GAC Aion V Review: Meet the Midsize SUV With an Actual Fridge

A midsize SUV under $45,000 with a proper fridge, voice-controlled massaging seats, and ride quality that shames cars twice the price. The GAC Aion V might be the most underrated EV on sale in Australia right now.

Back in 2022 an article did the rounds listing the five cars you could buy with an actual fridge built in: the Toyota LandCruiser Prado, the Range Rover Sport, the Rolls-Royce Ghost, and two others that were really just console coolers with an air-con vent blowing into them. In 2026 you can add the GAC Aion V to that list, and its $44,590 price tag makes every other car on it look faintly ridiculous.

I’ve spent a week in the Aion V, GAC’s midsize electric SUV, and I think it’s one of the most underrated cars on sale in Australia today. I’ve barely seen another one on the road and given how much tech and feature content it packs in under $50,000, that needs to change.

Pricing, size and what’s covered

The Aion V launched in Australia in late 2025 in two variants. Premium opens the range at $42,590, with Luxury, the variant I tested, priced $2,000 higher at $44,590. Both figures exclude on-road costs.

At 4.61m long, 1.85m wide and 1.69m tall on a 2.78m wheelbase, it’s almost identical in size to the Geely EX5, though the EX5 is about 5cm wider. It rides on handsome 19-inch alloys wrapped in 225/45 R19 Maxis tyres, with McPherson struts up front and a torsion beam rear axle giving 166mm of ground clearance.

Tare mass is 1,880kg and Gross Vehicle Mass is 2,280kg, so payload comes in at 400kg. There’s no towing rating. Backing all of it is an 8-year, unlimited-kilometre vehicle warranty, 8 years and 200,000km on the battery, and 5 years of roadside assist.

Powertrain and range

Both variants share the same drivetrain: a single 150kW/210Nm motor on the front axle, running GAC’s Architecture Electric Platform 3.0, the same underpinnings used for the Toyota bZ3X under GAC’s long-running joint venture with Toyota. The battery is a 75.3kWh LFP pack using GAC’s Magazine Battery construction, claimed good for 510km on the WLTP cycle at 16.7kWh per 100km.

GAC doesn’t sell this as a quick car, and it isn’t one. 0-100km/h takes 7.9 seconds, well shy of segment benchmarks like the Tesla Model Y, but outright speed was never really the brief here. Charging tops out at 180kW DC and 11kW three-phase AC, with GAC claiming 10 to 80 per cent in 24 minutes.

DC Charging tested

I wanted to see if that charging claim stacked up, so I took the Aion V to a public AmpCharge DC fast charger rated to 140kW. I arrived with about 30% state of charge and 171km showing on the range readout.

The session ran into a wall almost immediately, though not the car’s. The charger’s placard capped output at 200 amps, which at the roughly 387 volts the Aion V was drawing worked out to around 78kW, nowhere near the claimed 140kW ceiling. That’s a function of the Aion V’s 400-volt architecture meeting a current-limited charger, not a shortcoming in the car.

Even so, 24 minutes after starting at 33%, the car had reached 73%. That’s close enough to GAC’s 30%-80% claim to call it verified and it would comfortably hit the full claim on a charger capable of feeding more current.

Life inside the cabin

Open the door, which needs a Tesla-style press rather than a simple pull, and the Luxury cabin feels genuinely premium. Cream leather seats, dark metallic trim accents, and an ambient light panel across the dash that looks especially good after dark make this feel like a much pricier car inside.

The Luxury grade is where the standout features live. Its leather seats are heated, ventilated and massaging, the last of which can be switched on by voice command, a first in any car I’ve tested. Behind the driver, only the front-passenger-side rear seat gets a fold-out tray table, and the console lid between the front seats hides that fridge: a 6.6-litre unit holding up to 12 mini cans, capable of running anywhere from -15°C to 50°C. It can be switched on or off from the second row too, and the controls can be locked from the main touchscreen so curious kids can’t fiddle with it.

Not everything is perfect. There’s no glovebox, just a pair of bag hooks, so front storage is tighter than most rivals in this segment. The cupholders need a firm shove to seat a can or coffee properly. The panoramic sunroof, standard on both variants, has no physical shade control either, only a touchscreen or voice command toggle.

The back seat redeems most of that. It’s a high, well-bolstered bench with excellent head and leg room, two ISOFIX points, three top-tether anchors, and a fold-down armrest with cupholders and a phone slot. Boot space is a generous 427 litres, with an adjustable floating floor and underfloor storage for the charging cable and tyre repair kit.

On the road

This is where the Aion V really earns its keep. The suspension tune, the same combination of struts and torsion beam it’s smaller Aion UT sibling, handles road imperfections about as well as anything I’ve driven at this price.. Steering is sharper too, and I’d put some of that down to the Maxxis tyres fitted here, a step up from the lesser-known brand on the UT. None of that polish is an accident,GAC has been a joint-venture partner building Toyota-badged cars for the Chinese market for decades, and that chassis experience definitely shows on the Aion V.

Acceleration feels eager off the line despite that unremarkable 7.9-second sprint time, with no perceptible lag once you plant your foot. It’s a similar character to the smaller UT, which suggests GAC is tuning every model in its range to hit the same acceleration feel regardless of size or weight. The one caveat is wet-weather traction: driven in Sport mode during a run of rainy days, the front tyres spin easily from a standing start, a predictable trait of a front-drive EV with instant torque on tap.

The other genuine surprise came from an over-the-air update that landed the night before I tested the lane-centring assist. On the Aion UT, this system pulled the car from side to side in its lane. Post-update, on the Aion V, it tracked cleanly and confidently at 100km/h with no input from me at all, a good reminder that ADAS complaints on cars with OTA capability are rarely permanent.

Where it sits in the segment

The Aion V’s closest rivals are the BYD Atto 3 (from $39,990 before on-roads), the MG S5 EV (from $40,490 drive-away) and the Geely EX5, which trails it on range at 430km WLTP against the Aion V’s 510km. GAC has said it won’t chase the bottom of the market on price, banking instead on range and equipment to do the talking, and on the evidence of this car, that’s a reasonable bet.

GAC is still a new name in Australia and no amount of feature content changes the fact that long-term ownership costs and resale value here are unknowns for a brand barely a year into the market.

That said, if you’re shopping this segment, the Aion V deserves a spot on your test-drive list. It’s a phenomenal package: comfortable, quick-feeling where it counts, loaded with genuinely useful tech, and yes, it has a fridge. GAC says its local range will grow to 10 models by 2027, and if the Aion V is anything to go by, that expansion is worth watching closely.