[0:06]Oh, yeah. Question: What's quicker than a Lamborghini Aventador? Charges faster than you can drink a cup of tea and has more technology than a local Best Buy. Answer: a Denza Z9 GT. What's a Denza Z9 GT? What are those? No, seriously, what are those? The Z9 GT is a premium car available as a hybrid or fully V. It's from Denza, a new Chinese brand that's a spin-off of BYD, a bit like Lexus is to Toyota. And it's in direct competition with a host of European premium brands. Think of it as China's answer to BMW, Mercedes, Audi, and Tesla, but is it better? Today I'm testing the fully electric version, and on paper it is really bloody good. It's got a massive 122 kilowatt-hour battery pack, it's got a range of 600 kilometers, and unlike a lot of its European rivals, it is really, really bloody fast. Only problem is, I've only got about three hours with the car, so we better get on the road. Let's do it. Oh, door opens automatically. Oh, and now it's trying to kill me. Easy, easy. Will it close automatically? Yes.
[1:26]Right, let's talk money. This Denza Z9 GT will set you back 115,000 euros, or in British pounds, it's going to be about 105,000 pounds. Quite a lot of cash. The hybrid will be a little bit cheaper, but still, very punchy. However, it might be worth it when you think about the performance you're getting. The EV is powered by three electric motors, two at the back, one at the front, and the power these motors produce is off the charts. Get this right. It will produce 1,156 PS and 1,200 Newton meters of torque. That's similar power and torque to an Aston Martin Valhalla, for goodness sake. That's not me making a mistake, that's what Denza are claiming. The one question I have, though, is, does it put the power down when you launch it? Launch control. I'm actually in race mode, brake, gas, send. Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
[2:29]That is, that is unnecessarily fast. My goodness.
[2:35]Yeah, no, I don't doubt the power whatsoever. I am very impressed that it can put the power down. And what's interesting is I've driven the Lotus Emeya, Lotus's electric saloon, high performance, and that thing struggles to put its power down during launch control. This thing, effortless.
[2:56]Acceleration isn't quite as quick as some EV rivals, it'll do 0 to 62 in 2.7 seconds, meaning the Porsche Taycan Turbo S and Tesla Model S Plaid, both have a slight edge. Perhaps the Z9 GT's 2.8 ton weight, half a ton more than its rivals, plays a part here. One of the things I noticed about this car before getting in is that it is fitted as standard with carbon ceramic brakes. Which means Denza has thought about not only supplying this car with breathtaking forward performance but also making it stop effectively as well. Let's try that, shall we?
[3:32]Yeah, now the brakes are good, the brakes are good. Right, let me give you some quick first impressions about this car. It is pretty quiet in here. We've got some big wheels, you do hear some road noise, but wind noise is pretty good. Keep your eyes on the road. It is watching me, this camera here is keeping an eye on me, making sure that I'm not keeping an eye on the camera as I talk to you. That's interesting. Um, but yeah, comfortable seats. A little bit on the sporty side, very supportive, but comfortable on the whole. Good driving position, the steering is in the right place, it's not offset to one side or another, so I'm pretty comfortable with that. One of the annoying things is that it doesn't have physical door mirrors, you have to rely on these cameras, which means that when you look in your mirrors, you end up having to look down at the doors, but, uh, that's not the end of the world. I can get used to that pretty quickly, and you can actually adjust them as well, so if you move your finger, you can, uh, actually change the position of the camera. So that's quite a nice touch. And then the general ambiance of the car, I think it is, it's quite pleasant in here. Yeah. Good first impression.
