GAC Aion Becomes Thailand’s Fastest-Growing EV Brand With 47% H1 Jump and Locally-Built RAYON

Thailand’s EV market has its clearest acceleration story of 2026, and it isn’t BYD. GAC Aion — the Guangzhou-headquartered EV brand and the SAIC-Wuling era’s most disciplined Thai localization play — delivered 12,800 vehicles in Thailand through H1 2026, up 47% year-over-year from 8,720 H1 2025 units. According to Federation of Thai Industries (FTI) data and the brand’s local distributor announcement on June 17, 2026, Aion now sits as Thailand’s third-largest EV seller behind BYD (38,500 units, +12%) and MG (22,400, +8%), and ahead of Tesla, Neta and Geely Galaxy. Aion’s growth rate is more than triple the volume leaders’.

Why the Curve Is Steepening

The acceleration comes from two converging factors. First, the Aion Y Plus compact SUV has matured into Bangkok’s go-to family EV, with 7,940 H1 units (62% of brand volume), priced between 1.069M and 1.299M THB ($30,260-$36,770), 610 km CLTC range and a service network of 78 dealers and 14 dedicated centers. Crucially the model qualifies for Thailand’s BoI 2026 EV6 incentive package — knocking 100,000 THB off the post-purchase tax bill — because Aion’s 75% local content threshold has been met at the Rayong assembly plant. Second, the new locally-built Aion RAYON sedan, launched in March 2026 from 1.189M THB (~$33,650), has filled a previously empty slot in the Thai EV sedan market.

RAYON: The Sedan That Was Missing

The RAYON delivered 3,210 units in just four months of availability, putting it on a ~9,600 units/year run-rate — second only to the BYD Atto 3 sedan in the Thai EV-sedan segment. Built on Aion’s AEP3.0 platform, the RAYON pairs a 78 kWh CATL LFP pack with a 720 km CLTC range and is locally assembled at the Rayong plant with a stated 80%-local-content target by 2027. The Aion ES rounds out the brand mix at 1,650 units (13%). On the supply side, Aion’s Rayong plant — the first dedicated Chinese-EV-OEM facility in ASEAN with 50,000+ units/year of design capacity — completed its second-phase ramp in May 2026 and now runs at roughly 32,000 units/year, with a third line slated for 2027 to lift total capacity toward 65,000.

What It Tells the Region

Aion’s +47% YoY puts the brand in pole position to overtake MG for #2 in Thailand by end-2026 if the current momentum holds and the Aion S Plus facelift, V Plus 7-seat and Hyptec GT all launch on schedule in H2. For other Chinese OEMs eyeing ASEAN, the RAYON’s debut also confirms a structural finding: locally-assembled Chinese sedans built on dedicated EV platforms are now the fastest-growing segment in Thailand, comfortably outpacing imported PHEVs. For the full H1 model-by-model split, dealer-network expansion plan, BoI EV6 incentive math and pipeline calendar, see iEVChina’s GAC Aion Thailand H1 2026 sales review.

Source: FTI + GAC Aion local disclosures / iEVChina analysis