Shanghai (Gasgoo)-GAC Honda will discontinue the production and sales of the existing vehicle models under its high-end car brand, GAC Acura, in the beginning of 2023, the Sion-Japanese joint venture announced on April 8.

CDX; photo credit: GAC Acura

The move is part of the efforts to further promote the implementation of GAC Honda's electrification strategy. The automaker said it will fully integrate the brand resources of GAC Acura to advance its electrification business.

Despite the termination of production and sales, GAC Honda will continue serve car owners of GAC Acura through the franchised shops that have already been included in the joint venture's sales and service network for electric vehicles (EVs) and other channels.

In the future, GAC Honda will speed up the building of an all-new channel model with EV sales & service shops and mall-based shops as themes. The joint venture launched on March 29 the new all-electric vehicle brand “e:NP” (named “Ji Pai” in Chinese) with the brand strategy released at the same time, making it the first joint venture in China to have a standalone BEV brand. Since 2022 onwards, the automaker will roll out one e:NP-branded model per year.

GAC Acura currently has two production models for sale, the CDX and the RDX. Besides, the TLX-L has already bowed out of production.