[4:35]I mentioned race mode earlier, it's got loads of different driving modes, though, I was probably jumping ahead of myself. We have eco, we have normal, we have sport, and we have snow. Let's get a feel for what the accelerator is like in each of those different modes. Okay, eco, it's fast. Let's try normal. Yep, a little bit more responsive, still very fast. And then we'll go into sport. Do you know what? It's not violently responsive. It's just, it's just quick. There is a bit of a delay to when you press the accelerator and the car responding. I'm, I'm not mad at that, because what it means is that the acceleration is not like a light switch that you're, you're flicking on. There's a, there's a little bit of delay just to allow your body to prepare itself for that violent forward thrust. We'll talk about the steering and stuff in just a moment, but I think we should probably pull over and take a good look around the Z9 GT to familiarize ourselves with what we're dealing with. This is a car that can out-accelerate almost everything, but it doesn't look like a car that should out-accelerate anything. It's kind of a normal hatchback shape. Would you pay over 100,000 pounds for this? Let me know in the comments. Me, I'm not sure, because when you think about its rivals from BMW or Audi or Mercedes, their 100k plus cars normally look really desirable instantaneously. This, it's going to take a while for me to get used to. But let's look at it from a design perspective. Right, we've got these double DRLs at the side, slim headlights, and then these kind of air curtain bits lower down. This pink number plate, by the way, is mandatory in France when you temporarily register a car in this country, that's why it looks weird. And then speaking of air, these bits down here open and close to feed cooling air into the battery, which we'll discuss in just a moment. Now, this logo, I made some notes on this last night. There's a meaning to this logo. Apparently, the center is blue, showing the dream of a smarter, more elegant future through technology. The open top bit symbolizes an inclusive mindset, a welcoming, open approach to technology, and then the wings symbolize wings. Oh yeah, and Denza, that's an acronym for diverse, elegant, novel, zenith and aspirational. It's very deep. In profile, Denza calls it a shooting brake or estate, although you could argue it's closer to a hatchback, which makes it seem slightly less exotic, especially given the price. It has a waistline inspired by flowing silk. Optionally, it has cameras instead of door mirrors, rides on 20-inch wheels covering carbon ceramic brakes and yellow calipers as standard. Not to mention those automatically opening doors. And then at the back, not too much to talk about back here, very wide, got a decent stance to it. We've got these hourglass style rear brake lights, E cubed badge referring to the platform, and then the Denza Z9 GT badge, this black section in the middle, pink number plate, big spoiler up top and a couple of cameras just here to help you see what's behind you. Yeah, let me know what you think about this design. I'm still undecided. As for practicality, well, it's not the greatest. Denza say the EV version has a 495 liter boot, but to my eye, it does look a little bit smaller than that. Although some of those liters might be from the underfloor storage, which is very useful for stashing your charge cables. And on that subject, you also get a 53 liter front boot, a handy space for keeping things you don't need to access too often. Inside the back of the Z9 GT, it's quite spacious. I've got the door open because I want to show you something, look at this, press that button and it closes, like a Rolls-Royce. It also opens as well when you press the button. There you go. How cool is that? That's a nice luxury touch, I really appreciate that. And then there's loads of space in here as well, so much legroom, that seat's adjusted for me, I'm 5'11, and, uh, okay headroom, I would say. We've got a sunroof here and the blinds open and close. There we go, closing. I won't shut it completely so the light is on me, but that's nice. And we've also got reclining seats, believe it or not. Look at that. These actually go backwards and forwards. That's a nice luxury touch. Plus, these kind of thigh support areas move forward and backward as well. So, look at that, that goes down and then up again. It's not actually touching my thigh, so it's not doing anything whatsoever. Uh, maybe my legs are too long, but it's a nice idea. That's pretty cool. We've got storage for your stuff in the back of the seats. We can move this passenger seat forward and backward using these crystal controls. That's a good touch. And in the middle, we've got an armrest, two cup holders, a wireless phone charger, and some storage for whatever you want to store. Plus, this is really cool. Both of the left and the right seat also have heating and cooling, as well as massage, which you control using a touchscreen down here. Let me put on a relaxing massage. There we go. Lovely. There's so much going on back here. There's even a mirror, for goodness sake, which is lit up like a ring light, so you can do your makeup, and a nice little coat hook as well. Very cool. I also want to show you the doors from the front perspective. Um, when you press the brake, the doors close. Not just the driver door, but all the doors, and I don't think I've seen that on any car before. My camera man is currently standing by the door, but I'm going to press the brake anyway. If the camera shakes, it's because the door's trying to kill him, but watch this.
