BYD’s All-Electric Supercar To Offer an Incredible 1,287 HP but Weighs Almost 2.5 Tonnes
Long-awaited specifications for the production-ready BYD YangWang U9 have been revealed and as it turns out, it is even more powerful than we had originally expected.
The covers were lifted on the YangWang U9 back in January and the car was recently filmed testing on a racetrack for the very first time. It’s quite large as supercars go, stretching 4,966 mm (195.5 inches) in length, 2029 mm (79.8 inches) in width, and standing 1,295 mm (50.9 inches) tall. The U9 also has a 2,900 mm (114.1-inch) wheelbase, which is necessary to allow it to accommodate a large 100 kWh battery pack between the axles. This pack is manufactured by FinDreams, a subsidiary of BYD.
Driving the car are no less than four electric motors, each sporting 322 hp (240 kW). Add those together and you get 1,287 hp, more than the 1,100 hp that the U9 was initially expected to produce. While one could argue that the car doesn’t need 1,287 hp, it does tip the scales at 2,475 kg (5,456 lbs), much more than a combustion-powered supercar and roughly 175 kg (386 lbs) more than the Rimac Nevera.
BYD says it can rocket off the line to hit 100 km/h (62 mph) in just 2 seconds and power through to a 300 km/h (186 mph) top speed. The company also claims it’s able to travel up to 700 km (435 miles) on a single charge, as per the Chinese testing cycle.
Perhaps the most intriguing feature of the U9 is its special suspension system. BYD dubs it the ‘Disus-X system, and it provides complex vertical, lateral, and longitudinal motion control through the Damping Body Control System, the Intelligent Hydraulic Body Control System, and the Intelligent Air Body Control System. The systems allow the car to travel on three wheels and it can even bounce up and down.
Despite all the technology that has been crammed into the YangWang U9, it will follow in the footsteps of other BYD models and remain relatively ‘affordable’ by supercar standards, priced at around 1 million yuan (~$140,000).
