The chairman of Chinese carmaker SAIC Motor Corp. Ltd. said the company aims to ramp up its overseas sales to more than 1 million vehicles by 2025, the South China Morning Post reported March 7.
"We hope that by 2025, overseas sales comprising a combination of exports and overseas manufacturing could reach a scale measurable by the millions," SAIC Chairman Chen Hong was quoted by the newspaper as saying during a break in the National People's Congress meetings, which Chen is attending as a delegate.
Aside from producing its own cars, SAIC is also a local assembler for Volkswagen AG and General Motors Co.
SAIC's overseas sales in 2017 climbed by almost a third to 170,000 units, making it China's top vehicle exporter. Sales in 2017 rose 6.8% to 6.93 million units, more than double the Chinese automotive industry's average growth rate, the SCMP said.
Chen reportedly said SAIC has budgeted $100 million to set up a fund to invest in the U.S., with a separate project to test autonomous driving in the Silicon Valley. He added that SAIC will deepen its cooperation with Alibaba to create a smart transportation ecosystem, without elaborating, the SCMP reported.
SAIC, which launched a prototype electric vehicle last year under its Roewe brand, also set a sales target of 600,000 electric vehicles by 2020, the newspaper said.
