SAIC Motor Passenger Vehicle Company (SMPV), the passenger car arm of the Chinese group that owns MG, passed one million vehicle sales for 2026 by early November. That is a new annual record for the company, and it got there in less than 11 months.
The figures come from a release issued in Kuala Lumpur by SAIC Motor Malaysia, the official distributor of MG cars here. They cover SMPV's two passenger brands, MG and Roewe, and most of the volume is sold in China.
Contents
SAIC Motor one million sales: the numbers
- January to October growth: sales up 43.8% year on year, which SAIC says is the fastest growth among carmakers selling a million or more vehicles a year, and 34.3 percentage points ahead of the next fastest.
- Monthly volume: more than 100,000 vehicles a month for seven months in a row, from April to October 2026.
- New energy vehicles (NEVs): year-to-date NEV sales up 157.6% year on year.
- Sales mix: NEVs made up 61.7% of October sales, up from 36.4% in January.
In China, NEVs cover fully electric cars, plug-in hybrids and extended-range electric cars. By our reading, that jump from about one in three cars in January to about three in five in October is the clearest sign of where the company's growth is coming from: electrified models, not petrol ones.
The cars behind the growth
Two new sedans did a lot of the work this year. The MG 07, an electric sports sedan aimed at younger buyers in China's RMB100,000 to RMB200,000 price bracket, launched on 21 August. SAIC says firm orders passed 10,000 within 1 minute and 57 seconds, and the car delivered 14,577 units in its first month and 12,393 in October.
The Roewe Jiayue 07, an extended-range electric car built on what Roewe calls its CPP AI-native architecture, developed with ByteDance's Volcengine, launched on 23 October. Firm orders passed 10,000 in 1 minute and 53 seconds after 51,827 pre-sale reservations, and 5,000 cars were delivered in the first week after deliveries began on 1 November.
The model with the widest reach outside China is the MG4. SAIC says it has passed 525,000 cumulative sales worldwide, has sold more than 10,000 units a month in China for 13 months running, and sold 15,503 there in October. It also holds five-star safety ratings from both Euro NCAP and ANCAP.
How SAIC explains it
The company credits the growth to changes it began in early 2025: focusing resources on fewer core models, and from late 2025 running product development, marketing and customer feedback as one process. MG and Roewe also share core technology and parts, including integrated thermal management, semi-solid-state batteries and AI-based in-car systems, so development costs are spread over more cars. SAIC names HASCO, Yanfeng, QingTao and Momenta as partners on vehicle and component development.
What it means for MG buyers in Malaysia
None of the China models above have been announced for Malaysia, and the release does not mention local plans or prices. What matters here is scale. A carmaker selling a million cars a year, and moving most of that volume to electrified models, has more room to spread battery and software costs across its range, and MG is the brand that carries that range into Malaysia.
Locally, MG Malaysia currently sells the locally assembled MG ZS from RM105,000 and the MGS5 EV, which starts at RM103,900 for the COM variant. If either is on your shortlist, it helps to know the parent company behind it is growing, not shrinking, which matters for parts supply and future updates over the years you own the car.
Image courtesy of SAIC Motor.
