AION V Review | 8 years’ of almost EVERYTHING?

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hello folks, another week, another new Chinese brand to the UK. This time it's AON and this is the AONV. They are part of GAC which is a huge Chinese vehicle manufacturer best known for their joint ventures in China with both Honda and Toyota. They actually produce their vehicles for the Chinese market. And in fact, this car is based on the same platform as the Toyota BZ 3X, which is a car we don't get over here, but is available in China. Um, they say that that means that their manufacturing standards have that Honda and Toyota quality kind of built into them from the ground up. Uh, the proof of the pudding will be in that really, won't it, folks?

[00:00:39]We'll have to see how well these things are doing in a little bit of time. But what's most impressive about this car is not its £36,450 start price. Um, but it's the fact that it comes with an eight-year warranty, eight years of servicing, eight years of MOTS, or actually probably five years of 8 years roadside assistance with the AA.

[00:01:03]That's our standard. That's not like an add-on pack or anything. You just get that 8 years servicing, 8 years warranty, 8 years, 8 years roadside assistance. It's not bad, is it? Not bad at all. That warranty is limited to 100,000 miles or 125,000 miles in the case of the battery. N 62 in this is 7.7 seconds.

[00:01:26]It's got about 197 brake horsepower.

[00:01:29]We've got 316 mi of range WLTP and it's capable of 180 kW DC charging into the main cabin. And this feels incredibly premium, especially at this price point.

[00:01:42]But it feels premium regardless of the price point really. Uh, one slightly new thing to me is around the edge of this phone charger area. I think it's just one charger on here, by the way. It's a cooled 50 watt charger. Is not piano black, but what I'm going to call piano cream, which is a new one on me. Um, it actually looks far far better than piano black. They've literally just changed the color of it. I don't think it's a massively different material, but you can't see the fingerprints and the dust on it. Um, we've got these nice little rings around these cup holders here.

[00:02:17]This, um, being the premium model, has got a fridge with some cold water in it. You've got to be loving that, haven't you? And then the steering wheel, just a two-spoke wheel. Very smart, very functional. You've got a couple of roller dials and then four physical buttons on here. Does the job perfectly well. And then you've got um some sort of chrome trims on things like your window controls and your speaker system. The little driver information display I'm not a massive fan of. Seen something very very similar to that in some other Chinese cars and it just it's all right. It's fine. It's got all the information you need. It's all there.

[00:02:56]Just feels like a little bit of an afterthought in terms of like how much thought's gone into the actual design of it compared to something like the central touchcreen which looks far better. You you've got sort of soft keys along the bottom here for things like your air con controls. Hardly any physical buttons in here at all. We've got one for the hazard lights, uh one for the SOS button, and one for interior lights. I think um that's about it. As someone that's driven a lot of these new Chinese cars, the uh driver infotainment display doesn't feel massively dissimilar from things that I've used in BYDs and Moda, JQU, etc. That's to say, all fully functional. No particular issues with that. I'm not doing a deep dive into this system today because I've got very limited amount of time with the car and I'd rather get it on the road and see how it performs than spend a lot of time on this. But I dare say it's completely adequate. Um the screen could be slightly higher res for me and perhaps a bit bolder in terms of its colors. Slightly nicer contrast would be good. Um if there's one area where it feels like they could have perhaps invested a tiny bit more money, it would be on the quality of that screen. But you know, I'm nitpicking. I really am because um the and that probably only stands out because the rest of the cabin quality is so good. It really is very very nice. Um you've got wireless Apple CarPlay and wireless Android Auto. By the way, just beneath this top section of the center console, there's a big storage area underneath and then you've got a 12vt socket and a couple of USBs.

[00:04:28]material quality is just very good throughout and in a lot of the areas where a lot of manufacturers wouldn't bother things like that. It feels very plush. Even the door handles feel plush.

[00:04:40]And look, my seat goes back when I open the door to make it easier to get in and out. They're features you usually get in, you know, top sort of German marks.

[00:04:49]You wouldn't expect it in a Chinese car costing 36 12 grand. Um, it's only really when you get down to the door bins, there's no felt lining or anything and they just feel like Bogo standard door bins, but everything else feels really high-end. So, in the back of this car, this one has got the premium pack.

[00:05:06]That's a 1450 extra means you get real leather seats, heated ventilated seats.

[00:05:12]You get hot and cold box down here, which can go to minus15° or plus 30°. So, you can keep food either hot or cold. That's a really nice feature in a car of this price point.

[00:05:24]And look at this. You also get this as part of the premium pack, which is a full very, very sturdy with all metal mechanism tray. And that's designed to take a laptop, so you can do a bit of work back here. Uh, this front seat is quite far back and reclined, and I've still got that much knee room. I'm not the tallest bloke. I'm about 5'9 and a half. Um, but it's not dreadful. Uh if we're in my normal driving position over here, you'll see we've then got about that much room. Uh let me get out of your face slightly. You've also got a big squashy central armrest with a couple of cup holders and a phone holder there.

[00:06:06]USBA down here. It's unusual to see USBA. Now, there's also a little thing there and some storage on the back of that seat. Seats are very comfortable by the way. Totally flat floor as well, so you could get five adults in here. Um, it's really nice. Like even up here, it's all soft and squishy and luxurious.

