The largest Chinese automaker by sales in Europe, MG, could announce the location of its first factory in the region by this summer, two people familiar with the matter told Automotive News Europe.
Building cars in Europe would allow the company, which is owned by SAIC, to avoid EU tariffs on Chinese-made battery-electric vehicles (BEVs).
MG’s BEVs pay an additional 35.3 percent tariff, the highest rate, on top of the standard 10 percent for vehicles imported into the EU.
The tariffs went into effect last November and will last five years, although the EU and China have recently reopened talks on minimum-pricing rules that could replace the tariffs.
The automaker is looking for undeveloped land rather than taking over an existing site, which several countries have been offering.
The plant could have an initial capacity of 100,000 units a year and could start production in 12 to 16 months from final project approval, one of the sources said. Final approval has not yet been given, the source said.
Rather than expanding capacity at this first plant, MG is considering a second plant that would also have capacity of 100,000 units a year.
The MG sources did not say which European countries are under consideration, although Turkey, which has a free-trade agreement with the EU, could be a possible location for one of the sites.
The automaker first said that it was considering European production in summer 2023.
In June 2024, SAIC Motor confirmed in a statement that it planned to build vehicles, including electric cars and light trucks, for the MG brand in Europe.
MG Sales
MG’s European sales increased 5.1 percent in 2024 to 243,395.
But sales of its full-electric cars fell by one-third to 72,066, and their share of brand sales dropped to 30 percent from 47 percent in 2023.
Through February, MG’s overall sales were up 21 percent to 39,202 over the same period in 2024, but full effects of the electric car tariffs contributed to its BEV sales falling by over 50 percent to 5,509, just 14 percent of MG’s sales, according to figures from market researcher Dataforce.
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