Ride along as MotorTrend testing director Eric Tingwall wrings out five very fast
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00:00MotorTrend recently took a field trip to the world's largest car market to
00:10investigate whether Chinese cars are really as good as everyone says. Over 72
00:15hours we probed, drove, and tested 19 different cars. We chatted with AI
00:20powered voice assistants. We watched a machine swap a nearly empty battery for
00:25a full one in just five minutes. We tried to make sense of the ridiculously
00:30cheap prices. And because we're MotorTrend, we drove all of the cars. Hard.
00:37As they say, you can take the man out of the Motor City, but you can't take the
00:43Motor City go-fast mentality out of the man.
00:48Turns out at least a few people in China love speed too, because we found some
00:57rockets. Here are the five quickest vehicles we tested in China. Four cars
01:02and one absolutely bonkers SUV. Starting in fifth place we have the BYD Han, the
01:10flagship from the company that is constantly dicing with Tesla to be the
01:14world's largest EV manufacturer. The Han is sold as a plug-in hybrid or as an EV,
01:19which we tested in dual motor all-wheel drive form. The interior might resemble a
01:24Buick from the 2010s, but the Han has got it going where it counts. It makes 510
01:29horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque. The BYD Han is a very popular car in
01:36China. It's interesting, it doesn't seem like the SUV craze has hit quite like it
01:41has in America or even in Europe. Sedans are still really popular here, and you
01:47see that with the vehicles that NIO and Seeker and Xiaomi and BYD are building.
01:53Yeah, there's plenty of crossovers. Tesla Model Y might be the best-selling
01:58vehicle here, but sedans are alive and well, and something like this BYD Han
02:05feels like it's got the substance in it to be taken seriously in the US. I guess
02:12that would require American car buyers to take sedans serious. Shall we do it?
02:18Zero to 60 in the Han. Whoa! That thing has some giddy-up. Zero to 60 in 3.9, but man
02:27it launches harder than that. You see, numbers are great at telling you a lot
02:34about a vehicle, but they don't tell you everything. The speed with which this
02:39thing delivers torque, when you lift off the brake and it just goes, makes it feel
02:45just as quick as a car that does zero to 60 a second quicker than that. That's why
02:52you got to watch a video like this. You get the numbers and the feeling. This car
02:57to me doesn't have the kind of minimalist sleekness that we've seen in
03:03a lot of the other Chinese EVs. This feels almost more traditional, like
03:08something you would expect a GM to build, and maybe that's because BYD has been in
03:13the game longer than many of these other Chinese EV startups. Stability control,
03:21there's an off switch, but it turns back on above a certain speed, so that's gonna
03:27be inhibiting. It's a very intrusive stability control program. When I'm exiting these
03:35corners, it does not want to give me full power until about now. Try your best to
03:40work around it, but really there's only so much you can do, right? I mean, I don't
03:44want to come around this corner slowly at the end, but there's several seconds
03:50there where it's just not giving me full power when I'm flat on the accelerator.
03:54It's frustrating. It's interesting because it feels like if you lift, it will rotate a
04:03little bit, but then it just won't give you power. That's unfortunate. That's a
04:09unnecessarily aggressive stability control system. It's not even saving you
04:15from anything. It's not like power is gonna put you in jeopardy at that point.
04:20It's pretty well balanced in the middle of the corner. It's just right there
04:25where you want to be going back to power. It starts to cut it out.
04:31Good body control, though, and like I said, fairly neutral handling. So, the BYD
04:39Hon to me feels like one of the more solid Chinese industry offerings when it
04:47comes to electric sedans. Really nice ride quality, good body control, great
04:55power delivery. The one thing that I think would hold it back is how
05:02traditional this interior is. I think EV buyers, especially in America because
05:08we're still looking at early adopters and fast followers being the buyers, want
05:13something that feels more novel, feels more stylish, more modern. And this car,
05:21aside from this tablet center screen that's kind of hanging out here, feels
05:25exactly like a GM vehicle. If you took this out and replaced this with a screen
05:30that was more integrated into the dash, I would tell you we're driving in a Buick.
