The Aion name probably means little to you, but its parent company is much larger than the unfamiliar badge suggests. GAC is China’s fifth-largest car company, having produced buses in the 1950s, before moving into cars – including joint ventures with Toyota and Honda – and now overseeing a portfolio of vehicle brands.
In fact, the first-generation Honda Jazz was built by GAC, and today the company produces almost two million vehicles per year, and employs around 82,000 people globally, including 6,000 in research and development. GAC says it invests more than $6.5 billion (£4.8 billion) in R&D each year, while the Aion brand itself sold more than 300,000 electric cars in China in 2025. So, while Aion is a very new badge on British roads, this is far from a start-up having its first go at building cars.
