+++ CANADA will impose new tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, aluminium and steel, lining up behind western allies and taking steps to protect domestic manufacturers. The government announced a 100% levy on electric cars and 25% on steel and aluminium. Prime minister Justin Trudeau unveiled the policy in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he’s gathered with the rest of his cabinet for a series of meetings about the economy and foreign relations. +++
+++ You may not have heard of DENZA , but in the next few years it could be the latest Chinese brand to take on Europe’s elite with the new Z9GT, one of its statement offerings. Auto Express first saw the car at the Beijing Motor Show earlier this year, but having gone on sale in China, I now have more information about this Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo rival. Originally launched in conjunction with Mercedes, Denza is a brand with a more premium positioning than BYD’s self-badged products, and the Chinese company has previously hinted at a European launch over the next 12 months. So far Denza’s range comprises the D9, a luxury-focused MPV that’s likely to spearhead the brand’s push beyond China, and the N7, a mid-size SUV. The Z9GT marks a major step in design and execution for Denza, though. Created under the guidance of BYD’s group design chief Walter Egger, it mixes a muscular front end with pronounced rear haunches and a fastback profile that’s not dissimilar to the look of the Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo. BYD says the design mixes “subtle yet revealing” Far-Eastern cues with simplified “Bauhaus philosophy”, and there’s no doubt that the model looks like a more global creation than the other 2 vehicles in the maker’s line-up. The car is 5.180 mm long and 1.990 mm wide; slightly larger overall than the Taycan Sport Turismo, but smaller than the latest Porsche Panamera. But the Z9GT’s wheelbase is significantly longer than both of those cars’, potentially delivering better cabin space. Not only does the Denza Z9GT use the same e-Platform 3.0 as the BYD Seal, but it also uses BYD’s ‘blade’ battery technology, with an LFP-chemistry pack measuring 100 kWh. Denza claims the Z9GT can offer 460 km of range. There will be several versions of the Z9GT, but the most powerful will use a tri-motor powertrain with one 313 hp electric motor on the front axle and two 328 hp motors on the rear for a total output of around 1.000bhp. Denza claims this allows for a 0-100 kph time of 3 seconds. Rear-wheel independent steering allows the Z9GT to ‘crab walk’ as well. Along with the ability to drive sideways (in case of tight parking spots), this function also means the Z9GT comes with a tiny turning circle of 4.2 metres. Yangwang (one of BYD’s other sub brands) has already displayed this technology in its U8 off-roader. The Z9GT also features an adjustable ride height by up to 50 mm, making it suitable for ‘racetracks and mountain roads’ according to Denza. BYD’s Beijing show car didn’t have a functioning interior, but the company has now revealed what the cabin looks like. There’s a huge central touchscreen on the dash which is flanked by 2 further screens: 1 for the driver and 1 for the passenger. 2 smartphone chargers can be found on the centre console and above there’s a dual panoramic roof. The front seats feature zero-gravity functionality which lays them almost flat and there’s even 2 fridges: 1 for the front occupants and 1 for the rear. Denza could well be the second BYD brand to reach UK showrooms. The company’s executive vice-president Stella Li has indicated that BYD plans to badge its Fangchengbao models as Denzas for Europe, boosting the offering to include chunky off-road-focused plug-in hybrid SUVs alongside the likes of the Z9GT. The Z9GT will be priced around €75.000 in the Netherlands. +++
+++ JLR will reinvent the ailing DISCOVERY brand for its 6th generation by repositioning it in its own “unique territory” and moving it away from its Defender sibling, which has been “cannibalising” sales. The current Discovery has been on sale since 2017, making it the oldest model in the Land Rover stable. It is also the slowest-selling, notching up only 16.750 global sales last year, almost half that of the Discovery Sport. Despite the Discovery making up just 4% of JLR’s total sales, the British firm remains committed to bringing it back for another generation and will focus efforts on more clearly defining the Discovery’s positioning around its “family adventures” values. Discovery and Defender brands boss Mark Cameron said the repositioning will need to move the Discovery away from its Defender sibling, which offers comparable refinement and space with a broader spread of engines, trims and body sizes. The Defender’s 110.367 sales in 2023 were more than six times higher than those of its Discovery sibling. “If you look from a product perspective, Defender came in and sat quite squarely on top of Discovery and cannibalised a lot of that business”, Cameron said. JLR will attempt to set Discovery apart by moving it into a new space, possibly by adopting some MPV design elements. The Volkswagen ID.Buzz, for example, has been touted as a potential reference. A clean-sheet design brief could even spawn something as radically different to today’s model as the Mk1 Range Rover Evoque was from the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport. Discovery will become 1 of 4 stand-alone brands alongside Range Rover, Defender and Jaguar. Becoming its own entity will give the Discovery brand a renewed lease of life, said Cameron, because