05:36That's what I would think we were in. A 0-60 time of 3.9 seconds and a
05:41quarter-mile run of 12.6 seconds means the Hon won't be winning any races
05:46against the Model S, but the vehicle we drove sells for less than $35,000 in
05:52China. That's Model 3 money, and the Hon is slightly quicker than the Model 3
05:56dual-motor to 60 miles per hour, but 3 tenths slower through the quarter-mile.
06:01Call the tie? Maybe? Next up, we have the NIO ET5, a sleek,
06:07two-motor, all-wheel-drive EV that's sold in Europe as well as China. The ET5's
06:12best feature is that you can trade a depleted battery for a full one in less
06:17than five minutes at one of NIO's 2,200 battery swapping stations. Since
06:22quote-unquote charging is so fast, there's no need to be stingy with the electrons.
06:27Step on the right pedal and the ET5 zaps out 483 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of
06:34torque. All right, NIO ET5, almost 500 horsepower, more than 500 pound-feet of
06:41torque. Here she goes.
06:47It's kind of loud, but it does 0-60 in 3.3 seconds, quarter-mile in a 12 flat, so
07:00it's got the straight-line crud, it's plenty quick, but they don't quite have
07:05the sound figured out. It's really weird to have the audio input there directly
07:11correlated with pedal inputs and not just the accelerator, the brake pedal too,
07:15right? So I'm leaning into the accelerator, I'm off the accelerator, now
07:22I'm gonna go into the brakes.
07:30Guess what? The brakes overheated. This is pretty cool, you can't see it, but on my
07:42instrument cluster there is a small brake disc and caliper icon, and I wasn't
07:48convinced it was a brake disc and caliper, it's just a little circle, but it
07:52was red a second ago and now it's yellow, and I know earlier it was green, so
07:57that's one really cool feature. If your brakes are gonna overheat, at least tell
08:01me when they are starting to cool down and when they are cool enough to consider
08:06them good to go. Nobody knows what they're doing when it comes to sound
08:10with EVs. This, I can definitively say, is not the solution. It seems quite delayed.
08:20The volume is just unreal.
08:35I can't even talk to you when I'm driving. Alright, there goes the brake warning
08:41again. The powertrain soundtrack is incredibly loud, but the tires are also
08:46screaming for mercy, and I'm looking at something like a 26.5 figure-eight lap
08:51time, which is not great. That Xiaomi Su7 did something like a 24.7, so almost a
09:01full two seconds quicker in this handling, acceleration, braking test. I
09:06think this thing really is struggling with grip. This NIO ET5 feels quite
09:12solid when you drive it as if you're on the street, but when you push it to the
09:16limit on the track, it definitely doesn't feel like it got the full chassis
09:19development workup. Seems like there's not the grip you expect, and it really
09:25loves to understeer. Considering how much power this thing has, you'd expect it to
09:30be a true sports sedan. It's not really the case. Hitting 60 miles per hour in
09:363.3 seconds and clearing the quarter-mile in 12 seconds flat makes the ET5 a
09:41legitimately quick car. This is sports car territory, but don't go thinking the
09:46ET5 is some kind of sports sedan. The 100 kilowatt-hour battery makes this a
09:51chunky boy at 4,817 pounds. It doesn't handle nearly as well as it pulls. This
09:58is the Yangwang U8, and we can hear NIO's PR people screaming,
10:02who you calling fat, at its inclusion on this list. The U8 packs four motors, a
10:0849.1 kilowatt-hour battery, and a four-cylinder engine into a 7,628 pound
10:15package the size of a Chevy Tahoe. It's an extended-range electric vehicle, which
10:20means the gas engine supplies electricity to the motors, but never
10:24directly drives the wheels. That's okay, though, because those four motors make
10:28plenty of power and torque on their own. 1,180 horsepower and 944 pound-feet of
10:36torque, to be precise. This is a Land Rover wannabe Yangwang U8. Leather, suede-like
10:48materials everywhere, almost 1,200 horsepower, and she's got some ghetto.
