Styling
The Yangwang U9 has plenty of visual theatre. Big, C-shaped front lights and then a dramatic illuminated strip across the back, which gains the name 'Interstellar' for its troubles, are good starting points, as are 21-inch wheels in the arches. Yet nothing draws attention like the stabiliser blade running longitudinally down between a louvred cover at the back of the car, in place of a rear screen. The standard set-up behind this is for a four-stage automatically adjustable lip spoiler and then an active diffuser, but the U9 can also have a great swan-necked, carbon-fibre fixed wing back there if you want it to. Sure, stare at it too long and you might pick up on aesthetic flourishes which are vaguely
Lotus or
Maserati in flavour, although we're inclined to say the Yangwang has enough stylistic identity of its own to stand out in a crowd. Oh, and its doors open upwards, proper supercar-style, like a
McLaren. Excellent.
Interior
We had an incredibly brief go in the Yangwang U9 on track, so we weren't really interacting with the interior - and its technology - like we would do on a more thorough road test. However, initial impressions are good. The quality feels up to snuff throughout, the seats adjust through a range of positions and are plenty supportive enough, and both the 12.3-inch infotainment screen and the 10.25-inch instrument cluster, the pair backlit by mini-LEDs, appear to be crisp and helpful. Mind, getting into and out of the cabin can be a bit of a faff, especially if you're wearing a racing helmet and you're, um, of the larger persuasion. Other than that, though, it's an early thumbs-up for this cabin from us.
Practicality
Aside from the ingress and egress issues with the doors, we're not sure the Yangwang is the most practicality-minded vehicle in the world, even when it comes to supercars. There's no boot space quoted for it as yet (although it does have a cargo area in the back) and the interior isn't riddled with loads of touches that'd have Skoda going back to its 'Simply Clever' drawing board. But, again, we'll remind you that we weren't really focusing on this aspect of its character for this snatched drive in the vehicle, so we'll wait until we appraise the car closer to home to report back on this matter more thoroughly.
Performance
Take one look at some of the truly startling stats in the Tech Spec box for this Yangwang U9 at the top of the piece, and you'd wonder why it needs anything more than this. From a purely personal perspective, it is - with a peak output from its four 240kW motors combined - the most outright powerful car we've ever driven, with a headline 1,306hp. It also has a monstrous 1,680Nm, so despite the fact this two-door hypercar weighs a distinctly un-hypercar-like 2.5 tonnes, it'll run 0-62mph in 2.36 seconds and go on to a top speed of 243mph. Yep, the same as a McLaren F1.
It's therefore bending our brains (or twisting our melons, perhaps, if you were alive in the 1990s?) that this is the 'baby' U9. There's another model above it in the hierarchy called the Xtreme, which strips out the quartet of 240kW motors, and then replaces them with some stonking 555kW units. One of these on its own makes 754.8hp. Four of them together? Well, it's 2,220kW. Or 3,019hp. Making it the most powerful production car on the planet right now, as well as the record-holder for top speed. In September this year, at the Papenburg test facility in Germany, racing driver Marc Basseng piloted a Yangwang U9 Xtreme to a verified 496.22km/h. That equates to a bonkers 308.15mph.
So it's clear the U9, any U9, is a stupidly fast thing. Weirdly, it didn't feel transcendentally quick down the main straight at BYD's test-track facility outside Zhengzhou, so although we're not about to say the Yangwang was slow, we'd need another, fuller go in it to see, properly, just what the full hits of 1,306hp and 1,680Nm feel like.
The thing to watch for here, though, are the range and electrical economy figures. They were ratified under Yangwang's domestic Chinese light-duty vehicle test cycle (CLTC), and because this it is conducted a considerably slower average and maximum speeds than WLTP (the accepted worldwide standard of automotive economy claims), it gives back very favourable range numbers. Which would tally with us: going on some purely 'back of a fag packet' maths in our minds, nearly one megawatt's worth (960kW) of electric motors draining a rather modest (for this power of EV) 80kWh battery would surely never give back 280 miles of range. There's every chance the official one-shot distance of the U9 under WLTP would be more like 150-200 miles...
Ride & Handling
From our few laps of the 1.1-mile circuit, there's a lot to commend about the Yangwang U9. For a heavy car, it's very agile-feeling from behind the wheel, and there's good weighting and feedback through said item as well. Turn-in is super-keen, while the body stays properly flat thanks to the clever active suspension system on the U9 (called DiSus-X), which can also make the car leap in the air to clear potholes at speed. No, really.
It did, however, also have quite sharp brakes. Modulating the pedal for these carbon-ceramic stoppers isn't the easiest job in the world, as evinced by a number of journalists slowly crawling out of the pit lane, then performing what looked like an emergency stop in the pit exit as they brushed the left-hand pedal for the first time. Dialling back the servo assistance on the stoppers might be the first port of call for Yangwang's engineers when they're getting ready to tune the car for Europe's tastes.
As to ride, handling and refinement, there's nothing we can clearly ascertain at this stage. The U9 certainly didn't feel uncomfortable around the track, but when you're running at high pace on a freshly laid circuit then you're highly unlikely to experience any crashiness, or indeed any facet of the car's dynamic character about which you could reasonably discern how it would deal with crumbling sections of the M4, for instance.
Value
Prices are not yet confirmed for the Yangwang U9, but something like £200,000-£250,000 probably wouldn't be out of the question. Now that is obviously a huge pile of cash for an all-electric supercar (with no noises or exotic engine to sell its charm) from a marque which is hardly the height of long-established badge credibility. But we'd again draw your eye to the sheer performance the Yangwang offers, which arguably makes it something of a bargain at this level. Genuine hypercars, which is pretty much where the U9 is operating with its speed, are often many multiples of this amount of cash, while its novelty value could also see it find favour with car collectors looking for something a bit different from the European norm.
Verdict
We've not had long enough in the Yangwang U9 to make a definitive verdict on it here (think of the four stars at the top of the piece as more of a 'holding' rating), but what little we have glimpsed is enough to have us intrigued about this car's slated arrival in the UK. It's phenomenally quick and it seems pretty limber in the corners too, while there's enough desirability about its bodywork and cosy cabin to earn it further merit points. Pricing will, of course, be key, as will the way it can handle more mundane and indeed varied driving duties than simply hammering around a closed test track. But we very much look forward to sampling the U9 again - hopefully, for longer next time around, and on roads closer to home, in order to draw more meaningful conclusions on this record-breaking EV.
