SAIC charging ahead with EVs

SAIC Motor, the Chinese corporation that owns familiar British brands like MG, LDV and Roewe (formerly Rover), is building up a head of steam – and electric vehicles are an as yet small but important factor in the company's on-going success.

In 2018 the company's global vehicle sales exceeded seven billion units and the company has made it to number 36 on the Fortune 500 list (seventh for automotive manufacturers). At present, SAIC's market share in China is up around 24 per cent – somewhat better than Toyota achieved last year in Australia (18 per cent), to put that in context. Those brands SAIC owns outright – as opposed to joint ventures – built 827,000 vehicles last year.

But maintaining the company's steamrolling sales progress will be heavily bound up in developing and selling electric vehicles, according to Matt Lei, Deputy Managing Director of Overseas Business for SAIC Motor.

"Last year, our total EV sales reached 140,000 units. This is a 120 per cent increase, compared with that in 2017," Lei told journalists in Shanghai last week.

"We have a very ambitious target; we want to build up more than 50,000 public charging stations and we want to continue our investment and development in the EV area.

"We intend to invest more than US $3 billion by 2020. And our sales target... 600,000 [electric vehicles] by 2020."

The corporation is well along the path already, compelled to boost sales of its electric vehicles to meet restrictive quotas demanded by the Chinese government. Already on sale in China, the Roewe Marvel-X is a medium SUV that's all-electric. And the MG eZS, which is due to begin reaching global markets during the third quarter of this year, has been confirmed for Australia.

According to SAIC, the MG eZS will recharge to 80 per cent capacity after 40 minutes connected to a fast charger. Its electric motor is rated at 110kW and 350Nm, which should be adequate for an urban-focused family SUV.

Unfortunately, there are no plans currently for the Roewe Marvel-X to be sold in Australia.

The company is not pinning all its hopes on battery electric vehicles alone. According to Craig Luo, Executive Director for Product Planning, SAIC Motor International, the company is also embarked on developing plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell vehicles.

"Apart from the traditional combustion engine, we've also put a lot of effort into developing the 'new energy' vehicles," Luo said.

"SAIC Motor is the only Chinese manufacturer that has three alternative technology directions... plug-in hybrid, pure electric and also fuel cell."

The eMG6 that Carsales sampled on a race track last year, is an example of the plug-in hybrid technology already in series production and commercial available. On the LDV/Maxus stand at the Shanghai motor show last week, SAIC unveiled a cut-away model of the new G20 people mover with a fuel cell stack where the engine would be in a conventional, internal-combustion engine.

And in due course the commercial-vehicle brand will be sending us its EV30 van – and all-electric light van that's roughly the same size as a Citroen Berlingo or Renault.

So while the Chinese government is driving the push to electric-powered vehicles in China, it's a push that is rippling throughout the rest of the world as well.