Photo: SugarDesign
We have already told you that BYD’s new premium brand will make its premiere on January 5, 2023. Although that is next week, Yangwang keeps releasing teasers on Weibo about the R1, or whatever the new brand decides to call its off-roader. The latest image was enough for the rendering artists of SugarDesign to come up with a rendering that would fool anyone for an official picture of the electric car.
Thanks to the valuable help of these artists, we can have a better idea of how BYD designed its lighting signature. It gave us a lot of work to try to precisely describe it with the previous teasers, so we will spare you from these attempts and just invite you to have a look at the image above.
SugarDesign inserted most elements from those early teasers in the rendering, but forgot the LED strips on the lateral rear-view mirrors. The little diamonds on the front grille also do not seem to be so far away from each other. However, that may have to do with the angle at which the teaser picture was taken.
The big news the new teaser brought was the three protuberances above the windshield. The NIO ET7 and ET5 also have them for the LiDAR right in the middle, but the R1 has all three humps in the same size, which makes it look as if the new Yangwang actually has three LiDARs. We have no idea why BYD would choose to do that. It may be the case that this is a safety measure to reinforce redundancy, but only the development engineers will be able to tell us more.
The new off-roader seems to be big enough to seat seven people. However, the luxury proposition this EV carries may prevent that and just reserve the rear space for a lot of cargo. Depending on the derivative, the Yangwang may even offer only four seats, with two individual ones in the second row.
Being so wide and tall, the R1 will need a massive battery pack to offer a decent range. The spare tire hanging at the back may look like an indispensable design element, but it will also work like a parachute at highway speeds. In the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, that is not a concern because those buying these machines will not care about gas prices. With the Yangwang, the issue will be spending too much time charging or doing that more often than streamlined EVs usually require. Offering it as a plug-in hybrid with a significant range may be a good idea.
BYD has already shown it can achieve great sales numbers. The challenge it faces with Yangwang is to do the same to a more demanding public, with a lot more buying power than that required for the EVs it has sold so far. SugarDesign has anticipated the reactions these folks will have on January 5. If you remember that Toyota was also received with a lot of skepticism when it unveiled Lexus, BYD may ask its Japanese partner for tips to achieve the same goal.
SugarDesign inserted most elements from those early teasers in the rendering, but forgot the LED strips on the lateral rear-view mirrors. The little diamonds on the front grille also do not seem to be so far away from each other. However, that may have to do with the angle at which the teaser picture was taken.
The big news the new teaser brought was the three protuberances above the windshield. The NIO ET7 and ET5 also have them for the LiDAR right in the middle, but the R1 has all three humps in the same size, which makes it look as if the new Yangwang actually has three LiDARs. We have no idea why BYD would choose to do that. It may be the case that this is a safety measure to reinforce redundancy, but only the development engineers will be able to tell us more.
The new off-roader seems to be big enough to seat seven people. However, the luxury proposition this EV carries may prevent that and just reserve the rear space for a lot of cargo. Depending on the derivative, the Yangwang may even offer only four seats, with two individual ones in the second row.
Being so wide and tall, the R1 will need a massive battery pack to offer a decent range. The spare tire hanging at the back may look like an indispensable design element, but it will also work like a parachute at highway speeds. In the Mercedes-Benz G-Class, that is not a concern because those buying these machines will not care about gas prices. With the Yangwang, the issue will be spending too much time charging or doing that more often than streamlined EVs usually require. Offering it as a plug-in hybrid with a significant range may be a good idea.
BYD has already shown it can achieve great sales numbers. The challenge it faces with Yangwang is to do the same to a more demanding public, with a lot more buying power than that required for the EVs it has sold so far. SugarDesign has anticipated the reactions these folks will have on January 5. If you remember that Toyota was also received with a lot of skepticism when it unveiled Lexus, BYD may ask its Japanese partner for tips to achieve the same goal.
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