“Cheap” Chinese competitor Mercedes G-Class can sail!

A few months ago Autovisie was in China and we got to know the YangWang U8, a Chinese competitor to the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, for the first time. I don’t know yet that the SUV can sail.

YangWang is a luxury brand owned by Chinese BYD. Although the U8 looks more like a Defender than a G-Class. Is it really the SUV they want to compete with, as BYD says?

The “cheap” Mercedes G-Class

Just like the electric Mercedes G-Class, the YangWang U8 has four electric motors, one for each wheel. This allows the SUV to rotate 360 ​​degrees, just like its German counterpart. But sailing is also possible!

@auto_visie

Is this a competitor to the G-Class? gwagon byd fyp carsoftiktok

♬ Lay Low – Tiësto

In a video from CarNewsChina shows how the YangWang U8 can sail. The Chinese G-Class can drive at a speed of 3 kilometers per hour for up to 30 minutes. This means you can sail 1.5 kilometers completely electrically.

For comparison: it is about 4 kilometers to Texel. However, it can be useful for forest rangers or in places where one might accidentally drive into the water.

An hour of sailing is not possible

The four electric motors of the YangWang U8 together produce 1,196 hp. The motors are coupled to a 49 kWh battery pack, of course BYD’s LFP battery. If the battery is dead, the car still has a range extender. Sailing can therefore extend well beyond 1.5 kilometers, although BYD says the car will “float” for 30 minutes. So an hour of sailing on the local lake is not a good plan.

The price of the Chinese YangWang U8

The Mercedes G-Class competitor has a price of 1,089,000 Chinese renminbi in China. If you convert that into euros, that’s almost 140,000 euros. Whether the car will ever come to Europe remains to be seen. The manufacturer had previously informed Autovisie that the car could come to our continent if there was sufficient demand.