2024 Yangwang U8 review

We didn’t get to try this feature. Though there is a small lake in the golf course at the Goodwood estate, I can only imagine what Lord March’s reaction would be if we had driven in there and splashed about like a baby crocodile. Or hippopotamus.

There’s full hydraulic intelligent suspension based on all-round upper and lower wishbones, which can lift the vehicle by a total of 150mm and will further lift a punctured tyre so you can outrun your pursuers on three wheels. Yet underneath the rather garish skin, which seems to share so much of its proportions with Land Rover’s Defender model, this is rather a conventional thing, a bit like a dancing elephant.

It’s a body-on-frame construction using BYD’s e⁴Platform, a four-wheel drive electric architecture, and comprises four in-board motors either side of the inverter, which is attached rigidly to the chassis. The motors can be driven (or reversed) independently and drive the wheels via individual articulating driveshafts.

However this is not a full in-wheel motor system. Wheel motors are an expensive and difficult technology and confer such penalties on unsprung weight and consequent ride quality that they are really only suitable for driving rear axles and off-road commercial vehicles.

Nor is the U8 a full EV. True, its massive power and torque come from a big lithium-ion phosphate battery in the floor arrayed in BYD’s patented ‘Blade’ structure, but it also has a 268bhp, 2-litre, four cylinder petrol engine. So strictly speaking this is more PHEV than BEV, but since the engine never drives the wheels, it’s actually a range-extender – REX if you’re not already suffering from acronym overload. The engine is there to charge the battery pack when the mains is unavailable. Fill batteries and the 75-litre fuel tank and you’ll be looking at a range of 620 miles, of which just 112 miles can be accomplished in EV mode.

It’s got some off-road chops, too, with approach/departure/breakover angles of respectively 36.5/35.4/25.5 degrees, and ground clearance of 285mm. While these won’t exactly send an air-sprung Defender into a flat spin, the figures are broadly comparable to and, in some cases, better than those of the Ineos Grenadier.

There are three main driving modes, plus wading sensing and a hill-descent control with further drivetrain fiddling capability in the off-road modes, including yoking each of the front motors or rear motors together to give the effect of locked differentials.

It’s a five-seater with a boot capacity of 1,031 litres with the rear seats up and 2,050 litres with them folded. It’ll tow up to 2.5 tonnes (a full tonne less than either Defender or Grenadier), though its 3.46 tonne kerb weight is so enormous, it needs a payload of just 40kg before younger folk will need a special licence, speed limits will be reduced on A roads and dual carriageways, and there could be further potential ramifications if the vehicle is used as a commercial.

Those three taxi lamps on top of the windscreen are twin radar/camera units and a central Lidar, which gives SAE Level Two self-driving (where you need to keep your hands on the wheel). They can be customised to contain antennae for a roof-mounted drone – as you do…

The appearance is big and blingy, with diamond-like LEDs on the front and wind strakes all over the lamps, doors and rear wings. So big in fact, that even the 22-inch wheels look a bit lost in the square-topped wheel arches (20-inch wheels are an option). The door handles power out to you when you approach just like JLR’s cars and just as, well, superfluous. It’s really well made though, with shut lines you could iron into a shirt.

The cabin looks like an explosion in the tanning department, with comfortable and commodious seats and a heavily cowled centre console so passengers are kept well apart. The centre touch screen is flanked by an instrument binnacle in front of the driver and a passenger screen showing, well, in our test car, actually a Bruce Lee movie.

What’s it like to drive? Heavy, slightly lumbering, but quick. The traction and stability controls were bleeping and burping all the way through the fast turns at Fordwater and St Mary’s and the nose needed encouraging gently into the tighter turns at Lavant and the chicane on the slimy circuit and cold tyres.

There’s a slightly clunky feel about the drivetrain as you come on and off the power and the steering, while well weighted, is devoid of feel. Just as you’d expect really, and while a Defender would eat it alive on the road and probably off as well, it can’t tank turn, can it?

The long road out to the battle front of launching a new premium brand is littered with hubris and expensively abandoned names (remember Infiniti, or Maybach?). With Yangwang (careful with your diction there…), BYD is getting its shots in first before the rest of the Chinese makers pile in. It’s even introduced a Yangwang supercar the U9, which wasn’t at Goodwood.

The U8 is on sale in China where the price is 1,098,000 yuan, which equates to about £120,000, though there will doubtless be many reasons to pump this up when the vehicle finally makes it into UK showrooms. Program chief Alisa Hong says they want to do an all-electric version, but that’s a while off.

So, novelty and crowd-pleasing thrills in a quite ordinary package, but the U8 is certainly shaking a few trees in the world of SUV makers. And lest we forget here, the original Beetle would float and power itself across a flat calm lake for at least enough time for the ad agency to photograph it. As for driving on three wheels, we should remember Citroën’s DS with its hydropneumatic suspension which proved its abilities in 1962 when the terrorist Organisation de l’Armée Secrète riddled the coachwork and rear tyres of President Charles de Gaulle’s car with 140 machine-gun bullets. His cool-headed chauffeur, Francis Marroux kept the car rolling and probably saved de Gaulle’s life.

Now that would have been a publicity stunt to put tank turn to shame…