The long-standing partnership between SAIC – parent of MG – and General Motors has been extended for 20 years, but there are some winners and losers among GM’s brands.
Established in 1997, the SAIC-GM joint venture, which was due to expire next year, has been extended until 2047.
Although neither SAIC nor GM have confirmed the financial terms of the deal, reports indicate it will remain a 50-50 joint venture with income split evenly between the partners.
A GM spokesperson told CNBC the company had also extended the length of its SAIC-GM-Wuling joint venture, a three-way partnership between SAIC, GM and Guangxi Automobile. This arrangement produces Wuling and Baojun models, as well as Huajing vehicles designed with Huawei.
GM has confirmed the renewed joint venture will axe Chevrolet in China, although it didn’t provide a timeline for the brand’s shutdown. Chevrolet-branded models will continue to be built in China, although they will be purely for export.
A number of Wuling cars and SUVs, and Baojun vans, are sold as Chevrolets in Latin America and other markets, and it’s likely it‘s these vehicles which will continue to trundle out of Chinese factories with the Chevy bow tie.
With Chevrolet soon to disappear in China, GM says it will “sharpen its focus” on Cadillac and Buick, which has been the company’s volume brand in the country since the very start.
Whereas the SAIC-GM joint venture once relied mostly on vehicles and platforms developed in the US and Europe, the joint venture will continue “growing [a] portfolio of products defined and developed locally” with “more technology solutions developed in China for the Chinese market”.
To that end, SAIC-GM plans to launch “at least” 30 new energy vehicles – plug-in hybrids, extended range EVs, and pure EVs – by 2030. Some of these will flesh out the Buick Electra sub-brand that was launched in 2025.
With the exception of a few low-volume models, such as the Cadillac CT6 and Buick Envision, made-in-China Buick and Cadillac models have largely been for domestic consumption. As part of the renewal agreement, SAIC-GM will become a production hub for “select global markets”.
As part of this export push, the Buick Electra E7 SUV will head overseas from October this year, although it’s unclear which markets it is bound for. Buick’s presence is limited primarily to the USA, Canada, Mexico and China, so it’s possible it may be headed offshore wearing Chevrolet badges.
In a prepared statement, John Roth, head of GM China, said: “We are committed to strong performance in the China market, and we see meaningful opportunities to compete in select international markets: the Middle East, Africa, South America, Mexico and Asia-Pacific.”
According to GM, the SAIC-GM joint venture has produced over 20 million vehicles since its inception. For a while in the mid-2010s, China was GM’s largest market and a significant source of income.
During this period, GM’s market share in China hovered around the 14 per cent mark, and the joint venture sent about US$2 billion in profits back to Detroit every year.
Like Volkswagen and other foreign manufacturers in China, GM has been hit hard by the rapid rise of local brands and EVs. As sales nosedived and restructuring took hold, GM China slid into the red in 2024 and 2025, although so far this year it is back to being profitable.