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GAC, one of China’s biggest car makers, will launch in the UK early next year with an electric hatchback and an SUV aimed squarely at Volkswagen's ID 3 and ID 4.

The firm's announcement confirms Autocar's exclusive report that it was planning an imminent launch here, with the firm viewing the UK as an especially bountiful growth market for EVs.

As previously reported, the joint-venture partner of Honda and Toyota – which sold just over two million cars last year – plans to undercut established brands on price to attract buyers.

The smaller of its first two models is the Aion UT hatchback, which is billed as “China’s version of the Mini”.

Designed to suit city commuters, it's slightly longer and wider than the ID 3 – a decision informed by Chinese buyers’ expectations of interior space.

It is priced from the equivalent of just £7500 in its homeland but is expected to cost significantly more in the UK, due to the cost of shipping the car across the globe, plus taxes.

But, according to GAC COO Thomas Schemera – previously a leading figure at Hyundai’s N performance division and at BMW before that – the Aion UT must come in at a competitive price to generate any traction in a difficult market.

“From a price positioning point of view, to be higher than other competitors which have a well-established brand, that would be very challenging,” he said.

“Let me put it this way: we have to be smart and clever here to put our morals on the streets and also to simultaneously build the brand, not just with the product presence but supported by campaigns.

"As long as our brand value is on such a low level, we have to do everything to increase it. 

“With this mechanism, you can also increase the price step by step for your products. But first of all, you have to build confidence.”

To that end, the Aion UT is expected to land in the UK in the mid to high £20,000s. This would significantly undercut the ID 3 (£30,795), aligning it more closely with the MG 4 EV and upper-spec versions of the Renault 5.

UK specifications have yet to be confirmed, but in China, it employs a front-mounted 134bhp electric motor and a 60kWh lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery, yielding a range of 267 miles. 

Inside, the dashboard is dominated by a 14.6in infotainment touchscreen, which is used to operate key functions such as the climate control.

There is also an 8.8in digital instrument panel that shows critical information such as the car’s speed and range.

In keeping with a Chinese trend, the front seats can be folded flat to form a bed-like arrangement with the rear seats.

The hard plastics throughout the interior are moulded to lift perceived quality. For example, the window sills give the impression of stitched leather, while the backing of the door cards has a geometric finish, as if to mimic carbonfibre.

Arriving alongside the Aion UT is the Aion V, a Tesla Model Y and Skoda Enyaq-rivalling electric SUV revealed at last year’s Paris motor show. 

It gets a 224bhp motor and a 90kWh LFP battery, giving a range of 324 miles.

In addition to EVs, GAC intends to launch a range of hybrids, plug-in hybrids and “in some cases” pure-ICE cars.

The cars will be sold in the UK through a new joint-venture between GAC and Jameel Motors.

Jameel also retails Farizon electric vans through a separate tie-up with Geely.

Q&A: Thomas Schemera, chief operating officer, GAC Motor

What sets GAC apart from its rivals?

“First and foremost, our premium quality. This is nothing outstanding, because every customer expects premium quality, but we have run joint ventures with Toyota and Honda and we learned the ropes from the beginning. If you take a walk through our facilities – especially for Aion [models] – and have a look at our production, we really know how lean production works. Quality is not just a word: we take it very seriously from a customer perspective.”

What are your expectations for GAC's European launch?

“If you enter a marketplace and your brand awareness is low, you have to build brand awareness. The second step is to interact with customers – walking through this valley of tears, so to speak. You have to invest and you have to be absolutely aware that you cannot make money from the very beginning: this is impossible.”

Why headquarter your design operations in Milan specifically?

“I’m a big fan of globalisation. It’s very, very important from a Chinese perspective to understand globalisation, to want to know what our consumer benefits from across the world, and we have a lot of diversity. Not everything that works in China can be shifted across to another market, and that has to be very clearly understood - and vice versa.”

GAC Hyperluxury concept harks back to Bugatti Type 57SC

As well as fleshing out plans for global expansion, GAC has shared its vision of a personal luxury car inspired by the legendary Bugatti Type 57SC, Concorde and Chanel handbags.

The Chanel inspiration manifests in the Hyperluxury concept's livery: a black exterior largely free of branding (limited to the shrouds on the wing-mounted pop-up headlights) is contrasted against a bright orange interior, with a huge GAC logo embossed into the dashboard.

The seats are inspired by the minimalist look of the famed Le Corbusier LC4 lounge chair, first produced in 1928, and contain zero heating or cooling elements. The driver is instead supposed to wear a large jacket containing these functions – a reference to the bold outfits worn by motorists in open-top cars throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Instead of a traditional key, the car is opened and started using a gold ring that the driver can wear as a piece of jewellery.

GAC executives added that the concept was designed without the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. 

Stephane Janin, design director for GAC's Milan studio, said: “We thought it should be human-made, because we compare it with luxury goods, and we thought that's a value we should work on for this very specific project. It was interesting for us to ask ourselves: 'what does hyperluxury mean nowadays?'”

GAC has no plans to produce the car, however.