10:580-to-60 in 3.2 seconds. This one feels a little more solid than most at speed.
11:07Quarter-mile in 11 and a half seconds. Man, this thing is wild. Nice, really nice.
11:21We'll do a couple brake stops from 60. It's got a really soft brake pedal. Brake
11:30dive is quite nicely controlled. This is a big, heavy machine, so the brake stops are
11:35almost 130 feet. That's right up there with some really big trucks in America,
11:43even heavy-duty trucks.
11:51That was 137 feet. You could feel it kind of get into the ABS and then let off and
11:58get back into it on that stop. This Yangwang U8 is powerful, but it's also
12:04massive, so let's see what it will do on the figure-eight course. Oh yeah, you got
12:11a brake early. And you know, it felt good controlling brake dive, but man, this
12:19thing rolls. Tons of body roll, but kind of controllable from a... Ooh, I'm not
12:28getting full power anymore, buddy. No way is that full power coming out of these
12:32corners. Let's try it here. I don't know. Oh, maybe it's an ESC thing. I think
12:38that's an ESC thing. Some corners, it's not giving me full power. I can't think
12:43of the last vehicle I drove that rolled as much as this one, but it's not
12:52wallowy. It doesn't, like, wobble back and forth, toss your head around. It just
12:57leans over and sits, and it's fine. Definitely some ESC intervention there.
13:03It's not even, like, body roll. It's, like, listing like a boat, just parked on an
13:10angle. Well, there you have it. 28.31. What does that mean? Eh, she ain't quick,
13:15really, around a figure-eight course. But what'd you expect? This thing is all
13:19about coddling your ass, keeping you cozy and comfy, making life easy. This
13:27Yangwing U8 is a competitor to a G-Wagon or a Range Rover, and the build
13:33quality is quite impressive on the interior. The fit and finish, the
13:38materials used, really, really high-end stuff. So it kind of seems like there's
13:43two different worlds here, right? There's the $40,000 world, where it looks pretty
13:49good, but it doesn't feel like it's up to snuff with what a $40,000 Honda or a
13:56$40,000 Ford even feels like, both on the interior build quality and some of the
14:03dynamic qualities. Step up to something like this U8, which is $150,000, by the
14:10way, and it starts to feel kind of competitive. You know, dynamically, you
14:16might get some more advanced chassis systems in a European or American or
14:21British luxury vehicle, but this thing feels solid, comfortable, quiet, pretty
14:28poised. I'm kind of impressed. The name might be unmistakably Chinese, but the
14:34Yangwing U8 is as American as any luxury SUV sold in the States. It's
14:39outrageously huge, outrageously luxurious, and outrageously quick. 0-60
14:45takes just 3.2 seconds, and the quarter-mile is over in 11.4 seconds.
14:51Give it a different name, and the U8 would sell in the U.S. The second
14:57quickest car in our testing is the MG Cyberster, a rare two-door EV. This
15:02convertible wears the badge of a 100-year-old British brand famous for
15:07light, playful roadsters. The roof folds on the Cyberster, and the badge is shaped
15:11like a stop sign, but that's where the similarities end. The two-motor,
15:16all-wheel-drive model makes 536 horsepower and 535 pound-feet of torque,
15:22which makes light work of the Cyberster's 4,376 pounds. This car is not a
15:29direct 911 competitor. We're using that 911 as a benchmark, the standard that it
15:34needs to meet, maybe. This vehicle is, though, about half the price of a Porsche
15:39911. We're gonna start off here with a launch. We are in using the Super Sport
15:43mode, pulls up Track mode, and let's see what this does. Three, two, one.
