This is a solution to the above error that I want to document. I found other similar posts, but none described how this error can be associated with Cordova or Ionic.
I
you can change the value in platform/android/cordova/lib/builders/GradleBuilder.js
the value you changed, it will be replaced by the lastest gradle zip when you reinstall android platform, so you don't need to worry about change it
var distributionUrl = process.env['CORDOVA_ANDROID_GRADLE_DISTRIBUTION_URL'] || 'https\\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-2.14.1-all.zip';
or like the others ans
export CORDOVA_ANDROID_GRADLE_DISTRIBUTION_URL="https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-2.14.1-all.zip"