A big car, more than 5 meters 30 long, more than 2 meters wide
and more than 190 high. It's a big vehicle but it's
a vehicle full of big ideas. It is a sub-brand from BYD Auto
which is the more affordable partner. This is the high-end, everything we can, everything we are able
to do showcase platform. Today with me, Peter and with the Yangwang U8. I'm going to take you around the whole
car which is a long walk but it's worth it. I'm going to show
you the outside, the inside. And of course we're
going to do a bit of driving to tell you all
about this new brand. We're going to start here in the front of
course with this enormous daytime running LED signature strip. This is quite the feature
and it really sort of sets the tone for the
whole front of the car. You can see also this... This triangle element
here in the middle, this is supposed to represent the
universe with individual stars. And those stars also are
represented here in the LEDs. Of course, many functions are possible. For example, when you use the hydraulic
suspension to lower and raise the car, you will get arrows pointing in the
direction of where the car is going. It's really cool. There's a lot possible. Obviously, there's still a lot of development
possible with this as well, because since it's LEDs, you can really play with
this and really give it... even more features. Now... I'm not going to stand here and say
that this is the most beautiful car I've ever seen but it sure is impressive
and it's very distinctive as well. Now the radar in the
front is only the beginning because this car is
loaded with sensors. Here on the roof you can
see these three humps. Now the outside two are
empty but the middle one houses one of the
three LiDAR systems so that system reads the
road and there's a whole range of features inside
that make use of that. The outside too, you can put your own
things in here really. Anything from night vision to extra
lights to whatever you really fancy. So that is room for expansion. You see the sensor
overload almost continuing with a camera here and
a camera over here. That's of course when you go
off-roading so you have good visibility and also because it is such a huge
vehicle it is great for parking. You see in the middle
over there is a camera. Now that is also for parking but
it's also functioning as a dashcam. Earlier today we already
did a bit of driving. We did an acceleration
and a brake test, which is mighty impressive
with this drivetrain. 1200 horsepower remember, so this thing really moves and despite its
weight it also stops quite impressively. Thanks to that drivetrain, remember four motors on
one motor on each wheel, four in total, this car is also able
to do tank turns, which we also did earlier today, which is actually
quite fascinating. You can set the car to rotate
a certain amount of degrees. And the car just does it for you. Now I mentioned
this is a big car. I'm not a small person. I'm about 183 high and
about 90 kilos heavy and you can see how
high just the bonnet is. It's coming up here. If you move down the car you can
also really get a sense of scale. I'm 183 high like I said. This car is over 190 high. Again it's big and also things
like the mirrors you can see how big of a unit it is and in scale a
normal mirror unit is only this big. It's so much bigger and then when you
take the whole car into perspective, 5 meters 30 plus and not
including that rear wheel, it is a very big vehicle. But a very big vehicle has a
lot of room for cool features. For example, this might look like
a styling element, but it actually has LED strips built in. Now, that doesn't really serve any
function in terms of illumination, but for example, when you charge the car, this is the world's
largest battery indicator. It starts flowing up like it
does on your smartphone. This vehicle also
has vehicle to load, so when you plug
something else into the car, it actually changes color and
starts to cascade downwards. So the vehicle
might be enormous, but it does give designers room
to play with features like this. And that's actually kind of cool. Now here in the back, the design language continues. First of all, you have this giant optional
spare wheel with a camera. But here, especially in the lights, you can see the same
signature as on the front. Really cool. That they continue it this way and you can
again see this sort of blocky shape here. Two more cameras again
for the assistance systems. Use them to record your own videos
but obviously when you're doing any kind of off-roading that will also give
you the whole overview of the car. And again with parking
obviously this car being as large as it is you need
all the help you can get. You might have seen on the other
side there was also a port over there. Now this one is for charging. This is the Chinese spec car so... The plugs you will
probably not recognize, but on this side you do the
charging and on the other side you actually have a petrol
traditional fuel filler cap. Because this is a hybrid, but not in the sense
that you might expect, because this is
electric drive only. There's only electric motors
powering the wheels, four of them actually. This is the Yangwang's
proprietary E4 platform with one
motor on each corner, also used by BYD. And the generator motor in the front
only acts as an extra range extender. So there's a 75 liter petrol