all 4 of JLR’s brands are currently unintentionally competing with each other owing to their shared retail footprint. He said: “Recreating what Discovery stands for, we absolutely have to make sure it sits in a really unique territory”. JLR is likely to base the next-generation Discovery on its versatile MLA platform, which underpins the current flagship Range Rover and can accommodate both ICE and electric set-ups. JLR has confirmed plans for electric Land Rovers by 2026 and it is expected that the Discovery 6 will be one of them. However, the company has recently increased investment into versatile vehicle architectures (from € billion to €21 billion) in light of fluctuating EV demand and doubled down on the importance of plug-in hybrids as a transitional technology. This raises the possibility that the Discovery will continue to be available with ICE power. Given the versatility of the MLA platform, JLR may decide to offer the Discovery with a choice of hybrid and electric powertrains, like it is doing with the Range Rover. The 2025 electric Range Rover will give a strong indication of what to expect technically from a Discovery EV. That car will use an advanced 800V electric architecture for rapid charging and JLR has promised its performance will be comparable to that of the existing V8 Range Rover; both on and off road. Crowning the repositioned Discovery brand will be a new halo model. It is being developed by JLR’s SVO bespoke division, the team responsible for the Defender Octa and Range Rover SV. Like those cars, the Discovery flagship will have its own new bespoke performance nameplate, as part of JLR’s continued push to put distance between its 4 brands. SVO boss Jamal Hameedi said the car will be positioned with “its own special interpretation of what flagship means” for the Discovery brand. This design freedom is a result of the division’s clean-sheet approach, which means “we can do whatever we want; we’ve broken the chains of the formula”, said Hameedi. However, such freedom can be “a little unnerving”, he added, as well as “really exciting… because you can go in completely different directions” from before. “It is challenging because you’re innovating and creating as you go along”, said Hameedi. “For example, if we would have done the Octa as an SV, we would have had a formula to what we needed to do. But this is not an SV so we had to change the rules”. Special-edition flagships also give JLR another way to boost profit margins, making them a crucial source of revenue generation for future product development, according to JLR UK boss Patrick McGillycuddy. Currently, the average price of a JLR model is €105.000. “We limit the volume to give these cars a special appeal, but they’ve also got to be incredible things: incredibly well engineered”, he said. +++
+++ MCLAREN boss Michael Leiters believes that the British luxury supercar maker can succeed much like Ferrari has, but in a somewhat different way. “We have one element in our brand, and it’s belonging”, Leiters, who has been at the helm of McLaren for 2 years after 8 years as Ferrari’s CTO, said in an interview during Monterey Car Week. “We want to have people here. We speak with everybody. No arrogance”. That could be read as a not-so-veiled swipe at Ferrari, given that the Italian luxury sports car manufacturer is notorious for secrecy, invite-only events, and only selling new vehicles to current or favoured customers. At the same time, McLaren is following a formula Ferrari uses to huge success: Make distinctive cars and sell fewer of them at higher prices to create scarcity and pricing power. “We don’t want to copy anybody, not Ferrari, not Lamborghini or Porsche — nobody”, he said. “The achievement the company has done on the brand and on the product is fantastic. We have to build on that and to develop that to attract more prospects and more customers to our business”. McLaren has suffered from a slowdown in sales recently, in addition to a glut of cars pushed out in past years depressing residual, or used, prices in the secondary market. Leiters said the company, which as of March is wholly owned by the sovereign wealth fund of Bahrain, is now more focused more on the new Artura hybrid and its 750S supercar. “I think the most important thing is that we are now more, let me say, customer- and product-oriented”, Leiters said. “We don’t want to always supply the market”, meaning McLaren aims to give the market just under what it needs to spur demand. “We are very sensitive to that; we are building up our residual values. Residuals have come have come back significantly”, Leiters said. “Relative to other brands, we are recovering”. McLaren sold 5.000 cars globally in 2019. This year the figure is expected to be about 3.500. Leiters highlighted that the Artura sports car adds significant performance with very little added weight, something crucial in the supercar business. Leiters also said that McLaren may also introduce an SUV, or “shared performance vehicle” as he calls it, that could broaden its customer base. Leiters added that the spirit of openness is also embraced by McLaren’s Formula One race team, which he says is the “most liked” team on the grid. The McLaren F1 team is in the midst of a resurgence, winning on track and beating Ferrari in recent months. Ferrari, which was originally created for racing nearly 80 years ago (and started selling road cars to fund the race team), has been smarting from a series of disappointing performances on the track. The concurrent prominence of F1 in the US has helped boost McLaren in its most important sales region. Nonetheless, Ferrari keeps selling its luxury sports cars (at envious margins to boot) and has been a darling of the automotive investment world. Leiters and McLaren hope the recent success of its F1 team and a more inclusive attitude towards fans and potential customers translates to sales success at its showrooms. +++
