On September 20, 2023, the price of YangWang U8 Deluxe Edition was announced. RMB 1.098 million is the peak price of a self-owned brand hybrid SUV.
“Are you crazy? Buy BYD for 1 million?” Questions like this are endless.
In contrast, after the YangWang U8’s emergency floating, in-situ U-turn and other functions were exposed.
“Are you crazy? Isn’t this function far ahead of the curve?” Praises like “Are you crazy?” came out again.
What kind of product can attract so many voices? I went through all kinds of hardships to borrow a U8. After trying it for a day, I still have to curse:
“Are you crazy? Why are they sold so cheaply?”
I know you are in a hurry, but don’t be anxious yet. It’s not too late for you to raise your hand after I tell you the reason.
If YangWang U8 is compared to a person: Yi Sifang is his brain, Yunnan-P is his limbs, and the luxurious cockpit is his cultivation, these points are the core of YangWang U8.
What is Yi Sifang?
This is the J-20, China’s fifth-generation stealth fighter. It is affectionately called the “Eight-Winged Angel” by netizens because it has a pair of vertical tails, canards, main wings, and tail fins on its fuselage. As we all know, humans only have two hands, and the same is true for pilots as powerful as the Chinese Air Force. So how can a person control 8 wings?
The flight control is used to sense the flight altitude, speed, angle and position information of the aircraft, and control the aircraft’s rudder surface through preset programs to control the flight attitude and move the whole body.
And Yi Sifang is the “flight control” of U8. The J-20 pilot controls 8 rudder surfaces through a joystick, and you control 4 motors through a gas pedal. Of course, this BYD 100% self-developed technology, whose full name is “four-motor electric drive with lateral power vector distribution technology”, is not just as simple as controlling the motors. Yi Sifang needs to integrate information from the three dimensions of body, chassis, and power, and allocate them to the corresponding hardware to perform corresponding actions.
It sounds like a sentence, but it is actually very difficult. Just one part of the chassis requires drive control, brake control, steering control, body attitude control, traction control, cruise control, brake lock, and brake pressure assist. controls, electric power steering, four-wheel steering control, anti-skid control, stability control and more. Each of the above controls corresponds to many sensors. As for such control dimensions, Yi Sifang needs to deal with three. Faced with thousands of pieces of information that need to be integrated, sorted, and processed, I can imagine the hair of the old guys from the engineering academy getting thinner.
YangWang U8 is equipped with four motors that can work independently, which means you can do many things that once only existed in your imagination.
For example, make a U-turn.
This is not difficult because other brands have done it. The difficulty lies in the high-adhesion road surface, not just relying on power to dent a circle, but completing a U-turn while minimizing tire wear. This is why even in the muscle-flexing scene of advertising, Rivian R1T only dares to demonstrate in places with low adhesion such as gravel roads.
For another example, when the vehicle floats in the water, through good sealing and independent four motors, can we make a vehicle that can escape from water? Of course, this technology is too complicated, and it’s a long story. If you are interested, I will update it immediately!
In principle, the four motors can work independently, so there is no need for a so-called mechanical differential lock. After all, one wheel has nearly 400 horsepower, which is enough to get out of trouble. But why does the U8 still have a differential lock-like button in the car? How is it different from an ordinary mechanical differential lock?
From the U8 icon, we can get a glimpse of it. An ordinary differential lock has an X in the middle, and the U8 icon has a circle in the middle.
The principle of U8, to put it simply, is not disconnection, but superposition! There’s no need to remember the principle, let’s just look at the data. U8 can achieve a maximum torque of 8700N·m on a single wheel.
Now that we’ve talked about “big data,” let’s talk about horsepower. The four motors each have a power of 220kW, and together they are 880kW, totaling 1197 horsepower. 1197 hp, 8700N·m, YangWang Are you using a game modifier to build a car?
Okay, okay, I know, you will say that in the new energy era, horsepower is cheap. That is also based on a normal logic. How big is this nearly 1,200 horsepower? Let’s put it this way, if you add together the horsepower of the so-called U8 cars in the same class, such as the Mercedes-Benz GLS 450, BMW X7 M60i, and Audi Q7 55 TFSI, they only get a “mere” 1,237 horsepower.
To be honest, I only dared to step on the accelerator at about 20% all day today, for fear that the 1,197 horsepower would make me the first car owner to “hijack” a U8 due to a crash.
It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that I really can’t afford it!
But after repeated encouragement from my brother next to me, I finally plucked up the courage to get on the highway and experience it.
How to put it, when you read this word from the beginning of this paragraph, U8 has already reached 100. If you read it continuously, it is already 150. It’s so terrifying, it can really be wiped out in a snap, leaving no trace behind.
Although the 1,197 horsepower will cause a bit of slippage in the early stages of rapid acceleration, as long as you hold the steering wheel firmly and the E-Sifang straightens the body immediately, you just step on the accelerator and let U8 do the rest.
Fast, not luxurious, safe and fast is luxury. The strength of Bugatti is not that it is absolutely fast, but that it allows ordinary people without training to drive up to 350km/h.
What’s even more terrifying about the U8 is that Yunnan-P has the ability to suppress the pitch of the front of the car. This makes the U8’s acceleration feel different from ordinary cars. When other high-horsepower electric vehicles accelerate, you can still feel the process of the person moving from a normal sitting position to being photographed on the seat, but the U8 uses the seat to directly kick you away, and at the same time, you can also enjoy the seat massage and heat. Stone waist heating.
This is like when you were eating with your ex-girlfriend and your current girlfriend saw you. While she slapped you with her left hand, she pinched your shoulder with her right hand. I like this car with such a split personality and full capabilities.
