The Chinese company Aiways is setting foot on the European shore this year. In our continent, the brand is launching the U5, an SUV that in the future will be joined by an SUV with a strongly sloping roofline. This U6 Ion Concept looks ahead to that newcomer.
The Aiways U6 Ion is a car designed by none other than Ken Okuyama, a Japanese designer who, among other things, left his mark on the Ferrari Enzo. The U6 Ion Concept serves as an outlook on an SUV with a strongly sloping roof line, a so-called ‘Coupé SUV’.
Although the U6 Ion has a clearly different carriage than the already known U5, it does share its technical basis with that car. The company keeps technical specifications under control, since this is mainly a design study. The U6 Ion Concept, which will soon be simply ‘U6’ when it comes on the market, has a number of striking design elements. The roof is completely made of glass, but we find a strikingly high spoiler at the bottom of the rear window, which is accompanied by a smaller one placed on the tailgate.
The steering wheel in the U6 Ion is – after all, a concept car – more or less trimmed at the top. Behind the somewhat rectangular steering wheel, Aiways places a 7-inch digital display on which the relevant driving information is displayed. At the center of the dashboard is a 14.6-inch display that belongs to the infotainment system. The cheerful-looking sphere above it is not a webcam, but the robot that acts as a digital assistant. In the interior infused with orange details we come across striking things like draw loops to open the doors and between the seats of the rear passengers there is a storage space where you can store your drones and corresponding remote controls according to Aiways.
If the drive lines of the final U6 match those of the U5, the U6 will also be equipped with a 63 kWh and an 83 kWh battery pack. With the smallest battery the Chinese SUV comes 400 kilometers far (WLTP).