The latest offering from Chinese brand YangWang, locally available from BYD moniker, is a luxury hybrid U8 SUV with more than a handful of party tricks to justify its almost R2.8m price tag.
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The Herculean SUV is offered in two distinct trim levels, the Premium Edition and the Off-Road Master Edition. As the name suggests, the latter is the more off-road model in the range. The most notable visual detractors that distinguish the Premium Edition from the Off-Road Master are the additional features, such as a bolder front bumper, adjustable/removable roof rails, and snorkel (among other things), affixed to the Off-Road Master variant.
The YangWang U8 is a large SUV. It is 5 319mm long, 2 050mm wide, and 1 930mm tall, which would make it almost the same size as a Land Rover Defender 130 P400 X, although the U8 is founded on a slightly larger wheelbase (3050mm). Sharing the same physical footprint, the U8 is only a five-seater, with no third-row option. At the core of the U8 is a 2l turbocharged ICE powering a 49.05kWh battery, which is integrated into the chassis. Affixed to the 2l powerplant are four electric motors, each capable of a 220kW output, culminating into a total output of 880kW and 1280N.m.
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The cabin is ladened with six screens (and Nappa leather) ranging from a 23.6-inch instrument panel to a 12.8-inch centre console display.
The front-row passenger has access to a 23.6-inch infotainment screen. Additionally, the U8 features a 70-inch augmented reality heads-up display and a 22-speaker sound system. At the heart of the computational power of the U8 is an Nvidia Drive Orin SoC, which is fed information via 38 sensors that include three lidars, 13 cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, and 5mm wave radars.
As for party tricks, it can do a 360-degree tank turn (on land and in the water), it has a thermographic camera and built-in satellite phone, and it can float.
The U8 can wade in a maximum depth of 1 000mm and 1 400mm in the Off-Road Master Edition, as a result of the added snorkel. When the U8 exceeds the maximum depth while in the wading mode, it will automatically activate floating mode. This shuts down the engine, raises the suspension to its maximum level (150mm via the Disus-P hydraulic body control system), closes all the windows, switches the aircon to internal circulation, and finally opens the sunroof to offer a means of escape if need be. The U8 is said to be capable of staying afloat for 30 minutes and can even travel forward up to 3km/h.
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