A Hundred Million Reasons to Pay Attention
SAIC Group just delivered its 100 millionth vehicle — the first Chinese automaker to hit that mark. The milestone car? The IM LS9 Hyper, a flagship six-seat SUV that packs enough tech to make most competitors look like they're still using flip phones.
The 100 millionth customer turned out to be Momenta CEO Cao Xudong — a nice bit of symmetry, given that IM Motors is Momenta's exclusive "founding lighthouse partner" on autonomous driving. Partner becomes customer. That's the kind of signal the industry notices.
The LS9 Hyper itself brings some serious hardware: all-wheel steer-by-wire, 520-line LiDAR + NVIDIA Thor chip, full 800V architecture, and a combined range of 1,400+ km with its Stellar range extender. It's also the first car to feature SAIC's "endogenous safety system" — a bottom-up security architecture designed to keep the car safe even under cyberattacks or chip failures.
For SAIC, a company that's been building cars since 1958, this is both a celebration and a statement of intent. Whether that intent translates into market momentum remains the big question — but the numbers don't lie: a hundred million vehicles is a hundred million trust votes.
Editor's note: SAIC Group has noticeably lagged behind the broader market in recent years, with its stock price trending steadily downward. Here's hoping this milestone sparks a real turnaround. Watching closely.
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