At the beginning of 2025, SAIC-GM held a grand media communication meeting, which not only reviewed the achievements made in the second half of 2024, but also looked forward to the development blueprint for 2025. SAIC-GM General Manager Lu Xiao said at the meeting: "2024 is the most difficult year for SAIC-GM, but we have successfully reversed the trend with our perseverance and innovative strategies."
In 2025, as the domestic automobile industry is gradually moving from the first half of electrification to the second half of intelligence, major automobile manufacturers are also focusing on the fields of intelligence, networking, artificial intelligence, etc. SAIC-GM has also quickly adjusted its strategy, anchoring the goal of "electrification, intelligence, and high value" in the research and development and implementation of product technology, hoping to use more innovative technologies and more high-quality new cars to promote the company's transformation and development, bring users a more extreme product experience, and strive to achieve rapid transformation.
SAIC-GM successfully concluded 2024 with six consecutive increases in terminal monthly sales
For traditional joint ventures such as SAIC-GM, the road to transformation is often more difficult, with higher requirements for operational decisions, technological changes, the pace of new energy product innovation, and after-sales systems. With forward-looking market insight and a user-centric business philosophy, SAIC-GM withstood the huge pressure of declining sales in the first half of 2024, quickly launched a comprehensive self-rescue, and successfully achieved a stabilization and recovery of sales through intensive product upgrades, innovative marketing, and value system optimization. Starting from July 2024, SAIC-GM's monthly terminal sales have risen for six consecutive months, reaching 73,058 units (including exports) in December, a month-on-month increase of 9.4%, setting a new monthly sales record last year. The cumulative terminal sales for the whole year reached 673,007 units (including exports), of which new energy vehicle sales totaled 104,905 units, a year-on-year increase of 56%. The new energy penetration rate ranks among the top among mainstream joint venture automakers. Behind these achievements is SAIC-GM's rapid self-adjustment and persistence in technological iteration and innovation.
SAIC-GM's many star models performed well in 2024. Buick GL8 family achieved outstanding terminal sales of over 100,000 units throughout the year, ranking first in the sales list of large MPVs with its outstanding performance; Buick Envision family achieved monthly sales of over 20,000 units in December, reaching 20,643 units, of which Envision Plus became the market champion of 2.0T SUVs priced between RMB 150,000 and RMB 200,000. Buick LaCrosse 2025 Platinum Edition and Cadillac's new XT5, CT5 and other popular models also achieved remarkable results in their respective market segments; Cadillac brand's cumulative sales for the year reached nearly 130,000 units, achieving six consecutive months of growth.
With sincerity, leading technology and perfect system go hand in hand
SAIC-GM's "turnaround" against the trend in 2024 benefited from the "innovative combination punch" in marketing strategy. In September 2024, when the new Cadillac XT5 was launched, the brand launched the "limited-time fixed price" policy for the first time, and then Buick Envision Plus, Buick E5 and Buick LaCrosse Platinum Edition and other models also adopted this model. This policy allows consumers to skip the tedious bargaining process and focus more on the product experience, which has opened a breakthrough for sales. Not only that, taking advantage of the opportunity of the launch of the new Cadillac XT6 in November, the industry's rare inclusive replacement policy was launched again, with no restrictions on brands or models, providing better choices for car replacement users; from the end of 2024 to the beginning of this year, in order to prevent users from missing the subsidy window, Cadillac and Buick's national and local subsidies were continuously launched to provide users with a "peace of mind" gift, which is enough to prove SAIC-GM's full sincerity to users.
Thanks to this series of inclusive policies, SAIC-GM's product sales continued to grow. At the same time, the company took the initiative to control wholesale and reduce inventory, destocking more than 200,000 vehicles throughout the year, restoring the health of the channel, significantly increasing dealer profits and restoring dealer confidence.
SAIC-GM has also made significant progress in the field of new energy. The company has built a complete new energy full-link system, with performance and safety laboratories for the three-electric system, as well as two Autoneng super factories in Jinqiao and Wuhan. At the same time, it is also in a leading position among joint venture automakers in terms of new energy technology. The Autoneng intelligent electric platform is one of SAIC-GM's core technologies in the field of new energy, and has a reputation as a "safety ceiling" in the industry. Buick E5 has achieved the outstanding performance of "zero spontaneous combustion in 570 million kilometers of driving, zero fire in collision accidents, and zero battery degradation in one year of driving" with this; the "True Dragon" plug-in hybrid system also performs well. The Buick GL8 PHEV equipped with this system easily breaks 1,000 kilometers in the 120 km/h limit test; Pan Asia's full-stack self-developed NOP smart pilot, as a joint venture's leading L2+ level assisted driving system in China, has enabled the Buick Century model with this function to receive a five-star rating in the "i-VISTA China Smart Car Index". At the same time, SAIC-GM also leads the way in OTA upgrade capabilities, conducting 35 OTA upgrades throughout 2024, with a total of more than 750,000 upgraded vehicles, covering 26 models. The number of upgrades, total number of vehicles and coverage rate ranked among the top joint ventures.