[10:28]How cool is that? Literally all the doors close and then your seat moves forward to your driving position, and then the steering wheel adjusts accordingly. That is a nice luxury touch. And speaking of luxury, it is quite pleasant in here. We've got loads of Nappa leather, that's the high-quality stuff. We've got actual real wood on the dashboard. The stitching looks very high quality. And then you've got things like crystal up here on the dashboard, crystal buttons. Yeah, oh, buttons, that's a novel thing. Physical buttons for shortcuts, I'll talk you through them, so you've got the defrosting feature, you've got your drive mode, you've got this one for charging, I guess, I don't know, you've got your hazards, your start-stop button, your suspension button, and then we've got your E cubed button for lots of different things that this car can do, which are very unusual, including a pencil compass turning mode, intelligent crab walk, e-cubed parking, and a drift mode. Hopefully we'll show you those in just a moment, but yeah, it's very pleasant. And we've got two 50 watt wireless phone chargers, you've got storage down here for your key, cup holders. This thing in the middle is a double-hinged refrigerator. You can put cool drinks in there, and it will cool it to way below freezing, so you could actually freeze ice in there. And it also heats as well, so you can keep your coffee warm. That, nice touch. Plus, no real scratchy materials, which you might find in some vehicles, so down here in the door bins, that's all decent quality leather, same goes for down here, this carpet down there. It's really nice. And then technology, that is a whole different subject and there's a whole lot going on with this car. So, you've got a driver's screen up here, which is nice and clear. You've got a huge 50 inch, or at least it looks like 50 inch to me, head-up display in front of you. And then you've got a separate passenger screen for all your media, including YouTube, karaoke, gaming. And then in the center, this massive display. And there is one downside to this, and that is the fact that by default, it has a picture of, is that Ellen Degeneres? Oh no, that's Daniel Craig. Yeah, you always have Daniel Craig looking at you. Hopefully you'll be able to change that and customize it, but that is, um, yeah, that's slightly disconcerting, isn't it? Right, back on the road.
[12:42]Okay, let's talk steering. It is quite a responsive system, you can definitely feel that it's got rear wheel steering, so the turning is pretty direct. It's not aggressive, but it's direct. Body roll is quite impressive as well, or the lack thereof, shall I say. When you go into a corner quite quickly, the car stays reasonably flat, it breathes with the road. There is a bit of lean, but it feels organic, and on the whole, well controlled. In terms of suspension, the Z9 GT uses a double wishbone front layout and five link setup at the rear, along with dual chamber air springs that can switch between hard and soft to give you a choice of sportiness or suppleness. It also has a very advanced rear-wheel steering system. This allows the rear wheels to steer in the opposite direction to the front wheels to create a very small 4.6 meter turning circle, better than a London black cab. It also allows for some interesting party tricks. This car can do something called intelligent crab walk, where all the wheels turn in the same direction at the same time to let you drive diagonally for some reason. Let me demonstrate. I hit intelligent crab walk, put it into drive, release the brake, and then just turn the wheel and the car will drive diagonally. Left or right. Now, I know this seems quite pointless, but the point of it is that if you're in an urban environment where you have to drive diagonally through cars, then this is the solution. Now, you can only do about five degrees of steering lock at a time, otherwise it cancels, but, um, yeah, intelligent crab walk. How did we ever live before this was invented?
[14:32]Another really fascinating party trick that the Z9 GT has, is something called pencil compass turn. And, uh, you know what, it's better if I just show you rather than trying to explain it. I'll pull in here. Okay. Let's say you've pulled in and you want to spin around and do a U-turn, but the space is a bit too tight, don't worry. Press pencil compass turn, and then I just drag this button there, because that's where I want it, and then hit the start button, and then the car should, in theory, just start, start spinning. And look at that.
