JAC Motors

Sector

Automotive

Chinese name

江淮汽车

Programme

Day 5 · 15 Oct 2026 · Hefei

JAC Motors (江淮汽车) is a state-owned company from Hefei that has built vehicles for 62 years and today has two faces. It earns most of its money with light trucks, vans, pick-ups and buses. At the same time it builds the luxury brand Maextro with Huawei, whose S800 saloon costs more than 700,000 yuan. JAC is also the factory behind other brands: first NIO, then Volkswagen, and since the end of September 2026 it has been in talks with Stellantis, the owner of Maserati. JAC was on day 5 of the China Business Mission 2026, in Hefei.

Three fresh starts

JAC began in 1964 as a truck factory in Hefei, the city we profile in our article on Hefei. Around 1990 the company built only a few hundred vehicles a year. The new director Zuo Yan'an bet everything on one niche the big state-owned groups ignored: bus chassis. Light trucks, MPVs and, in 2007, passenger cars followed. When JAC listed in Shanghai in 2001, the listed entity was still literally called a chassis company. JAC still calls that knowledge of what sits under the car its core.

After 2012 its own passenger cars struggled to sell and JAC became a builder for others. From 2018 the cars of NIO rolled off JAC's line in Hefei, until NIO bought the plants for 3.16 billion yuan at the end of 2023. In 2020 Volkswagen bought half of JAC's parent holding, otherwise owned by Anhui province, giving it an indirect stake of about 14% in JAC (Wikipedia). In the joint plant Volkswagen Anhui, Volkswagen holds the majority.

Huawei the brain, JAC the body

Huawei does not build cars itself. It works with carmakers in the HIMA alliance and sells their cars in its own stores, next to smartphones. At Maextro (尊界) the division of labour is clear:

• Huawei supplies the electric motors, the ADS 4 driver-assistance system with lidar, the cockpit, the audio system, and its brand and sales network.
• JAC handles the chassis, engineering, production and supply chain, and carries most of the investment.
• CATL supplies the batteries.

According to Gasgoo, a joint team of more than 5,000 people works on the brand and more than 10 billion yuan has gone into the project. In April 2026 JAC and Huawei signed a new joint innovation agreement. The S800, a 5.48-metre luxury saloon, went on sale on 30 May 2025 at 708,000 to 1,018,000 yuan. From September 2025 to January 2026, according to Wikipedia, about as many were delivered in China as Porsche Panameras and Mercedes S-Classes combined. In August 2026 two luxury MPVs followed, the V800 and V680, aimed at the Toyota Alphard.

The other side of the luxury story

The success is fragile. Monthly sales of the S800 peaked in December 2025 at over 4,000 units, mostly from the order book, and fell to 367 in July 2026, reports Yicai. With the new MPVs the brand's sales rose again to about 2,600 in September. For 2026 the Chinese business site Huxiu expects just over 20,000 cars, while the project would only turn a profit from about 60,000 a year.

On 8 October 2026, a week before the delegation's visit, a test video by the Chinese car platform Dongchedi showed broken brake-pedal brackets on three V800s during emergency braking tests. Maextro called it an extreme test outside the standards, but promised to improve the part and upgrade delivered cars for free. The share price briefly hit its daily limit down that day (10jqka).

Commercial vehicles pay the bills

The figures are still in the red. JAC sold 384,071 vehicles in 2025, against 403,094 a year earlier. In the first half of 2026 revenue rose 14% to 22.1 billion yuan thanks to the expensive Maextros, but a net loss of 749 million yuan remained. The company has been loss-making every quarter since the end of 2024. More than half of revenue still comes from commercial vehicles, which JAC exports to dozens of countries in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

Europe: through other people's brands

Under its own name JAC is small in Europe. From 2016 Italy's DR Automobiles sold reworked JACs as DR, and in 2025 the Northern Irish bus builder Wrightbus launched a 7.5-tonne electric truck based on a JAC truck. Electric cars from China have also faced extra European duties since October 2024 (European Commission). The bigger road to Europe runs through other brands. Volkswagen Anhui, in which JAC holds a minority stake, builds the electric Cupra Tavascan in Hefei, a car also seen on Belgian roads.

On 30 September 2026 JAC confirmed to the Shanghai stock exchange that it is talking to Huawei and Stellantis about cooperation, but that there is no binding agreement (National Business Daily). According to Italian media the talks concern electric Maseratis with Huawei technology from the Maextro plant, finished in Italy. Stellantis has not confirmed this and will present its plans for Maserati in December (Il Sole 24 Ore).

Whoever builds the body chooses its partners

JAC's model is unusual to European eyes. A state-owned company puts its own brands in the back row and offers its plant, chassis and supply chain to whoever has the strongest brand and the best software. That makes it vulnerable: many Chinese buyers see the S800 as a Huawei car, and part of the margin and know-how sits with the partner. Yet JAC has already built for NIO, Volkswagen and Huawei, and is now talking about Maserati. For European carmakers and suppliers, the question shifts from who designs a car to who can build it quickly and well. How Chinese companies find their way to Europe like this is explored in Going Global: Chinese companies in Europe.