► Denza is aiming at Europe
► It begins with the Z9 GT
► But will its plan work?
Eurocentric evidence would suggest that the automotive industry is on its knees. Although the UK market saw marginal year-on-year rises in new car sales in March, they’re still way below pre-pandemic levels.
It’s the result of many factors intersecting: the cost-of-living crisis, global conflicts, tariffs, and a lack of consumer confidence in a regulation-driven push towards electric cars. The upshot is that most established European car manufacturers are feeling considerable pain.
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In March, a Chinese car became the UK’s best-selling model for the first time, in the form of the Jaecoo 7. It’s a big deal: a brand that didn’t exist on these shores until January 2025 is already making life tough for big names like the Kia Sportage, Ford Puma and Nissan Qashqai.
And that is no anomaly. Data will tell you that multiple brands from China are quickly rising into mainstream consciousness. Your eyes will tell you they’re appearing in just about every supermarket car park you visit.
BYD uses much the same formula and is also enjoying huge success, in a slightly different way. No one model has taken a headline-grabbing position on the model sales charts, but its diverse range has been attracting considerable interest, with a very healthy 21,337 cars registered in the UK from January through to the end of March. As a manufacturer, its UK market share is currently better than Renault, Mazda, Citroën, Honda, Dacia and Suzuki. For a brand that only seriously entered the passenger-car market in 2023, that is no mean feat.
Although the exact pricing of the new shooting brake/estate has yet to be confirmed, it’s likely to launch at around £95,000 for the hybrid version and £105,000 for the full EV. With a peak output of around 1140bhp, a quoted range of 373 miles, dual-chamber air suspension, lavish cabin equipment and the ability to go viral on TikTok with a crab-walk feature, the EV may sound expensive but it offers a lot. For similar money you can get a Porsche Taycan 4S with a lot less power and a lot less equipment.
For all the developments in the last decade, range and convenience remain key points to EV buyers. Perhaps critical to the success of Denza will be a generational leap BYD is gambling on with its new charging network.
The Denza Z9 GT supports 1500kW ‘Flash’ charging, dramatically surpassing every other car on the UK market, allowing for a 10-97 per cent charge in just nine minutes. Brilliant in theory – and BYD plans to make sure customers can get the benefit in reality.
It aims to introduce 300 Flash locations across the UK by the end of 2026, at Denza dealers and other locations, for a total of 600 charge points. If all goes according to plan, they will be the most powerful chargers publicly available in the UK.
It’s an ambitious goal, given that there are currently zero Flash chargers in the UK, but one that would be hard to doubt BYD on, given its habit of making the impossible possible.