The latest cars revealed by BYD and its luxury sports division, Yangwang, may be ludicrously impractical and unaffordable but they do reveal the extent of the Chinese company's ambitions when it comes to taking on some of the most prestigious car brands in the world.
Think Ferrari, Porsche and Range Rover and their top end offerings and you have an idea of what the Wangyang subsidiary is aiming to compete with.
The Wangyang U8, for example, is a monster vehicle by any standards, so much so that at a weight of 3.5 tonnes, you’ll need a heavy goods vehicle license to even drive one legally in this country.
It’s described as a four wheel drive all-terrain vehicle and it looks like something from a Mad Max movie set or a tank training ground for the US military.
The interior, however, is as plush and high-tech as they come.
This thing even floats for up to half an hour on water, thanks to an emergency flotation function.
It has a power output of 1200 horse power, about seven times the output of a standard family car. Four electric motors deliver 295 horse power to each wheel, yet the other part of the hybrid equation is a modest four-cylinder 2.0 litre petrol engine, which sounds quite a contradiction.
It can accelerate from 0 to 100 KPH in 3.6 seconds and has a top speed of just under 200 kph. The claimed battery range is "up to 1,000 kilometres".
These kinds of figures are meaningless for most people, but in a global market someone out there will want to buy one. Just not anyone I know. The U9 will be on sale in the United States, for example, for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Wangyang U9 is described as a'high-performance pure-electric supercar’.
For a first effort, it’s very impressive in super car terms, with touches like gull-wing doors that swoop upwards. The images here speak for themselves.
It has an 80kWh battery, delivering 960kW power to all four wheels - equal to a total of 1,300hp. The top speed is over 300 kilometres per hour and the 0 to 100 kmh time is about 2.36 seconds. Some 300 of these cars have been sold in China for about $250,000 each.
These two Wangyang vehicles were shown at a static presentation in Dublin this week, but I’m not sure we’ll ever see either in this country again.
It’s as image builders that they serve their purpose at this stage. What is most relevant about them is what they foreshadow in terms of what is to come from BYD and other Chinese companies - and how they aim to unnerve some of the biggest car names in the world.
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