tank and you can actually only use that petrol to burn to
create electricity for the drive. So this is always an
electric drive car. With an almost 50 kWh
battery in the middle, BYD's Blade battery technology, they have a claimed combined
range of about 1000 km. As long as you put
petrol in the tank, you're good to go. But you're always
driving purely electrical. This will only kick
in when necessary. You can dive into the settings
to set where you want your charge to be when you
want the engine to kick in. The only exception is
in Sport Plus mode, then it will always be on. Because Sport Plus with the
1200 horsepower full boost, full banana setup will
require so much energy that they always have the engine
on to recharge the battery. Wheels and tires, obviously a big vehicle
needs big tires. 22 inch rims on this one
you can get smaller as well. That is mainly if you
want to go off-roading. You can see that the rubber here is already
quite chunky so on the road this is fine. When you go off-roading
though you want a bit more compliance with a bit more
rubber so that you can go down some rim size and gain a
bit more in terms of rubber. Last we have this piano black wheel
arch with a few aero elements here and the E4 logo for the
drivetrain system fits with this car in terms of the design that
you have the green paint and you have the whole top part of the
car is in the same piano black. Now when you're off-roading
ground clearance is the name of the game and suspension travel
is the other name of the game. Here we have the
suspension pumped up in its highest setting and you
can see the extra... height that you can get
and the extra travel the wheel can have thanks to
this hydraulic suspension. Interestingly you can also
use it to self level the car so when you're parked
on an angle and the car is not straight you can use
the suspension to pump up each wheel individually
and level the car by itself. Now here in the front you can
again see the scale of this car. Earlier I said I'm 183 and the
suspension is in its highest setting now but you can see how massive
this door is just to begin with. In here the theme of Nappa
leather and wood continues. You can see with these sort
of swoosh lines this design element and again the same
metal that we saw in the rear. The bottom again here lined with that
Nappa leather and the emergency latch. Again, same thing as in the back, they kept it simple here. Simple buttons for the control
of the mirrors and the windows, locking the windows for the rear
and a button to open the door. Nice and simple, nice and clean. I like that they didn't
overdo it here with screens or any kind of trying
to reinvent the wheel. This is traditional, everybody knows how this
works and it works just fine. So no need to go crazy here. Seats, obviously luxury all throughout
here in this Nappa leather again. Perforated as you can see because
they're ventilated and heated. These bolsters here on the
side are interesting because depending on the setting that
you have in the driving mode, these bolsters will auto adjust
when you go through corners. So they will actually push in and
keep you in your seat so to speak. A little bit like a racing seat, but as soon as
then you level out, you go straight again, then the bolstering goes away and
you just sit as you normally would. So it's not constantly
pushing in your sides, just when you go
around the corner. Down here you have all the seat
controls like you would expect. Again they kept it
traditional here, everybody knows how this works, everybody knows where to
find this and what it does. So that's also quite nice
that it's kept simple. You can see it's a nice
large opening to get in, no extra handles here that might
be handy for some people, but again you have the extra
running board to get into the car to make life a bit
easier getting this high up. You can see we have a little
adjustment for the steering wheel here motorized so
that is very nice. The steering wheel is actually continuing
the theme of keeping things traditional and not too
complicated because we have... Real buttons, real wheels,
real things to press. So that was the
Chinese assistance. This is still a Chinese car, so you'll also see a few
Chinese symbols around here. But everything is where
you expect it to be. There's no capacitive buttons, there's no swiping, there's no weird
things going on. Everything is nice
and traditional, which I like, which is a good way to do it. That's not to say they haven't
skipped any kind of innovation. There's still some
controls for the lights, for example, are here in the screen. Some things for your
seat you can do here, your head-up display. That's all controlled here on the side
instead of a traditional knob or dial. So it's not that they've completely
skipped on innovation, they've kept things sensible
where necessary and put other things in the
screen that make sense, which is actually quite nice. Middle tunnel is... Massive! It's really large, the vehicle is broad so
there's space for it but it does intrude on the
driver space a little bit. So for example if you want
to put your knee here to the right you can't because you
know the tunnel is right there. So cockpit overview, it's a very simple layout. I like that it's clean, there's nothing... too busy going on to distract
you from the driving experience. The vents here on the top obviously
