MG Motor will end its importer-led distribution in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and take direct control of sales, aftersales and brand operations in both markets. The SAIC-owned brand has carried the EU's heaviest tariff burden of any Chinese manufacturer — a combined 45.3 per cent duty on China-built electric vehicles — since Brussels imposed anti-subsidy tariffs in October 2024. That levy, not retail housekeeping, is the context that makes the Prague and Bratislava move legible.

William Wang, Managing Director of MG UK and Europe, framed the change as a milestone. "This marks a significant new chapter for MG's journey in Europe," he said. "The Czech Republic and Slovakia represent important markets with strong long-term potential, and our continued investment reflects both our confidence in the opportunities ahead and our commitment to accelerating MG's growth across the region."

Taken alone, the shift is the kind of organisational step most growing importers take once volumes justify the overhead of a national sales company. But MG has stacked three other structural moves this year, and together they read as a coordinated localisation programme rather than a distribution tidy-up.

The tariff bill that reset the strategy

In October 2024 the EU imposed anti-subsidy duties on Chinese-built electric vehicles, with rates varying by manufacturer according to the state support investigators attributed to each firm. BYD drew a comparatively light rate. Geely faced more. SAIC drew the worst: an additional 35.3 per cent on top of the standard 10 per cent import duty, or 45.3 per cent combined on every electric MG shipped from China. That margin is the difference between a competitive and an uncompetitive price, and it explains why MG has spent 2026 constructing a European footprint that depends as little as possible on Chinese-built imports.

Galicia: €200m, 120,000 units, 2,000 jobs

The manufacturing anchor landed in June, when MG confirmed its first mainland European plant in Galicia, north-west Spain. The confirmed plans call for roughly €200m ($230m) of investment, about 2,000 jobs and capacity of up to 120,000 vehicles a year when the site opens in 2028. MG has described the facility as combining vehicle R&D, manufacturing, component supply and logistics in one integrated operation — language that signals more than an assembly shed built to clear a tariff line.

The move sits inside a wider pattern across the Chinese OEM cohort. BYD is building an EV plant in Hungary. Chery already produces the Ebro S700 in Barcelona through its Ebro-EV Motors partnership on a former Nissan site. Leapmotor builds through its Stellantis tie-up. Geely has talked about shifting output to Belgium. UBS analysts predicted as early as mid-2024, when provisional tariff rates emerged, that localisation of assembly would beat exporting finished cars from China and absorbing the trade friction. MG's Galicia announcement is that forecast landing on schedule.

Engineering and batteries move faster than concrete

Manufacturing is the slow layer. A plant announced in June 2026 will not turn a wheel until 2028. Engineering moved first: in March, MG opened a European Engineering Centre in Frankfurt, built to adapt vehicles to European climate, road and driving conditions, working alongside the existing Longbridge engineering team and London design studio.

At the same event MG unveiled SolidCore, a semi-solid-state battery with a 95 per cent solid electrolyte structure that the company claims is the first of its kind in mass production anywhere. Kimi Li, vice president at MG Europe and the UK, presented the battery and an updated Hybrid+ powertrain as evidence of the brand's ambitions on range and accessibility. MG says SolidCore will reach European-market EVs by the end of 2026.

The hybrid hedge

Hybrid+ matters for a second, understated reason. Hybrids and plug-in hybrids attract only the EU's standard 10 per cent duty, not the punitive rate applied to pure electrics. Hybrid+ sales across Europe grew 300 per cent in 2025 to 137,000 units — real consumer demand that also sidesteps MG's biggest cost disadvantage entirely.

The hedge looks shrewder by the month. January 2026 brought the first pause in new car registrations after six consecutive months of growth, with Germany down 6.6 per cent and France down by the same margin. Hybrids took an all-time-high 38.6 per cent share of new registrations across the bloc that month. Industry forecasters now expect battery-electric growth to slow through the rest of the decade as hybrid, plug-in hybrid and combustion sales persist longer than earlier transition timelines assumed.

What to watch

None of this changes the mechanics in Prague and Bratislava: an importer relationship wound up, replaced by directly managed retail. But OEMs rarely tighten their grip on distribution in markets they intend to leave. MG's pattern this year is consistent — engineering closer to the customer, assembly closer to the customer, now the point of sale too.

The milestones to track: SolidCore's arrival in European-market EVs by end-2026, Hybrid+ volume against a slowing EV curve, and above all the Galicia plant's build-out toward its 2028 opening and 120,000-unit capacity. For the brand carrying the EU's heaviest Chinese EV tariff, localisation is the only route that keeps the European growth story intact.