GAC Aion will launch the Ray 7 in China on 12 November, and the car is doing two unusual things at once. It is a five-metre-class mid-to-large electric sedan offered at a compact-sedan price, and it is the first Aion built around Huawei drive hardware rather than GAC's in-house units. Pre-sales opened on 17 October with five versions priced between 128,800 and 158,800 yuan, so the official launch is mostly about confirming the trim ladder and stacking the launch benefits.
Photo: JustAnotherCarDesigner / Wikimedia Commons (CC0) — Illustrative: Aion RT, GAC Aion's existing mid-size sedan.
The consumption claim is the pitch
Aion says the Ray 7 uses just 9.7 kWh per 100 km on the CLTC cycle, which for a car of this size is a genuinely low figure and the basis of the 700 km range rating. The savings come from a new thermal management system built around a 28-in-1 module, lower drag from the fastback body and the DriveONE multi-in-one electric drive that Huawei developed and GAC has adopted. Whether Chinese-market figures survive contact with a motorway at 120 km/h is another matter, but the underlying engineering direction is right: efficiency, not battery size, is what makes a cheap long-range car possible.
Brakes by wire
The second headline is the braking system. The Ray 7 uses Huawei's EMB, a fully electric brake-by-wire setup with no hydraulic backup, and Aion quotes a 100 to 0 km/h stop in 33 metres. That is competitive-supercar territory on paper, and it also frees up packaging space and response time for the assistance systems. The car carries a lidar on the roof, and GAC has been demonstrating urban navigation assistance and automated parking in the pre-sale campaign, positioning the Ray 7 as a technology car rather than a fleet special.
Photo: Zoerides / Wikimedia Commons (CC0) — Illustrative: Aion RT, GAC Aion's existing mid-size sedan.
What it has to beat
The price bracket is brutal. At 128,800 to 158,800 yuan the Ray 7 goes against the BYD Qin Plus EV, the XPeng MONA M03 and, from inside GAC's own showrooms, the smaller and cheaper Aion RT. The Ray 7's answer is size and hardware: a longer body, Huawei drive and braking hardware, and a consumption figure none of those rivals can currently match. If the launch pricing holds at the pre-sale level, Aion will have put a five-metre, 700 km sedan into the same bracket as a well-equipped compact hatchback, which is exactly the kind of offer that has been reshaping the Chinese market all year.
- Launch on 12 November; pre-sale from 17 October at 128,800-158,800 yuan, five versions
- Five-metre-class mid-to-large electric fastback sedan
- Huawei DriveONE electric drive; 9.7 kWh/100 km CLTC, 700 km range
- Huawei EMB fully electric brake-by-wire, 100-0 km/h in 33 m
- 28-in-1 thermal management module; roof-mounted lidar