almost reminiscing of the bulbs here on the top of the roof with
the LiDAR that we saw earlier. It's dominated by this big curved
screen here in the middle. That's where you do everything
that is related to the car. So we can go in here and you
have your car and obviously you can pinpoint all the functions
that you want to change. Anything from the sunroof open/close to your seats to
whatever really you want. But luckily they haven't put
everything in the screen. You can see down here there is still
a whole row of physical buttons. This is for your drivetrain, this is for your auto parking. My Chinese is not very good so
I don't know what that means. Hazard lights and down
here you even have actual buttons for diff locks for
turning the car on and off, the suspension and your EDC. So it is... Very technologically advanced because you
can do pretty much anything in the screen but they haven't forgotten
about user comfort and usability while
driving especially. So the buttons are still there. You sit here, it's very commanding. In front of you you have another screen
with all your relevant driving information. It's not very bright though, especially with sunglasses
on that might be an issue. Down here you have two dials. One is for your driving mode, you can go to normal, sport, eco. All your driving as
you do it day to day. You can see that the car also changes
with some sounds and some colors, ambient lighting
changes and so on. If you want to go for the full Sport Plus
you have to do it through the menu. I'm not sure if that's a safety feature or
not but you can just select your driving modes and if you want the full banana
then you got to go into the central screen. The other dial here is
for your terrain modes. So if you want to go wading, mountain, muddy, sand or land or snow, you can also see the graphics
here they change and you can also play with your display here
in terms of what you want to do with the car and then again
especially in combination with the diff lock you can set it up
exactly the way you want. You can also do that here on
the middle screen actually, you can select your terrain, but it's very nice that it
is available here on the steering wheel as well in
terms of a physical dial. Last on the passenger side, it's hard to see for me from the driver's
side because they polaroided that out, but there is another screen
here for the passenger, usable for anything from navigation
to movies to browsing the internet. Now going down this
central tunnel you have two inductive charging
pads which is actually quite nicely located
here in the front so you can still see and grab
your phone if necessary. Two cup holders here
adjustable in size so that is also nice makes sense
to have them here. And a special mention for the
key here because often keys are cheap plastic
full of fingerprints. Not the case here. This is, I don't know what it's made of, glass or stone, but this is a heavy, it feels like a pebble and
it looks like a pebble, key fob. So obviously it's
wireless keyless go but this feels like a very nice
premium accessory. Really sort of captures the
whole experience of this car. Down here in the middle
we can open the split and you have a place to maybe
store a phone or something. But here in the middle part you can
see that we have an extra cubby hole. Very deep and you might
wonder well what is that for? It is actually a refrigerator. Going back up here to the screen
we can actually both cool or heat. This cubby. So if you put it on refrigeration
we can go from minus six, I kid you not, all the way to plus six so you can
keep your food frozen in there really. Or if you want to go for
heating you can go... please turn on yes... you can go from
35 to 50 degrees. So if you're getting any
kind of takeout it fits in here and it stays either
warm or cold so no more... tap it drinks in the summer or take
out that gets cold on the way home. Quite nice. Big button here lined with felt. Simple and easy and
effective but there's more. If I go into the menu I have a
special option for the storage box. Watch over here. And here we have an additional
locked storage area so you can put, I don't know, some kind of valuable in there and you
can actually set a pin code to open this. So if there's something
that you don't want to get stolen or want to
have hidden out of view, that's where you put it
and when you close this It is actually locked. Smart feature. Now interior design. This car is equipped with Nappa
leather and real wood in this case. There's no animal
friendly options available as far as we know at
the time of filming. The grills here for the speakers. They have a 22
speaker sound system. Also stand out nicely and what I
really like is that they kept it clean. There's just one button
here for the window and one button to open
the door and that's it. So no screens, nothing crazy going on. Down here in the storage you see
a manual override button for the door in case of an emergency or in
case of some kind of unforeseen power failure you can still open
the door this way and no filled in here also again full leather here
in the storage bin in the door. Not a big one but it is fully lined and
there's even a little bit of elastic here. Stepping inside the
vehicle made easy by this running board and the chunky
handle here in the side. You can see plenty of
