BYD’s Yangwang appears to be working on a new flagship electric luxury sedan. A prototype of the same has been spotted testing in China, and it resembles the Rolls-Royce Phantom.
The heavily camouflaged prototype has a long wheelbase and imposing proportions, while coach doors, or rear-hinged “suicide doors”, give it the kind of chauffeur-focused character expected from an ultra-luxury saloon. The door-handle placement makes the unusual opening arrangement fairly obvious.
The design also features large wheels inspired by recent Maybach models, a styling choice that has become increasingly common among China’s premium new-energy vehicles. An air canister visible beneath the rear bumper could point to BYD’s DiSus-A air suspension system.
Chinese reports suggest the sedan could use a pillar-less body, allowing passengers to enjoy a wide opening when both doors are opened. However, removing the B-pillars creates a major structural challenge.
Yangwang could address that with a load-bearing battery mounted low in the chassis, using the battery pack as part of the structure. Interestingly, the prototype also appears to have a conventional metal roof rather than a panoramic glass roof, potentially helping improve rigidity.
Source: Car News China / Image source: Yu Lei Kan Che
Copy the best. Make it better….and we’ll see a few years down the road if it’s worthy of being in the same class as RR. I wish though that the Chinese and Koreans would stop copying others. Be creative and come up with a better….car, TV, fridge, boat, ammo, whatever…come up with the item….better.
Copy the best first, improve, then innovate often from basics. Let me take a few chronologically.
1.Separate channels for water and sewage in Indus-Saraswati Valley city (IVC) dwellings, lost but rediscovered several millennia later; west with bong farmers (google it) half millennia back, brought standalone septic tanks, then far improved version of IVC replete with different solutions for wet and dry waste. Concept of shower was from a hundred tiny holes in flat vessel used by Vaishnavaites among Hinduism, but piped. India struggling with Swach Bharat Solution on continent population. India copied “spray after big job” into wc from Japs; but west stuck on tissue!
2.Other extreme. Chinese used Russian fighter jet engines as template for 4 decades before innovating with their own fresh core engine up design, may not match GE, P&W but almost there. India’s 3 decades tryst with Kaveri Engine that failed to power Tejas fighter, GE mothballed GE404 engine being used, but the Kaveri Derivative Engine may replace Grandma 404. But grassroots up new engine design for 5th gen AMCA is seeing RR and Safran with capability but none proven helping India, hoping to emulate lower powered Safran’s modular design, giving amazing speed in maintenence, repair, hence up-time. And the VCE design, only the 2 US companies mastered, not even Russians.
3.Chola Kingdoms a millennium back as well as Gujaratis had thousands of tall trees felled to stich them (kattu in Tamil is to tie) into “kattumaram” sails boats that can carry an elephant or equivalent number of horses across the Bay og Bengal to distant shore: that principle in anglicized “catamaran”. To cut with hand help saw meant a shop can churn out a couple of boats a month. But Dutch innovation to use windmill concept with what is known as automobile crank shift meant large number cut for dozens of boats. Add the first corporates Dutch East India Company to have concept of share market, spread fast to London. The result was amazing, often ruthless exploitation of the world as colonizers, with industrial revolution adding more than bells and whistles. Gunboat “diplomacy” saw Opium force grown, refined in India, thrust on Chinese for British cups of tea! Pray Chinese don’t repay the compliment.