AITO will start selling cars in Europe in the fall of 2027. The Chinese luxury SUV brand, built by Seres with Huawei’s technology, confirmed the timing at the Paris Motor Show today, where it showed the AITO 9, 8, 7, and 6.
AITO sold 426,000 vehicles in 2025, more than any other Chinese luxury brand. Now it has a date for Europe. But you won’t find the word “Huawei” anywhere in its Paris press kit.
A year out, with a lot of paperwork left
AITO is giving itself 12 months, and it needs them. The brand says it’s still “actively pursuing” EU Whole Vehicle Type Approval, the certification any car needs to be sold in the bloc, and it’s targeting a five-star Euro NCAP rating under the 2026 protocol across its whole lineup.
Its briefing material also includes a pledge to comply with GDPR. That’s not something automakers usually feel the need to spell out, unless they expect European buyers to ask where their data goes.
The rest of the plan is localization: tuning the powertrains and chassis for European roads, multilingual voice controls in the cabin, adapting driver assistance and parking features “with partners,” and building a service network with local parts and customer support teams.
What’s missing is everything a buyer would care about. No prices. No launch markets. No dealer or distribution partners. No European specs.
And this isn’t the first time AITO has teased Europe. Seres showed the AITO 9, 8, and 5 at IAA Munich in September 2025 without giving any timeline. Seres has also been selling its own Seres 5 crossover in a couple of European markets, like Norway and Greece, for years.
“For AITO, New Luxury is where traditional luxury meets technological luxury,” said Clifford Kang, board member and vice president of Seres Group, during the press conference.
Big, fast, three-row SUVs
All four models are SUVs, and all of them are offered in China as both battery-electric and range-extended EVs (REEV), where a gas engine acts as a generator.
The flagship AITO 9 (sold as the M9 in China) is 5,285 mm long on a 3,125 mm wheelbase, putting it in BMW X7 and Mercedes GLS territory. AITO lists up to 497 kW (666 hp) and 0-100 km/h in 4.6 seconds, along with an 800V fully active suspension, rear-wheel steering, and a CATL battery. The five-seater is the EV version, while the six-seater uses the range extender.
At the other end, the AITO 6 is a 4,960 mm two-row SUV aimed at younger buyers. The EV version makes 340 kW and the REEV 345 kW, with 0-100 km/h in 5.2 seconds.
The company also names Bosch, CATL, Valeo, and Pirelli as suppliers, which is clearly meant to reassure European buyers.
The Huawei-shaped hole
In China, AITO has been Huawei’s car brand in all but name. It was the first brand in Huawei’s Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA). Huawei handled product definition, design, and sales through its own stores, and it supplied the driver-assistance system and HarmonyOS cockpit that sold the cars. Seres built them.
That arrangement wasn’t cheap. Seres reportedly paid Huawei roughly 10% per vehicle in licensing and channel fees, and its purchases from Huawei and its affiliates hit 56.05 billion yuan ($8.3 billion) in 2025.
It also just changed. On September 15, Seres took over AITO’s product definition, design, marketing, retail, and service, with Huawei moving to a support role. Two weeks later, the two companies signed a new five-year cooperation agreement.
So the Paris pitch credits the “SERES MF Platform” and unnamed “partners” instead. That makes sense for Europe, where several governments have restricted Huawei equipment in their 5G networks. AITO clearly wants buyers in Munich and Lyon to see a Seres brand, not a Huawei one.
Strong at home, but slowing
The track record in China is real. According to Seres’ annual results, AITO sold 426,000 vehicles in 2025, led by the AITO 8 (over 150,000), with the AITO 9 and AITO 7 above 110,000 each. The brand hit one million cumulative deliveries in 46 months.
But 2026 has been rougher. HIMA, where AITO is the biggest contributor, delivered 37,490 vehicles in September, down 29% year-over-year and its fourth straight monthly decline. Seres posted a 1.72 billion yuan net loss in the first half of 2026, compared with a 2.94 billion yuan profit a year earlier, as revenue fell 7.9%.
Then there’s trade policy. Chinese-built battery-electric cars face EU anti-subsidy tariffs of up to 35.3%, on top of the standard 10% import duty. Chinese automakers have leaned on plug-in hybrids to get around them, and AITO’s range-extended lineup would have fit right into that strategy.
That door is closing. On October 9, the EU and China agreed to halve Chinese hybrid and plug-in hybrid exports to the EU. Neither side has released the terms, so it’s not yet clear how range extenders will be treated.
AITO will also be late to the party. By fall 2027, it will be fighting BYD, which has already overtaken Tesla as the best-selling EV brand in key overseas markets, and Xpeng, which has been in talks to buy a Volkswagen plant in Europe, on top of the German luxury brands on their home turf.
Electrek’s Take
The AITO 9 is a genuinely impressive SUV, and Chinese buyers have spent real luxury money on it. On paper, the cabin tech and the performance match or beat what the German brands offer for the money.
The problem is that AITO’s success in China was built on Huawei. Huawei’s stores, Huawei’s software, Huawei’s brand recognition. Strip that out, and in Europe you have a big, fast, well-equipped SUV from a company almost nobody there has heard of, priced against BMW, Mercedes, and Volvo.
Chinese luxury brands have had a hard time in Europe so far. Nio has been at it for years with tiny volumes. Building a premium dealer and service network from scratch is slow and expensive, and AITO is doing it while its home sales are falling and Seres is losing money.
And the tariff picture keeps getting worse. The BEVs get hit with anti-subsidy duties, and the range-extender workaround is now being capped by an EU-China deal whose details we still don’t know.
A year out with no prices, no markets, and no partners, “autumn 2027” is a statement of intent, not a launch. We’ll take it seriously when there’s a price list and delivery dates.
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