[00:06:25]The vents are in the door pillars here as you're getting Kia, which is quite nice. It means that the the air comes out at sort of this level rather than blasting at you from down here. And obviously, if you do have a midseat passenger and your vents are down there, they tend to get very cold or hot shins, but no one else feels the benefit. So having the vents in the pillar there, I think's a good shout. If you want to recline these seats, by the way, you can and you can go a long way. You can basically turn this into a bed. And the HVAC system's got a little setup as well in case you actually want to try and have a sleep in here. Not bad. Not bad at all. So here's that 473 L boot. Um it's a decent enough shape and size. You can move the floor height and there is some under floor storage there to keep your cables in. Alas, there's no frunk because it does mean to get to those charging cables if you need to. If you've got a load of luggage in here, that all needs to come out first. One of the things that is quite interesting though is they actually do have a spare wheel available as an optional extra. It is an optional extra. It's not included in the price, but you can get one if you want one. So, first thing to say is this car is only available in front-wheel drive, and there's only one battery pack available. That frontwheel drive system to me needs a tiny bit of a tweak because it's very easy to do an outrageous wheel spin in this car and if you plant it, you will find the car struggling a bit to put the power down.

[00:07:50]Um, having said that, the accelerator pedal feel is really nice and as long as you're not too heavy with it, you can get nice sort of controlled power delivery. Uh the brake pedal is very eager and you might find it a bit grabby certainly at first. You just need sort of 10 minutes to bed in with that I think. But the suspension feels like a real triumph. I mean bear in mind we're on the UK roads here and you know I mean I'm going over a bit of road now that looks like it's a war sight really. It's It's absolutely hideous hideous bit of road and this is doing a great job of soaking it up, but it's not then like massively boaty in the corners. I feel like they've tuned the suspension really well for our roads. And in general, there's quite a lot to like about the way the car drives. It just needs a couple of little tweaks and it would be there. Like, it would be really, really good. The car will bing and bong at you.

[00:08:48]It's got all the driver assistance systems in it. Um, just like any new car does, you do have to go in and turn them off every time. Uh, there may be a shortcut for that. I haven't discovered it as yet. Um, that doesn't mean it's not there. It just means I haven't potentially found it. The way they've implemented those bings and bongs, though, you you've probably heard it going off in this video. It's there. I'm aware it's there, but it's not a massive distraction. It's not um taking my attention away. It's not making me so frustrated that I absolutely have to dive into this menu and turn them off.

[00:09:25]And that for me is the sweet spot with these driver assistance systems. If you can leave them on, obviously they're there to improve safety and whatnot and hopefully to get you driving at the correct speed more often. Um, so that's not a bad thing. If they're so annoying you have to immediately turn them off because they're just a massive distraction and therefore perhaps causing more of a hindrance than they are improving safety, that's a bad thing. So, I think they've got the balance quite reasonably right on this in my short test drive with it anyway.

[00:09:57]But with a couple of tweaks here and there, this would be a very good car. like a really nice thing to drive and it's very luxurious, really well speced, particularly if you go to the premium pack. I mean 1,450 quid, you get loads with it and I suggest you dive onto their website and their configurator and have a look at the difference.

[00:10:22]It's really quite impressive. Um, by the way, you have to go up to premium to get this light interior. There are then two interior color options. You've got this cream color and then there's also kind of an orangey color which seems to be quite on vogue with some of the Chinese manufacturers now. Um, but both look very smart. If you get this base spec model, you get the black synthetic leather, but that feels really good quality synthetic leather. Um, I was having a chat with a renowned automotive journalist back at the event and um, we were both saying like we'd never know that it wasn't real leather.

[00:11:02]You you just wouldn't unless you're some sort of, I don't know, leather sniffer or something. Uh, it's very, very good quality. And for me, the exterior of the car is a little bit bland. It's a little bit generic. I'm not in love with it or anything, but I could live with it. I don't think it's hideous. Um, but the interior is gorgeous and the interior is great quality and if the general build is anything like the interior, I think it could be a bit of a winner. So, I mean that that great eight they call it the 8 years free service in the 8 years uh the 8year warranty uh the 8year roadside assistance with AA all that stuff. It's pretty impressive. Um, if you're worried about parts and stuff, they've got a contract with DHL for next day delivery of parts. Um, they've got a UK warehouse. There's also a big EU warehouse. Uh, hopefully they'll keep those warehouses well stocked. Um, but just the fact that they've done that shows that they've tried to get ahead of the part supply issue. Uh, how that bears out in the real world, we'll have to wait and see really. And the same is true for all these new brands really. is a like we'll have to wait and see how everything turns out, but at the moment it looks like quite a compelling car for an extremely compelling price. Now, in terms of servicing and after sales support, um they're going to have a telephone concier line uh for initial sales inquiries, but they're going to have 25 UK dealerships by the end of this year, and the eventual plan is to have a hundred uh in a couple of years time. Um, for servicing, you obviously you could go to one of those dealers, but they're actually going to call on the AA's network uh to do the servicing.

[00:12:47]So, you can get the car serviced on your drive or at your place of work, for example. What do you feel about that?

[00:12:52]Let me know your thoughts in the comments. And let me know your thoughts on this car. Is it one you would consider? Would you want to give it a bit of time to see um if there are any sort of teething troubles come out or anything? On the face of it, it's a fairly compelling package for the price tag. Of course, go and check out leasing.com if you want to check out the latest lease prices on one of these. I am expecting to see some deals on this um because they're forecasting good residuals, which often means good residuals plus a low entry point often means a good lease deal has got a place to live there somewhere. So, keep your eye on the leasing prices and of course using my link helps support the channel.

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