Aion UT review

It’s an electric hatchback from Aion, the Chinese (where else?) brand that gained its first foothold here with its V SUV earlier in 2026. Aion’s big play for your attention is ease of ownership: eight years’ warranty for the car and battery, eight years of roadside assistance, eight years of servicing and eight years of MOTs. And cheap finance. Not sexy, but with everyone's purse strings under the kosh, compelling.

Allegedly the UT is named after its happiest hunting ground – Urban Traffic – but in scenes not seen since the last WRX STI, certain circles are already calling it the Urinary Tract. Harsh.

Do we condone this kind of behaviour? Absolutely not. Did that stop us buying a carton of cranberry juice to stick on the UT’s bonnet for our own amusement? You’ll have to scroll down to find out.

What a ****-take. Can you share the UT’s performance specs?

Urine luck. Sorry, you’re in luck. The Aion UT line-up is as simple as can be, with only the one powertrain available: a 60kWh LFP battery affords 268 miles of range WLTP, while a 201bhp motor provides front-wheel drive and a modest 0-62mph time of 7.3 seconds.

The UT’s soft-edged styling disguises how big it is – at 4,270mm long its closer in size to the Renault Megane E-Tech Electric than the daintier Renault 5, thus putting it in the same league as the Cupra Born, Peugeot E-308 and related Vauxhall Astra Electric, Volkswagen ID.3, MG4 and (slightly bigger) Kia EV4.

Aion’s effort is less expensive than all of those, cheaper even than the budget-conscious MG. The entry trim starts at £28,950 and even the UT Premium Pack – with a glass roof and wireless phone charging – is only £30,150. And yet the battery is either on par with or bigger than the entry models of all those rivals, so its range is competitive.

What might stop me buying one?

A few things. The charging speed is a bit undercooked: the UT will max out at 87kW on a DC supply, like those you’ll find at a service station. So a 10-80 per cent charge takes 32 minutes, and on a long trip you’ll be kicking your heels for more time than you would in, say, a Megane.

The central touchscreen is far, far too fiddly. All of the car’s essential functions are spread across several menus, and while you can shortcut some of them you need the rock steady hand of a brain surgeon to accurately jab in the right place while you’re moving. And you’ll need to do this without looking because the driver attention warning will have a meltdown if you glance away from the road.

Meanwhile the lane keep system is comically inept, either aiming at white lines that don’t exist or guiding you into the path of oncoming traffic. You can turn it off, and it has to be there by law, but plainly it’d be safer without.

Oh, and if you use too much throttle out of a junction you’ll spin the front wheels. Even in the dry. In light drizzle we suspect it’ll have all the poise of a Week 1 Dancing on Ice celebrity.

Hmm. What’s the UT good at?

It might just be the most comfortable Chinese car we’ve ever tested on UK roads. The context being that China likes its cars spongier than in Europe, so when they’re sold here they’re either too floppy or heavily retuned and compromised.

Not so here. The Aion UT runs MacPherson strut suspension up front and a simpler torsion beam at the rear, and at low speed the damping combines with the plushness of the seats for genuinely comfortable ride quality. A tab jiggly maybe, but the movement stays below your hips.

It’s not so good at higher speeds though. Head over to the Driving tab for more on that.

The UT is also very spacious for its size – the 440-litre boot (complete with split floor) embarrasses most of its mainstream rivals, and the back seats aren’t horrific for adults either.

The interior also deserves a mention: the leatherette is lovely and the bright cream finish shown above is so much more uplifting than the inside of an Astra. In the same way that La La Land had more feelgood vibes than The Blair Witch Project. Yeah.

The Aion UT has a fair bit going for it. It’s comfortable to pootle around in, the interior is plush and feels built to a good standard, and it’s spacious and airy inside. Combine that with eight years of never having to worry about its upkeep and you’ve got an ownership pitch that’s ridiculously low on hassle.

And even though its design is unmistakably China-centric, it doesn’t look out of place here like some imports from that part of the world. The relative anonymity of the brand and what it stands for might put some people off, but given the number of Jaecoo 7s finding homes here it’s clear that a big chunk of the population either doesn’t care or doesn’t currently have the means to spend that bit extra on something that might handle better.

Two big problems: the touchscreen is dangerously demanding, and when you’ve got several warning systems kicking off one after another you’ll soon start to wonder why you didn’t just buy a 10-year-old Nissan Leaf. Both of those are an issue of execution, and if Aion can get on top of that it’ll have VW, Renault and MG more than a little bit worried. Big if though.