Yahoo Autos BYD's Latest SUV Can Moonwalk Across a Stage
Chinese carmaker BYD has been heavily into EVs for a long time, but it has ambitions for a more luxurious future, too. That will come under the Wangyang sub-brand, which launched yesterday with the debuts of the U8 SUV and the U9 sports car. Both are about what you would expect for halos of a new EV platform, but the U8's entrance is something you have probably never seen before.
Yes, that is a car moving completely sideways on the designed rotations of its wheels alone. Both Yangwang cars have four independent electric motors, so the U8 is capable of a "Crab walk" that would make a four-wheel-steer Hummer EV seem inadequate. Each of the four wheels is turning in a different direction, and the speed differential between them seems to be what allows the car to move sideways without all four wheels directly perpendicular to the direction of travel. As Road & Track contributor Kevin Williams put it, the car is practically moonwalking. It's a party trick, one that would only possibly be useful parallel parking on a perfectly predictable surface, but it certainly is a neat one.
Beyond that gimmick, the Yangwang U8 is fairly in line with what you might expect from the burgeoning high-end electric SUV market. Four independent motors combine for a reported combined output over 1100 hp, enough for the car to apparently reach 60 MPH from a standstill in 3 seconds. Pricing is reported to fall around ¥1,000,000, which is equivalent to slightly under $150,000.
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