+++ Just last year we saw the MERCEDES GLS receive its mid-life update with new exterior design, interior technology and revised powertrains. Now it seems like the German firm isn’t finished with its BMW X7 rival as it looks to tweak the GLS even further. Spy shots indicate the 2025 modelyear GLS will acquire a new front end, but in a similar fashion to the AMG GT 4-Door facelift earlier this year, that looks to be all for the exterior changes. We can expect the new headlights clusters will be a little more angular than the current car’s, mimicking the GLC and GLE’s front end design language. Expect the grille and the lower section of the front bumper to be altered for the 2025 facelift as well. A new set of alloy wheel designs usually arrives with an updated Mercedes model. Despite being the flagship SUV of Mercedes’ internal-combustion engine range (G-Class aside), the GLS hasn’t adopted the brand’s latest interior technology. There’s no ‘Hyperscreen’ like we’ve seen in the all-electric equivalent to the GLS, the EQS SUV, nor is there a ‘Superscreen’ from the E-Class. With this new facelift it’s possible Mercedes will look to replace the twin 12.3-inch displays with a more impressive set up. As for the engine range, I suspect this will be unchanged: 350 diesel. 450 diesel, 450 petrol and 480 petrol. The Maybach version gets a 572 hp 4.0-litre V8 mild-hybrid while the AMG 63 version has an even more powerful V8 with 612 hp. +++
+++ NISSAN remains committed to an electric-only line-up in Europe by 2030 despite the slowdown in EV sales growth, but the firm’s Europe sales chief says it will need flexibility in the coming years. The Japanese firm last year committed to phasing out its combustion and hybrid models in Europe by the start of the next decade and said all new models launched in the region will be EVs. Nissan is currently working on EV successors to the Qashqai, Juke and Leaf (all of which will be built in Sunderland) along with an electric Micra. Its existing EV line-up consists of the Ariya and the Leaf. A recent slowdown in the growth of electric car sales has prompted some car manufacturers (such as Audi, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche) to scale back their EV ambitions. But Mayra González, Nissan’s Europe sales chief, said: “Our business plan is very clear: we want to achieve 100% electric sales by 2030 in Europe. The key is, from now until 2027, we need to think how to best balance the portfolio between EV, combustion and hybrid. We see in Europe a lot of inconsistency among countries in the way electrification is progressing and we need to provide vehicles that are aligned with that progression”. She added: “A balanced model portfolio will be key. But our strategy on electrification is clear”. However, González did admit that the uncertainty has created challenges for Nissan. “We need to understand that electrification is not only about technology: it’s about incentives, government, timing”, she said. “There are many things behind that could accelerate or could stop it. So we need to see how this evolves”. Nissan has yet to disclose launch dates for its next-generation EVs, but it is currently expanding and upgrading its Sunderland production facility in readiness. Although it is not yet known if there is the potential for both combustion and electric modelsto be built on the same production line, François Bailly, Nissan’s Europe planning chief, hinted that existing combustion and hybrid (badged e-Power) models could still have a long life. “You have seen the new Qashqai”, he said, referring to the recently facelifted version. “This is the third-generation Qashqai and we have never invested so much in the Qashqai. So investing in e-Power? Yes. Continuing? Yes. For how long? We’ll see”. +++
+++ We’ve only just seen the covers come off the wild new Nevera R, but RIMAC has also now given us insight into its next project: a single-seater that’s designed to conquer both Le Mans and Formula One cars. Mate Rimac, the CEO and founder of Rimac, divulged some tidbits on the new project while unveiling the Nevera R at Pebble Beach. “Nevera R is here to push the limits in road cars. But we have been working simultaneously on another project related to this vision”. “Picture this with me: a Rimac single seater that’s going to be faster than any race car for most tracks. Faster than Formula 1, faster than Le Mans”, he added. Details remain slim on the project, but to put that claim into context the fastest overall time around the Nurburgring belongs to the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo: a Le Mans car from 2018 with a time of 5:19.55 minutes. The fastest road car meanwhile is the Mercedes-AMG One with a time of 6:35.18 minutes. In order to beat not only the latest Le Mans cars, but Formula One cars too, Rimac will likely utilise the same all-electric, quad-motor set up from the new Nevera R, which produces 220 hp more than the standard Nevera at 2.136 hp. We’ve not yet seen a single-seater based on the Nevera’s platform, but we have seen the flexibility of the architecture in relation to the Pininfarina B95 and its roofless, speedster-style body. With one fewer seat the single-seater will no doubt be lighter, but we suspect plenty of aerodynamic changes to promote downforce will be in store. +++