Auten Intelligent Electric Platform
“True Dragon” plug-in hybrid system
NOP Smart Navigation
SAIC-GM has always regarded safety as its top priority. The company meets the safety regulations of many regional markets around the world, has an independent safety development team, and has a veto over safety hazards. In terms of battery safety, SAIC-GM develops and designs around "battery safety throughout its life cycle", and incorporates safety concepts throughout the entire process of battery research and development, testing, manufacturing, use, and retirement and cascade utilization. This is a more comprehensive and detailed set of development concepts and solutions for battery safety in the automotive industry so far.
SAIC-GM vows to become the leader in the joint venture 2.0 era by 2025
Entering 2025, SAIC-GM is standing at a new starting point. Lu Xiao said: "Starting this year, SAIC-GM will comprehensively blow the 'counterattack horn' of joint venture automakers and become the leader in the era of joint venture 2.0." To this end, SAIC-GM will take "electrification, intelligence, and high value" as its goal, launch more innovative technologies and high-quality new cars, and promote corporate transformation and development.
SAIC-GM will launch a new generation of super-convergent vehicle architecture designed specifically for the Chinese market this year. This architecture integrates SAIC-GM's latest advanced technologies such as body, chassis, powertrain and electronic and electrical architecture, and has the characteristics of "more flexible scalability, more diverse power, smarter experience, and more agile and comfortable driving". Based on this new architecture, a series of new energy vehicle models will be built to support various body forms such as sedans, SUVs, MPVs, etc., with a wheelbase covering 2800mm-3300mm, meeting various drive forms of front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive and four-wheel drive. At the same time, it supports a variety of powertrain forms such as pure electric, plug-in hybrid, and extended range. In addition, the architecture also integrates the next-generation central computing platform, adopts a new architecture form of central computing + regional controller, and the software adopts SOA layered service architecture to fully enable "oil and electricity intelligence", bringing more atomic-level services and faster iteration upgrades to the new generation of smart cabins and smart driving systems to meet the diversified needs of users.
Continue to exert efforts in the field of technology to accelerate the transformation of intelligent electricity
The Autoneng platform will also be upgraded from pure electric drive to a multi-drive new energy power platform - the Autoneng 2.0 platform, which not only includes a pure electric system, but also supports plug-in hybrid and new range-extending technologies to meet the performance development needs of different new energy vehicle models. In terms of pure electric, the Autoneng 2.0 platform can support up to 900V in the entire domain, and uses the industry-leading 6C ultra-fast charging lithium iron phosphate battery, which can replenish energy for more than 350 kilometers in 10 minutes.
In terms of intelligence, SAIC-GM will launch a new generation of intelligent cockpit platform. The platform is equipped with a super-new generation of chips, which can achieve up to 8 screens, and is equipped with a 50-inch AR-HUD to bring an immersive experience. At the same time, the platform will also fully introduce AI technology to improve the intelligence level of scenarios such as voice interaction and assisted driving; the new generation of intelligent driving platform will also realize the comprehensive upgrade of chip hardware and the deployment of end-to-end intelligent driving models. Accurate environmental perception and decision-making are achieved by equipping it with a new central computing chip and high-performance sensors. Based on end-to-end model algorithms, it provides a "door-to-door" intelligent driving form, covering high-level intelligent driving functions such as urban and highway smart navigation, dynamic parking and memory parking.
According to the plan, from 2025 to 2027, SAIC-GM plans to launch 12 new models, 100% of which are new energy models, covering different body styles of sedans, SUVs and MPVs. The product definition of these new models will be independently led by SAIC-GM and Pan Asia, and will be 100% centered on the needs of Chinese customers. In the future, every product of SAIC-GM will have 100% digital technology support and will be more in line with the needs of Chinese consumers.
In conclusion: Looking back at 2024, SAIC-GM achieved a reversal against the trend with its tenacious spirit and innovative strategy. In 2025, SAIC-GM will promote corporate transformation with more innovative technologies and high-quality new cars to achieve positive and new development.