15:51Okay, that was bizarre. I was not expecting it to make those noises, which
16:17sound like they're straight out of an 80s monster truck video game. It did a
16:290-to-60 in 3.1 seconds, quarter-mile in 11.5 seconds, and yet kind of devoid of
16:36drama. It doesn't really hit you with a huge amount of torque, even though I
16:42think it makes a good amount of torque. Let's give it a launch. A little bit of
16:50torque there. 0-to-60 in about 3.1 seconds. It is quicker than a 911. It
16:58sounds like it's a 1980s arcade game. It has none of the oral drama of a real 911,
17:09but, you know, it goes. That's what EVs do. All right, let's do some brake stops.
17:18All right, let's do one from 100. I will admit to being a little bit nervous
17:23braking from 100 miles per hour in this car. I'm just hoping that everything stays bolted
17:29together. I do not like the way the brake pedal feels. No action there. No feedback? No
17:40nothing. Nothing, right? I mean, I know I'm standing on the pedal, but this almost
17:44certainly has a brake-by-wire system, and I'm saying that just based solely on how this thing
17:48feels. There's no way you're stepping on anything other than kind of a simulated brake pedal,
17:55something that's connected to a box that sends electronic signals to the brake booster to then
17:59push fluid to the calipers. The brake stops in this MG Cyberster are longer by about
18:05five feet in the MG Cyberster compared to a Porsche 911. I'm sure weight has a lot to do
18:10with that. Tires could be a factor as well. You just don't feel like there's any connection to
18:16the car. There's a Super Sport button on the steering wheel. If you push it, it does not
18:21activate Super Sport mode. It activates track mode, so we're in track mode. We've got traction
18:26control and ESC off, maybe. Overcooked that one a little bit. Got a brake earlier. Remember,
18:35it's an EV. It's quick. Well, chassis balance-wise, it's not atrocious.
18:49I shouldn't say not atrocious. It's okay. It's responsive to brake and throttle. I will say
18:56there's nothing about the steering that makes me love it. It is very much the epitome of everything
19:03we dislike about bad electric power steering system. I am about a full second slower in this
19:14car, which is quicker zero to 60 than I was in the 911 around the figure eight, right?
19:19A little stability control intervention there. I've got traction control off, but not stability
19:25control. As far as I can tell, you can't turn off stability control. I had some locals help me with
19:32that. It's nowhere near as neutral as the Porsche. You're not really having to worry about oversteer
19:40in this car. It will a little bit if you really provoke it, but doesn't require balancing on the
19:49edge like the 911 does. It's a grip issue, maybe a confidence issue, a balance issue a little bit,
19:56handling quality. Yeah, it's what you'd expect almost. The EV is quicker in a straight line,
20:03but it can't match the Porsche in terms of handling, in terms of braking, and certainly
20:08not in the sense of driving experience. It's nowhere near as fun. The Cyberster's 3.1 second
20:16zero to 60 run and 11.5 second quarter mile performance makes it quicker than the Porsche
20:22911 Carrera. Oh, and did I mention that it sells for just $50,000 in China, where a 911 costs more
20:29than 150 grand? MG says the Cyberster is more grand tourer than sports car, and we can confirm
20:37that it's not the most agile or engaging car on our figure-eight circuit, but it is dang impressive
20:43in a straight line. The quickest car we tested in China by a metaphorical mile is the Xiaomi
20:51Su7 Max. This Tesla Model 3 performance competitor makes a monstrous 664 horsepower
20:59and 618 pound-feet of torque from two motors driving all four wheels. It's another heavyweight
21:06at 4,861 pounds, but Xiaomi hides the weight far better than NIO thanks to that extra power
21:13and skilled chassis engineering. I'm in the Xiaomi Su7. This is a kind of Model 3
21:19performance competitor, really. Let's see what she'll do zero to 60.
21:23Oh, my God. The squeeze on your chest. Zero to 60 in 2.68 seconds. Quarter mile in 10.71.