By the way, did I just mention Yun Nian-P?
What is Yun Nian-P?
If you want to stand taller and have a yoga ball and a gaming chair at hand, which one would you choose?
Yoga balls are low-cost and don’t hurt if they get crushed, but they are unstable when standing.
Gaming chairs are more expensive, but they are more stable.
This is the general difference between air suspension and hydraulic suspension. Our common air suspension is a relatively low-cost height-adjustable suspension. The disadvantage is that the air is greatly affected by the environment, which is why the air pump needs to be continuously inflated sometimes.
The YangWang U8 uses hydraulically adjustable suspension. To be honest, I was quite surprised when I first learned about it. The air suspension adjustment height of our common L9, G9 and other vehicles is around 70-90 mm, while the U8 can directly reach 150mm. This achievement is also very explosive when looking at the global original car field.
With such a wide range of height adjustment, coupled with the brain of Yi Sifang, U8 can achieve the camping leveling function. As long as it is within a certain range, no matter what the height of your four wheels is, U8 can keep the car level and disconnect. It will not stop working after the power is turned off.
This function is more about flexing muscles and exploring possibilities. But in daily driving, this is where Yunnan-P really shows its strength. Throughout the whole day today, I almost forgot that this is a hard-core off-road vehicle with large beams, whether it is head-turn suppression during acceleration, nodding suppression during acceleration, roll suppression during cornering, or active suspension raising when off-road, All left a very deep impression on me. In my impression, it is no exaggeration to say that this is the only car that combines comfort and hardcore.
The performance of the chassis is good enough. But there is another very important link in the vibration transmission path of the car body, which is the seat. Now we have to talk about the cockpit of U8.
Is the interior of U8 luxurious enough?
Everything visible to the naked eye is genuine leather, which is the most basic sincerity. Although some million-dollar SUVs don’t even have this sincerity. The interior design of the U8 is a matter of opinion, but the materials and craftsmanship are really good, and the feel and touch are great.
I didn’t understand the Dynaudio Platinum Evidence speakers, so I consulted Diao Yindi. His original reply to me was: To buy a set of this thing for home use, it costs two to three hundred thousand. Very good, the car costs less than 1.1 million.
What surprised me the most was the U8’s NVH. Because it has a floating-level cabin sealing, even for a car with such a high chassis and such a heavy weight, the road noise at highway speeds is very subtle, so subtle that you need to listen carefully to hear it. The cabin in the upper half is also very quiet. For example, today in the service area, my companion got out of the car to put some water in the car, and I was waiting for him in the car. Because I changed the parking position, the central locking was turned off, and I didn’t notice it. As a result, my companion called me out of the car window and I didn’t hear him for more than a minute. High-speed noise is mainly wind noise from the A-pillars, but considering this size and level, it’s pretty good.
At this point, I still have at least 5 points about U8 in my mind that I can continue to talk about at length, but due to space reasons, I will stop here. We’re done talking about cars, so let’s finally talk about something else.
Why do I say YangWang U8 is cheap? Let me take a look at what U8 has in store.
The fastest acceleration time of the deluxe version is 3.9 seconds in regular mode, 3.6 seconds in racing mode, and 4.9 seconds in power feed state. No one can achieve it at present.
Yunnan-P intelligent hydraulic body control system, three-level stiffness adjustment, and total suspension adjustment stroke of 150mm, which no one can achieve currently.
With 1,197 horsepower, no one can currently achieve this in an SUV.
Wading in the water for half an hour, floating and turning in the water, no one can do it yet.
A high-speed tire blowout keeps the car body stable, something no one can do at the moment.
You can make a U-turn on the spot, the electric big G can do it, and it sells for 2 million.
Ordinary people don’t have much idea about these, right? Let’s talk about something closely related.
I measured the fuel consumption today. A car with 1197 horsepower, a length of over 5 meters, a width of over 2 meters, a height of over 1.9 meters and a weight of over 3.5 tons has a comprehensive fuel consumption of 7.4L/100km. I looked at my junk fuel car with 184 horsepower and a fuel consumption of 9.5L/100km, and fell into deep thought.
If you choose any of the above points and place it on an imported brand, wouldn’t it be a technology that changes the world? There are not many technologies like YangWang, there are 6. A car with such capabilities costs 1.098 million. Do you still think it’s expensive? And the significance of YangWang U8 goes beyond that.
We have not caught up with the first steam industrial revolution and the second electrical industrial revolution. Compared to our ancestors, we are far behind. But the Chinese people just have this drive and are not afraid of falling behind, they just have to catch up.
And new energy is our best opportunity in recent years. As the crown jewel of the industry, automobiles have greatly helped and improved the upstream and downstream industrial chains. China suffers from difficulties in industrial upgrading and transformation because it does not have high-premium products that are available internationally. At present, the sales of global car companies are still dominated by South Korea and Japan, which shows that there are quite broad prospects for Chinese brands. Korean and Japanese car companies strive to survive with low prices and high configurations. Chinese brands are Korean and Japanese Plus Max versions, which are more cost-effective and comprehensive.
In the first half of this year, China exported 2.34 million automobiles, a year-on-year increase of 76.9%. Among them, 795,000 new energy vehicles were exported, a year-on-year increase of 112.7%. When our car goes out, it is also an imported car. For example, BYD Yuan, the domestic price starts at 135,800 yuan, and the export price used to be double. If U8 is to be exported, it will be based on this product strength. I wouldn’t be surprised if it sold for 3 million. If such high-premium products are sold, Chinese people may not have more money, but the money in your and my pockets will definitely be more valuable.
And this is the true meaning of YangWang.