Seres relaunches Huawei's Aito M8 at 379,800 yuan after October deliveries fell 96% to 720 cars

A relaunch priced above the old car

Aito, the large-SUV brand jointly built by Huawei and Seres (HKEX: 9927), put the updated M8 on sale on November 13 at 379,800 to 469,800 yuan, about $56,560 for the entry variant, across 10 versions ¹. That floor sits 10,000 yuan below the pre-sale price set on September 30 and 20,000 yuan above the outgoing car, softened by launch benefits worth up to 35,000 yuan ¹. Every variant now carries an 800-volt platform and Huawei's Qiankun ADS 5 driver assistance as standard; Aito claims 1.5 billion yuan of research spending and 126 innovations went into the update ¹.

The ledger the new price has to beat

October, the first full month after the September 15 handover to Seres, delivered 720 M8s, down 95.88 percent year on year; January through October managed 37,570 ¹. The same nameplate found more than 150,000 buyers across 2025 ⁴. The alliance is sliding with it: HIMA, the Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance grouping Huawei's car brands, delivered 33,537 vehicles in October↗, down 50.84 percent, a fifth straight monthly fall that pushed its year-to-date total negative for the first time ³. Nikkei reports↗ members are already pushing for more independence ².

Huawei keeps the technology, Seres owns the risk

At the launch, Richard Yu, Huawei's executive director and chairman of its consumer business group, drew the division: Huawei keeps core technology, product definition and design, while Seres runs manufacturing, marketing, sales, service and updates ¹. The money has flowed one way for years.

Seres paid Huawei and its affiliates 56.05 billion yuan in 2025, roughly 10 percent of each car in licensing and channel fees, Electrek↗ reported, and overseas Aito models will switch to Bosch systems ⁴⁸. For investors, Seres, which raised $1.8 billion in a November 2025 Hong Kong listing↗ and fell on debut, is the closest listed proxy on the alliance ⁶.

A profit, a best seller and a market that keeps shrinking

The bull case is on the record too: the M9 has been China's best seller above 500,000 yuan for four straight months, and Seres, after a 1.72 billion yuan first-half loss, returned to a 1.42 billion yuan profit on 28.08 billion yuan of third-quarter revenue↗ ⁴⁵. China's retail car market has also fallen every month this year, September by 28 percent ⁸.

The first clean read lands in early December

November deliveries, published in early December, are the first clean measure of Seres selling what Huawei engineered, because October's 720 were all outgoing-model cars ¹. The order book is the first market price on a Huawei car without Huawei selling it. If 379,800 yuan plus 35,000 yuan of benefits cannot lift the M8, Seres owns the operations of a collapsing flagship, while Huawei's technology terms ride on a five-year agreement↗ whose financial details neither company has published ¹⁷.