The Chevrolet Corvette will continue to be powered by a V8 engine in the long term because parent company General Motors will not rush out an electric variant “just to meet that regulation”, its engineering boss told Autocar.

The nameplate returned to Europe with the right-hand-drive V8-powered Stingray in 2021 as a halo model for GM’s comeback to the continent after an absence of four years. The line-up now also includes the track-honed Z06 and the newly released hybrid V8 E-Ray, with the larger GM range to be bolstered by the Cadillac Optiq and Lyriq electric SUVs within the next year.

But speaking to Autocar at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, General Motors chief performance car engineer Tony Roma said that while electric cars are the future, plans for a Corvette EV have yet to be officially drawn up. "We talk about what it would take to make a capable enough car, but right now it's still science fiction," he said.

That’s despite GM recently revealing a fully finished, future-looking Corvette EV concept (pictured below), which was produced entirely by the firm's Leamington Spa design studio.

Instead, the sports car will continue to be powered by a V8, either in naturally aspirated form (as long as the regulations allow it) or with a hybrid element, as with the E-Ray.

However, while rivals such as Ferrari and Lamborghini have added plug-in hybrid power to their respective ranges in the SF90, Urus and Revuelto, a PHEV Corvette is not planned, according to Roma. 

He said: “I don't think plug-in is worth it – the mass, the cost, the complexity. 

“So, with E-Ray, we kind of went the other way. If you look at some of the criticism, and I won't poke anybody in particular, but some of our competitors have been criticised for the games you have to play to get the car in the right mode, and which charging mode and this and that and the other. 

“But when you drive an E-Ray, you just fire it up and drive it. It's just a hybrid. It charges the battery for you. It does everything. If you want to override and make it charge the battery faster, there's a button for that. But other than that, that's pretty much it, and keep it simple, keep it usable.”

He added that if manufacturers were given “some kind of credit from the regulators” in order to hit a certain electric-only range, “then I would consider [PHEV] for this version of the car”.

Looking forward, Roma said that when it does eventually come, the electric Corvette will need to be “engaging” instead of just fast because 0-62mph times are becoming a “meaningless metric” as “every car is incredibly fast.”  

Instead, the brand will need to look at how to be different because buyers will soon drive “a brutally fast [electric] sedan” every day and so will “want something different”.

Roma said: “And so that's our challenge – to come up with that something different, that something engaging. 

“When you're buying a car like a Corvette, why are you buying it? You're buying it because you want something special. You want to be engaged in the art of driving. 

“And so when we can figure out how to do that, and as we put more electrification in the car, we will, but we're not going to do an electric version of this car just to do it. That would defeat the entire purpose.

“Everybody should just take a deep breath and relax, and we'll get there when it's time.”

Roma also said GM won't accelerate development of an EV Corvette just so the car can stay on sale in Europe after 2035. “We will not make a car just to meet that regulation,” he said.

From 2035, all new cars sold in the European Union and the UK must emit zero emissions when driven, meaning that only electric cars will be allowed on sale. As such, to continue being sold here, Corvette must bring to market an EV.

“I'm not gonna make an EV and put a Corvette badge” if it is not worthy of the brand’s “70-plus years of history”, said Roma “Nobody wants that. Sorry, I will stand firm on that. The badge means something to people.”

A key reason for not rushing out an electric Corvette, Roma told Autocar, was that the Corvette is a global car, so when an electric Corvette is finally released, it needs to appeal to all markets.

Asked what needs to happen to get to that point, he said: “The things that we would need to be true – the power-to-weight ratio of the electrification components, the cost, the range. All of the things that you would need to make a car that we think would be worthy. I'm not sure you could do it, or if you could, it would be just brutally expensive.

He added: “Our cars will be all-electric when an all-electric car is better than what we have right now. And until then, we'll continue to do what we're doing right now. 

“What we need to figure out to get to that point is how do you get that visceral connection, that personality that you want to engage with, in an electric car. 

“Frankly, and I've driven a lot of really good electric cars, most of them don't have that emotional connection and the computer does so much of the work. But when I want to go on a Saturday morning and go for a drive, I want to fire up [an engine] and listen to all those noises.”

Tesla will launch a long-wheelbase version of the Model Y in China, a new filing with the nation’s Ministry of Industry and Information has revealed.

Compared with the regular Model Y, it has been stretched by 186mm – 150mm of which is between the front and rear axles. It is also slightly taller, at 1668mm compared with the regular model’s 1624mm.

Inside, there are three rows of two seats, giving a total capacity of six.

It gets a dual-motor powertrain with a combined output of 456bhp, suggesting it could keep pace with the previous Model Y Performance.

The news comes as the recently introduced, updated Model Y struggles to find traction in China. Its sales are currently down by almost 18% compared with at the same point last year and look unlikely to rebound quickly. 

Tesla will be gambling that the addition of an extended-wheelbase version – to better accommodate the Chinese market's expectation for interior space – will help to steady the ship.

The Model Y L will be unveiled officially this autumn. Tesla has yet to reveal whether it will be offered outside China, but such models rarely make it out of that market.