SAIC Maxus featured the biggest year-on-year increase. According to a new roadmap recently revealed, the subsidiary is ready to roll out more than 20 NEV models by the end of 2025 and strives to make NEVs account for over 40% of total sales then.
