Since May 2020 and its launch in France, MG has gone into overdrive. The range has just been enriched with a fourth model, 100 dealers have been recruited and around forty people have been hired at the headquarters of the French subsidiary, in the La Défense district, near Paris. In a sluggish automobile market, the Chinese manufacturer is posting honorable commercial results. In less than two years, nearly 6,000 registrations of electric and plug-in hybrid cars have been recorded, 40% of them to private individuals, the rest being made up of sales to short-term rental companies and demonstration vehicles.
This score makes France the second European market for the brand, which distributed 52,546 vehicles in 2021 on the Old Continent, more than half of which in the United Kingdom, where it also markets thermal models. This manufacturer is owned by the vast public consortium SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation), which bought the name of Morris Garage (MG), a former English brand whose small roadsters had their heyday in the 1960s.
The very vintage logo has been duly preserved. “Our Chinese origins do not disturb our customers, who know that their smartphones are also made in China without this posing any quality concerns. But the reference to the MG brand brings an additional dimension that reassures them », emphasizes Julien Robert, Director of Sales and Network. To complete the reassurance of the barge, MG applies a seven-year warranty on its cars, like Korean brands.
Aggressive rates
Faced with other Chinese manufacturers present in Europe, MG avoids playing the disruption card, while Lynk & Co only offers monthly rental formulas and Aiways favors, with more than mixed results, online sales. The traditional network of dealers must expand, with the ambition of reaching 200 points of sale in 2024. The objective is to achieve 10,000 registrations from 2022 with, as the most tangible argument, the price of the models, that the brand estimates 20% less than the competition.
However, MG denies being a “low cost” manufacturer and defines itself as a generalist very focused on “electrified” models, the cheapest of which is billed (before ecological bonus) just under 30,000 euros. Forty years following the Japanese manufacturers and twenty years following the Koreans, the Chinese at MG are beginning a long march guided by a fairly classic strategy: aggressive prices, a style intended to blend in with the masses and a level of equipment superior to the average. The difference is that in 2022, the electrification of the automobile is reshuffling the cards by closing the technological gaps between competitors.
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