British brand, MG, was officially re-introduced in the country last October by The Covenant Car Company, Inc. (TCCCI), distributors of Chevrolet. MG, an abbreviation of Morris Garages is a brand that’s been around since 1924. They made affordable, small, fun-to-drive sports cars in the UK. Fast forward to 2019 and MG is now manufactured by Shanghai Automotive Industry, Corp. (SAIC Motor), China’s biggest automobile maker.
Chinese vehicles may not have best reputation among buyers, but the guys at MG Philippines wanted to show us that everything from the initial design all the way to the final product that is now sold here is manufactured just like your Japanese or European car. They are built to similar, if not possibly even higher standards.
This was the subject of a familiarization tour, with our hosts, TCCCI, flying with us to Shanghai to see the efforts being made to make MG and its parent company, SAIC, truly global carmakers.
We first visited the SAIC Design Center, where we were given a quick yet broad summary of SAIC’s 2018 business performance. SAIC Ranks #36 among Fortune Global 500 Companies and #7 in the Automotive Category.
The Design Center introduced us to MG’s design philosophy which is “Emotional Dynamism”, an expressive design language which emphasizes MG’s premium nature. It brings together three elements – “ Emotional,” “Humanized,” and “Agility,” which accentuate desirability, accessibility and dynamic stance.
One of the key design features is the new face for MG. It features and enlarged full frame grille which also allows for a big MG badge front and center.
Formerly a year-long exercise, the design process has been sped up, from pen on paper artist concepts to high resolution computer rendering in about seven days. There’s emphasis on how computers have done a lot for the design process, like being able to simulate different atmospheric lighting on a proposed vehicle’s surfaces. SAIC takes advantage of state of the art computer hardware and Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality technologies to develop multiple vehicle exteriors and interiors without the need to produce real world prototypes until the final concept is passed. This reduces both costs and time.
After the Design Center, we headed roughly 100 kilometers out of town to the SAIC Motor Passenger Vehicle Motor Co. Manufacturing Co. where their research and development tech labs and assembly plant are located. Here we got to see their different test labs, including the NVH Chamber with built in wind generator which can produce gusts of up to 250km/h. Noise, Vibration and Harshness is measured inside the vehicle. An interesting facility was the CWT (Climatic Wind Tunnel) lab which tests air con performance, engine cooling, thermal management and heat protection, window defrost and de-mister performance, and rain-snow and water management. This lab also simulates day and night profiles of temperature, humidity, solar radiation, drive conditions and a dyno which can simulate speeds up to 100-kph.
At the manufacturing plant, one of the most advanced facilities in China, a lot of the processes in the body workshop are done by robots. 100-percent of the welding and painting is done by robots and Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGV’s) which bring components for assembly to different parts of the production line. They also manufacture and assemble power plants for conventional, hybrid, and electric vehicles.
On our third and last day, we went to the Tianma Circuit to experience MG and some of Roewe’s offering’s on the race track. Tianma Circuit is an FIA approved F3 level international circuit that’s 2.063-km long with 14 corners. This activity was split into two areas, the track and gymkhana areas, both of which showcase power, braking, cornering and the rigidity of their chasses.
We got to drive the MG ZS subcompact SUV, the eMG6 hybrid sedan and MG HS compact SUV on the racetrack. We put them through their paces, each performing as well as expected for that category of vehicle. We then spent the rest of the day with the Roewe brand of vehicles, namely the i5 compact sedan, the ei5 the full electric (EV) compact station wagon, and the Marvel X EV AWD mid-sized crossover SUV. Again with the vehicles performed as well as expected. The electric vehicle’s performance exceeded our expectations.
With the SAIC manufactured MG and Roewe, we saw for ourselves that, every step of the process — from design to final product — is as meticulous as you would expect, comparing favorably to global Japanese and European brands you’re more familiar with. They’re also way ahead with new technologies that some of its contemporaries are still just planning to develop.
SAIC has Innovation Centers in California and Israel and Manufacturing plants in the UK, India, Thailand, Indonesia, and Shanghai, among others in China. Aside from making cars for today, they are also looking ahead. Their Future Prospects are: “Electrification” – development of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure; “Vehicle Sharing” – ride sharing; E-commerce and income generation; “Intelligent Connectivity” – smart cars, connected cars and ‘cars on internet’; “Globalization” – design studios already in UK, Thailand, India, Indonesia and soon US; and innovation centers in California and Israel for energy, connectivity, intelligent driving, network security and the “internet of things” etc.
SAIC is not only a carmaker, but an innovator in technology too. Some may say that Chinese car companies have a lot of catching up to do. We found that SAIC is a long way ahead already.
By Neil Pagulayan