space for an adult to sit. A lot of controls here
in the back as well, which is quite unique as you
would assume this is a front seat. But no, the luxury is definitely also here
available in the second row. All the seats are
heated and cooled. Easily enough space
even for six foot one, 183 person, no issues whatsoever. And the same goes for legroom. You can see how much
space there is here. This seat is in my
driving position, So... Easily enough leg room and because
it is a full flat architecture there's no hump here in the middle so you
know plenty of room for your feet and also here under the seat there is more
than enough space to park your feet which is obviously great on long
journeys. Sliding here to the middle this is I wouldn't say a full
seat but it is no problem for an adult to sit here. Again plenty of leg room... plenty of headroom as well even
with the panoramic window cover closed here. And the
same goes on here on the side. Now you have these two infotainment screens
where you can do anything from TikToks to Zoom calls and watching movies
and anything in between. So that's a great optional
extra maybe if you have kids. Speaking of kids, here in the ISOFIX area
you can see this little flap. It says ISOFIX on it and when we pull that out with velcro you can
see that it reveals the ISOFIX points. Which I think is a really nice and
elegant solution because often you see some kind of clip here that
is impossible to open or something that you remove altogether which
will then instantly get lost. So that is never a good
solution this is actually quite elegant because it looks
like it's one part of the seat it doesn't get in the
way and you're not losing anything. So that is a great
solution. Here in the middle... Like I said, you can sit here if you want, it even has a headrest, but you can also open this
up and put it in this position. Then you have some
cup holders up here, great for your drink. You have an additional screen
here to operate your seats, even massage function. Adjustments, it's all possible here. And then when you
open this last bit up, you have two USB charging options and
you have a wireless charging pad as well. Down here you have a small
screen for your climate control. Here you can adjust your
airspeed and your temperature. Obviously that's for these here, which also have a manual dial. Then down here you
have two more USB, a C and an A type for
your charging needs. This pops in here. And then lastly you have the
controls for the passenger seat. So you can imagine if this is a
chauffeur driven car or when you just want some more room in the
back and you want this seat to go... That way then you can
control that over here. You can even press one button for
it to lay down by itself completely. So you can see with this
passenger seat in its fully folded position it is almost like an
executive feel back here. And then especially when you use the
electric seat controls to fully recline, turn the seat heating on, then you're really set up
for a very nice journey. And especially when
you sit like this. You can see that you go for the
full business class experience. We got to have a look at
the boot because you would expect for such a large vehicle
to have an enormous boot. Now it opens very G-Class
style but as you can already tell by my backpack
it's not enormous in here. If we use the tape measure. You get about 95 centimeters
in depth and well you have to fit it between these so if we
measure that we're looking at 102 centimeters approximately. So it is a big opening certainly more than your
traditional hatchback. But you can also
see when I step in... That it is pretty full pretty quickly. Luckily you can also fold the seats down. You can do that from here and thanks to
the hydraulic suspension you can have it squat down, so it's easier for you to load
things into because you can see here. It is a completely flat load lip which is quite nice and you
even have this mirror finish down here. I'm sure you can also get
that in different spec to rest something on before
you put it into the boot. We have a bit more storage for
some pillows and some charging cables and some emergency stuff
but no place to put anything else. So if you do want to charge
this with a power plug you're probably going to have
to store them over there. Now of course we've got to show you how
big it gets in here with the seats down. You have this little control
panel here in the back, nicely illuminated
with a power symbol. Down here you have a Chinese
plug in this case but obviously in the European spec this
will be a European outlet. With this panel you can raise and
lower the suspension here for easier loading and you can
electronically raise and lower the seats. So let's try that out. So you can see here that the
whole sequence starts in the front. The front seats move, then the seat base of the
middle seats move and only then the headrests and the
whole seats are coming down. That of course to create the most space
but also to create the full flat floor. Now I will go to the side. To show you that we now have
a completely flat floor here, all the way basically
to the driver's seats. And to give you an idea
of how big it is now, if you take this load lip out, this is practically a bed. You can sleep in here, you can use this
as a camper van. And that also gives you a