[15:09]And I'm literally just turning on, on the spot. That is wild. And boom, we have stopped. And that means I can now pull away very, very easily without the hassle of messing about with a three-point turn. That is pretty cool. That same party trick can be used to parallel park the car. The idea is that you point the nose into the space, and then the rear wheels will drag the rest of the car into the bay. It's all very cool, but there is a penalty for overusing it in the form of tire wear. Oh, and speaking of tire wear, the car also has a dedicated drift mode. I never got the chance to try it for myself, but my goodness, this car can really throw some shapes. Right, let's talk efficiency. The Z9 GT has a flipping massive 122 kilowatt-hour battery pack, that's enormous. That's about as big as it gets in electric cars. It's bigger than the majority of its rivals. It's bigger than the BMW IX3, which has an incredible 500-mile range. It's bigger than the Mercedes CLA. It's bigger than almost anything on the market. So you might be forgiven for thinking that it has an incredible range. Spoiler alert, it doesn't really. Denza says the official WLTP range is 600 kilometers or 372 miles. Not bad, but given that a BMW IX3 can do around 500 miles with a smaller battery, it does raise some questions about this car's efficiency. However, whatever it lacks in efficiency, it more than makes up for with charging speed. According to Denza, the Z9 GT can recharge almost its entire battery in under 10 minutes. And to find out more about it, I tracked down the company's director of EV charging, Diego Perichi, to find out more. Diego, this is a prototype flash charger. What does this mean for the user? How quickly can a Z9 GT charge? So, this is actually a serious production charger, and it, uh, brings something that has never been experienced before. A fast charging experience that is comparable, if not better, with refueling, conventional refueling. Well, we know conventional refueling is a matter of minutes, so how quickly can we go from a low state of charge to a high state of charge? So, a quick top-up, typically to 70%, takes just five minutes. And a full refueling of the battery takes nine minutes. Nine minutes is very fast, the fastest I've ever heard of in an EV, so we're talking above megawatt charging levels, right? Yes, correct. And how are you doing this, because most places don't have the power from the grid, quite frankly, to provide that speed of charging? That's that's a great question. So, if we have to install thousands of chargers with such power level, we would need to build new power plants. So, we decided to do what the BYD group does best. Install in every single charging system, the most advanced batteries in the world. So, this flash charger is equipped with the blade battery second generation, that are these super advanced batteries that allow to charge and discharge very fast. And we install these systems in between the grid and the charger. In this way, we can store energy and release it just when it's needed. A very modest grid connection of few hundred kilowatt is enough to deliver a multi-megawatt charging performance. So you're using the same types of batteries that are in this car to store energy and then deliver it at high speed when the customer needs it? Correct. That's insane. Right, I think there's one thing left to do then, and that is to charge it to see exactly how fast it can top up. Yes. It turns out Diego wasn't exaggerating. During this controlled demonstration, the Z9 GT was recharged from 10% battery in very little time. No kilowatt charging figures were shown, Denza says customers don't care about such things, but the actual charging speed reached as high as 2 kilometers per second. The slowest it seemed to get during this test was 1 kilometer per second. After 4 minutes, the battery was over 75% charged, and with just over 9 minutes elapsed, the Z9 GT reached 97%. Key things to note, firstly, this car's battery isn't particularly affected by the cold. Even in minus 30 degrees Celsius, it only requires an extra 3 minutes to reach the same charge level. Secondly, these flash chargers are coming to Europe. Denza plans to have 3,000 in Europe within the next 12 months, with 300 of these coming to the UK. Right, my time with the Z9 GT is coming to an end. They've only given me a few hours in this car for some reason. Are they hiding something? Do they not want me to live with it for much longer to find something out? I don't know, I don't know, but I feel like I've got to give you a verdict based on the time that I have spent in the car and on the whole, I'm going to say, I'm quite impressed by this thing. I'm impressed by the power, I'm impressed by the acceleration, which is frankly scary. The braking is exceptionally good. The handling, from what I've experienced, is more than acceptable. The suspension feels plus. I am again going to put a massive caveat on that because I haven't driven it on UK roads. But out here on these French roads, it's actually acceptable. And the thing is full of so much technology that you can't help but be impressed by it. I mean, the amount of gadgets that you get in this thing are frankly unreal. It really does put a lot of its rivals to complete shame in that regard. I don't think it's a complete slam dunk, though, and the reason I say that is because I'm not sure the Z9 GT speaks to me on an emotional level. The cars that this is going to go up against from rival brands like Mercedes and BMW and Audi, they often speak to you on an emotional level. You look at those cars and you think, I want to drive that, I want to own that, I want to see that on my driveway. And so far, the Z9 GT isn't quite ticking that box for me. Is it the exterior design? Probably. I'm not convinced it looks special enough to warrant the price, but that's a subjective viewpoint, which can easily be argued with. What can't be argued with is the Z9 GT's trump card, its astonishing recharging speed. It's taking us to the stage now where EVs can recharge at a very similar speed to petrol and diesel. And yes, the infrastructure will need to catch up, but Denza is dragging that infrastructure kicking and screaming along with it. And that alone makes the Z9 GT worth considering if you want a premium EV and have 100 grand burning a hole in your pocket. Unlike other premium cars, which buyers often buy with their heart, this might be a premium EV you buy with your head. Because there's no debating, the Z9 GT makes a very compelling case for itself.
