Aiva ME7: Seres and CATL unveil first car without Huawei in Paris

Aiva ME7 is the first production car of the new Chinese brand Aiva, created by manufacturer Seres (owner of the AITO brand) and battery giant CATL. The world premiere took place on the evening of September 28, 2026, at the Château de Champlâtreux near Paris during Paris Fashion Week. It is a mid-size coupe-crossover 4,850 mm long with a 2,900 mm wheelbase, which will be available both as an electric vehicle and as a hybrid with a gasoline generator. The main difference from AITO is that there is no Huawei tech at all: the multimedia system runs on ByteDance’s Doubao artificial intelligence, the autopilot is made by DeepRoute, and CATL supplies the batteries. Order intake is promised for early 2027, with sales planned in China and abroad.

Contents

• Who Aiva is and why the premiere was held in Paris
• What the Aiva ME7 looks like and its dimensions
• What is known about the battery, range, and the hybrid version
• Inside: artificial intelligence instead of Huawei
• When the Aiva ME7 will go on sale and how much it will cost
• What this means for the Ukrainian buyer

Who Aiva is and why the premiere was held in Paris

Aiva is a brand of Saidou Technology from Chongqing (before the renaming, Landian Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of Seres). In 2026, the company was recapitalized by about 6.67 billion yuan, and the ownership structure changed: the largest stake (34.5%) went to an entity of the Chongqing city government, Seres kept 32.96%, and CATL entered with a stake of about 9.89%. The brand was officially presented on June 9, 2026, together with the Aiva Origin concept; the name stands for Artificial Intelligence Voyage Ahead, and the slogan is “AI first, then the car.”

The reason for the brand’s appearance is simple: Seres earns mainly from AITO, a joint project with Huawei, and wants to have its own lineup that does not depend on Huawei. Therefore, Aiva deliberately has no HarmonyOS and no Qiankun autopilot systems: the voice assistant and multimedia are built by Volcano Engine (ByteDance’s cloud division, owner of TikTok) on the Doubao language model, the autopilot is by the DeepRoute startup, and CATL provides the batteries and the battery-swap station network. The car is assembled at the Seres “Phoenix” plant in Chongqing. A premiere near Paris, and during fashion week at that, is a direct signal that the brand is being built from the start as an export-oriented one aimed at a young audience, not only for the domestic Chinese market.

This is already the second time in a week that a Chinese manufacturer has entered the European stage: we wrote a few days ago about the Deepal S07 from Changan, which is expanding sales in Europe.

What the Aiva ME7 looks like and its dimensions

The ME7 retains almost everything shown by the Origin concept: a crossover body with a sloping coupe-style roof, a roof-mounted lidar, and a small anti-wing above the rear window. The main design element is the “Smart Light Eyes” headlights: pixel blocks that not only shine, but display dynamic animations and respond to a person’s gestures in front of the car. The front end is described by the manufacturer as “submarine-like,” with a bumper inspired by a shark fin; ten aerodynamic channels run along the body, and at the rear there is a wide spoiler shaped like a “double whale tail,” which stabilizes the car at high speed. Three colors were shown at the premiere—Sea Wolf Silver, Coral Purple, and Flamingo Red—with a coating that changes shade depending on the angle of the light. Options include aerodynamic wheels with transparent covers.

By its size, the ME7 lands in the hottest segment of the Chinese market—where the Tesla Model Y, Xiaomi YU7, and XPeng G6 compete. A 2,900 mm wheelbase with an overall length of 4,850 mm means short overhangs and a spacious second row, while the sloping roof, like on any coupe-crossover, takes away some trunk height.

What is known about the battery, range, and the hybrid version

A fair caveat is needed here: at the premiere, the company revealed the design and dimensions, but did not announce the power, battery capacity, or official range figures. Everything known about the hardware comes from Chinese industry publications that rely on data from the manufacturer. According to them, the electric version is built on an 800-volt platform with a CATL battery, charges from 30 to 80% in about 15 minutes, and travels about 700 km on the Chinese CLTC cycle. As a reminder, CLTC is noticeably more optimistic than the European WLTP, so real-world range will be lower. The hybrid version will get a 1.5 L turbocharged gasoline generator and an electric motor on the rear axle; Seres has been making exactly such powertrains for AITO for many years, so the technology is not new for the company.

A separate feature is battery swapping. In August 2026, Aiva confirmed talks with CATL about connecting to its network of battery-swap stations: by mid-year, CATL had about 2,000 such stations in 180 cities in China. For the new brand, this is a way not to build its own charging infrastructure, and for the buyer it is an option to “refuel” in a few minutes. The company has not said whether this will work outside China.

Inside: artificial intelligence instead of Huawei

No interior photos were shown at the premiere, so it is too early to talk about the cabin. The main thing is known about its “brains”: the multimedia system runs on the Doubao large language model developed by ByteDance. The system supports continuous dialogue without repeating a wake-up command, recognizes the driver’s emotional state, and remembers vehicle-usage habits, adjusting settings accordingly. The DeepRoute driver-assistance system works without detailed HD maps and is designed for city streets and highways; there is no data on its availability in Europe. For comparison, in the AITO crossovers that Seres makes with Huawei, the same tasks are handled by HarmonyOS and Qiankun ADS—we analyzed this in detail in the AITO M7 review.

When the Aiva ME7 will go on sale and how much it will cost

There is no official price. The company only outlined a floor: no model of the brand will cost less than 200,000 yuan (about $29,500), meaning the ME7 is targeting the mass segment above “budget,” but below AITO—the Chinese press even calls the car “an AITO for half the price.” Order intake was promised for early 2027; sales are planned both in China and abroad through a dealer network separate from AITO, managed by Seres’ international division. The company did not name specific European countries or dates, so the European premiere should be read as a statement of intent, not the start of sales. Ukraine has not been mentioned so far.

What this means for the Ukrainian buyer

For our market, the Aiva ME7 is, for now, news “for the future”: Chinese electric cars reach Ukraine mostly through parallel imports, and the first cars will not appear earlier than sales start in China. If that happens, the owner will face the same situation as owners of any fresh Chinese model: model-specific accessories will not exist for it for another year or two. For this case there are brand-agnostic solutions—universal floor mats that can be trimmed to fit the cabin floor, universal mud flaps, and a 900×1000 mm trunk mat that can be cut to the shape of the compartment. The full list of such items is in the universal accessories section. Once the model builds up a fleet in Ukraine, model-specific EVA mats, wind deflectors, and sill protection will appear too—this has already happened with Zeekr, XPeng, and BYD.

We deliver via Nova Poshta across all of Ukraine.