21:38That is massively quick. 128 miles per hour in the quarter mile. This thing makes about
21:46673 horsepower, if my memory is right. More than 600 pound-feet of torque, and it goes in a straight
21:52line. You can see the influence from a Tesla Model 3 in this interior. This horizontal screen,
21:59dual phone chargers underneath, large glass roof overhead, but there's some real big differences
22:08as well. I've got a nice instrument cluster display here, and I've got a nice instrument cluster
22:14instrument cluster display here, a head-up display. These materials are so much nicer than what you'll
22:21find in a Model 3. There's so much more style going on. It is more expensive than the Model 3
22:26dual motor we have here, and that seems like a pretty incredible deal to me. Let's do some brake
22:32stops now. A little bit of lock-up and then a little bit of a release. I'm getting a pop-up
22:43warning. I can't read that. I would not be surprised if that has something to do
22:55with the brake heat. I did confirm this is a brake temperature warning, which means we're
23:00two for two in this electric sedan comparison we're doing on getting brake temperature warnings
23:09without doing that much to abuse the brakes. Yeah, we're stopping from some high speeds,
23:14but we're not doing a ton of stops here. We're doing three, four from 60 miles per hour,
23:20one or two from 100 miles per hour, and then maybe a half-dozen laps of our figure-eight course.
23:28If you're going to be a performance car, if you're going to offer 700 horsepower and you're going to
23:33do zero to 60 in less than three seconds, you got to back it up with brakes that can stop the car.
23:39People are going to take these to autocrosses. They're going to track them. Maybe not everybody.
23:44You got to do that development work. In addition to a sport plus mode, this car has a master mode
23:50where you get to adjust all these different configurations. There's a drift mode. There's
23:55the ability to adjust the torque for an app, the ability to adjust the regen braking for an app.
24:02There are four different ESC settings, plus off. Seven different traction control settings,
24:08plus off. For the sake of our figure-eight course, I'm trying to keep things simple,
24:12so I'm leaving it in automatic torque distribution, automatic regen distribution,
24:18ESC fully off, traction control fully off. Let's go ahead and see what this car can do.
24:27There's my brake warning again. Less than half a lap in. Nice rear power bias. Lots of fun coming
24:35out of here. I'm not getting the braking I need there, so we're going to have to brake a little
24:39bit earlier, but man, it's awesome power oversteer in this car. A little bit of mid-corner understeer
24:48that you're fighting with. Hard to get the brakes quite right. Another brake warning,
24:53so I've probably got to stop it here after this lap. 24.84, though, that's quite a bit quicker
24:58than the Model 3. Obviously, this thing has a lot more power, but it's quite a bit more fun to drive
25:05based solely on the corner oversteer on exit, power oversteer. It's wild to me that all these
25:12EV companies struggle so much with keeping the brakes cool. I guess that's because in normal
25:18driving, they're only using regenerative braking, or 90% of the time they are, and they realize that
25:24they very rarely get too much heat into the mechanical brakes. But the German automakers
25:30have figured out how to make these 6,000 pounds, 600 horsepower SUVs lap the Nürburgring, a 13 plus
25:38mile long racetrack, all out, using those brakes super hard. So when we're doing these rinky-dink
25:45figure eight laps, maxing out at 80 miles per hour maybe, why is it so hard for them to figure
25:52out how to keep the brakes cool? This car is so much fun powering off the corners. It's got this
25:59great, easily controlled power oversteer. Mid-corner, you're fighting some understeer, but
26:09see this being a lot of fun for somebody who's kind of just getting into performance driving.
26:15This is fun. Gotta fix the brake heat though. Gotta fix the brake heat to be a true sports sedan.
26:232.7 seconds to 60 miles per hour. 10.7 seconds at 128 miles per hour in the quarter mile.
26:32Here's some context for that. The Su7 is as quick as a Veyron to 60 miles per hour. It is faster
26:39than a Corvette Z06 through the quarter mile, and it costs just $42,000 in China. Yet the real
26:47mind blower is that Xiaomi is known for making phones and electronics. This is the company's
26:54first car, and that's what makes China's auto industry so interesting. In a span of 10 years,
27:02Chinese cars have gone from factory-fresh jalopies to giant killers. If you like cars
27:09and technology, and yes, going fast, you've got to pay attention to what's happening in China.