bit of an idea of the height. I can sit in here reasonably comfortable
and certainly here in the middle. With the panoramic roof, no issues whatsoever. So then, this is truly cavernous I'd say. Ikea, no problem. Any bikes, mountain bikes, surfboards, also fit, no problem. Now we are on a test track
here in the south of Germany. Unfortunately, we're not allowed to
go outside the gates. So the full driving review will
have to be saved for another day, but we are allowed to do a few laps
here to get a driving impression. So that's what we'll do now. All right so we are now
in normal mode we've got a few laps on
this short track here. So we're gonna see what this
car does in terms of handling. In normal mode you
don't get the full bananas in terms of horsepower
but we should be good. We're going to take a little few corners
here with a bit of acceleration in between. You can feel right away that you're
definitely driving with a heavy vehicle. Now we're gonna
straight so we're gonna Push it. Even in this low
horsepower setting, normal driving mode, you can feel the
electric push obviously. It's not violent, it's compliant, quite pleasant even though
it's a lot of horsepower obviously from this
four motor drivetrain. But it's quite nice, nothing too crazy, especially with a lot of high
horsepower electric cars, you often have that sort of savage
feel that makes you sick quite easily. That's not the case
here in normal mode, so that is actually quite nice. Now we get on a bit
of a technical bit. You can really feel the size
and the weight of the car. It's a large vehicle obviously, so you have to get used a
little bit on how to place it. But there is a lot of glass here. You can see around pretty well. And even on this
little technical bit, that helps. These seats are auto adjusting, so you can put it in a
setting where it gives a bit of extra bolstering as you
go through the corners. A dial here on the steering
wheel where I can adjust the driving modes as well
as the terrain modes. Now we are on a track, so I don't need to
adjust the terrain, but I can adjust the driving mode
and we're going to go to sport. It gives it a little bit
more horsepower. And a little bit of stiffer. You can really tell that it's stiffer
already even in the small bend. It's actually warning me that
my cornering speed is too high. It's a lot more pickup here. Well that's heartbreaking. That's where the weight of the
vehicle comes into play again. Here we got a little
straight again. It's still compliant, it's a bit more violent
than the normal mode, but still it's not
unpleasant to go through. It's fast, yes, it's a large vehicle that
you're accelerating, you notice that it's a large vehicle that
you're accelerating with a lot of mass, but it's still, it's not violent or anything, it's still everyday usable. Now here on the twisty stuff. Yeah, it's the same thing again. Big vehicle, heavy vehicle, but the sport mode is dealing with it
a bit better than the normal mode. Obviously you get a lot more
support from the suspension system. The hydraulic system
pumps itself up to give you that more support in
this short technical stuff. It's nice that there's such a significant
difference between the modes. I always prefer that, that you can actually
properly feel the difference. Now, we're going to go to the E-plus drivetrain menu and go to Sport plus for the full banana. This is going to give us the
full almost 1200 horsepower. Ooh, you can feel the traction
control fighting it. Now it's not warning me that
my cornering speed is too high, because obviously now I'm
in the most violent mode. You can really tell the difference
again with this Sport Plus mode. Everything even more sharp. So after a day with the Yangwang U8
we can ask ourselves is there space for a Chinese super SUV in the European
market and what does it have to offer? And I have to say it
has quite a lot to offer. This is really BYD's
showcase platform. This is where they show us everything
they're capable of in terms of drivetrain, technology and the
whole car concept. And I have to say some
of it is truly impressive. Their E4 drivetrain platform
with 1200 horsepower is crazy in a car like this and it will
also be the underpinnings for the Yangwang U9 supercar which you really
have to put in Lamborghini territory. In terms of what it
offers as a car it is big, it is spacious, it is Range Rover, Mercedes EQS territory, BMW iX territory. That's really where this car fits in in
terms of its size and it's what it offers. The technology
inside is impressive, there's a lot of clever
things in there. I like that they
haven't overdone it. It's not all screens
and nothing else. It's buttons, it's things that work they kept and things
that can be improved they improved. And if you combine it with
this whole package with the hydraulic suspension with
that E4 four motor drivetrain I think it's a mighty
impressive proposition. Depending a little bit
on pricing of course, where it's going to land. Would it work on
the European roads? I think why not? If those cars like I mentioned the
iX or the Mercedes EQS work, why wouldn't this work? And they offer things
like eight-year warranty, they have like special off-road
packages that you can even get a drone box for on the roof if
you're into that kind of thing. So there's a lot going on with this brand
and there is quite a lot more to come.
