The name "Z9 GT" may not be unfamiliar to some people.
In 1999, at the Frankfurt Motor Show, BMW unveiled the Z9 Gran Turismo, a two-seat convertible supercar concept.
Adhering to the cutting-edge and pioneering design concept of the Z series, the BMW team changed the previous straight and regular lines to incorporate more round and bumpy line elements, and visually pursued the magnification of the "Z9 GT" sports posture.
The controversial combination of elements at the time did not prevent the design of BMW’s "Z9 GT" from becoming a classic. Although the final "Z9 GT" concept car was not included in mass production, four years later, BMW reinstated the "Z9 GT" personality and elegant design temperament on the new 6 Series codenamed E63.
It can be regarded as a pity that the "Z9 GT" was not mass-produced in another way.
Although it was not released, it is coincidental that the "Z9 GT" still has some fate with China.
The designer of the BMW Z9 GT is former BMW design director Chris Bangor, and this is also his first design work after joining BMW.
About half a year ago, Chris Bangle, who had been away from the automotive design industry for two years, was invited to China and became a design consultant for Xiaomi after seeing the appearance of the Xiaomi SU7.
It was also in China that Tengze rebranded the "Z9 GT" and named its first flagship hunting car the Z9GT. The "Z9 GT", which once left a light mark in the history of the automotive industry, has finally found its own production model 20 years later.
Fate is amazing.
Last night (August 20), Tengshi Automobile officially released the Z9GT & Z9 sedan version in Shenzhen.
Positioning D-class intelligent luxury flagship sedan, pre-sale price 339,800, and provide plug-in hybrid, pure electric two energy forms, 5 model versions, including:
Z9GT & Seat Edition Z9:
Easy three-way plug-in hybrid version (three motors + 2.0T special plug-in hybrid engine)
1100 4WD Pro Edition: 339,800
1100 4WD Max Edition: 369,800
1100 4WD Ultra Edition: 419,800
Easy three-party pure electric version (CLTC pure electric battery life 630km)
630 4WD Pro Edition: 359,800
630 4WD Max Edition: 389,800
Zhao Changjiang, the chief co-creation officer of Tengshi Brand, revealed to us:
In early September, the Z9GT will start a national test drive activity and complete the listing in the second half of the year, ready for delivery; the sedan version of the Z9 is expected to be launched in the fourth quarter of this year.
Tengshi Z9GT: "Easy Tripartite" debut
The road to new energy luxury, how to go more smoothly and steadily, we found that new energy luxury brands need to offer different things, find their own unique secrets, traditional luxury look at the car logo, new energy luxury look at technology.
In the national auto market over the past 10 years, the market share of Chinese brands has risen year by year, reaching 61.9% in the first half of this year. New energy and domestic independent brands have become the mainstream players in China’s auto market.
However, during the same period, the market share of Chinese brands in the national luxury car market was about 34.7%. At a time when new energy is on the rise, Wang Chuanfu believes that Chinese brands have "great potential" in the new energy luxury market.
Among them, the large-size luxury market is an important track with rapid growth.
In 2022, the national large-size luxury car sales were about 960,000; the following year, this data achieved a year-on-year increase of 52%, reaching 1.46 million, and sales increased by nearly 500,000 new cars.
The Z9GT has become a key model for Tengshi to impact the large-size luxury market.
On the Z9GT body, BYD’s technical team integrated Easy Tripartite, Eye of the Gods, DiLink, and Cloud Carriage suspension technologies.
The first is the optimal solution for the three-motor power layout: the Z9GT will be first equipped with a new three-party technology platform, which is also the first technology platform in the world to achieve independent driving of three motors and independent steering of two motors at the rear wheel.
The "Easy Tripartite" project started in 2020. BYD has invested 5 billion R & D expenses. The entire technology platform consists of three parts: power architecture, control architecture, and vehicle intelligent architecture.
In terms of power architecture, the Z9GT realizes the unification of plug-in hybrid and pure electric dual platforms, which is also the only architecture in the world that realizes plug-in hybrid and pure electric with the same platform:
* Front driver source part:
Pure electric platform: the peak power of the front drive motor reaches 230kW, the peak torque is 430N · m, the maximum speed is 20500rpm, and the comprehensive working condition efficiency reaches 92%.
Plug-in mixing platform: high-efficiency EHS electric mixing system, comprehensive working condition efficiency 92%, maximum speed 20000rpm, peak power 200kW, peak torque up to 315N · m
2.0T high-efficiency engine for plug-in mixing: from the same source of fifth-generation DM technology, rated power 152kW, maximum torque 325N · m, maximum compression ratio of 13.4, thermal efficiency of 44.13%, achieving the highest thermal efficiency in mass production at the same level, reducing vehicle noise by 11.8db
* Plug-in hybrid, pure electric dual electric control assembly with the same platform: using silicon carbide double-sided calcined junction design, the efficiency is increased to 99.8%
It is worth mentioning that BYD also pioneered the industry’s first plug-in hybrid, pure electric CTB battery structure.
Lian Yubo, president of BYD Automotive Engineering Research Institute, introduced to us:
The pure electric CTB is the fusion of the battery and the body system junction, while the plug-in hybrid is the multi-dimensional fusion between the exhaust, body and other systems. BYD has realized the plug-in hybrid blade battery sandwich structure, which is equivalent to the pure electric battery pack. It is both an energy body and a structure, ensuring the safety of collisions.
The maximum charging power of the Z9GT pure electric version battery reaches 270kW, and the SoC 30% -80% time is 19 minutes; the SoC 30% -80% time of the Z9GT plug-in hybrid battery can also achieve 19 minutes.
Under the unification of the dual-platform power architecture, with three motors as standard, the Z9GT has nearly 1,000 horsepower, including:
The zero-hundred acceleration time of the plug-in model is 3.6s, and the NEDC feed fuel consumption is only 5.6L. The zero-hundred acceleration time of the pure electric platform model reaches 3.4s, and the 100-kilometer CLTC power consumption is only 15.8kWh.
At the level of power architecture, Tengshi has re-established the dual benchmark of power and energy consumption for D-class luxury cars.
Followed by the control architecture, empowered by the rear-wheel dual-motor independent steering technology, the Z9GT series is equipped with a rear-wheel steering function with a standard steering angle of 20 degrees, which is also the largest steering angle in the world.
Not only does the Z9GT steer to a large angle, but the rear wheels also support co-directional, reverse, internal and external adjustment.
Based on this, TENSE has achieved the flexible performance of the A0 class in the space of the D-class car: the turning radius of the Z9GT is only 4.62m and the diameter is about 9.24m. This result is also the shortest turning radius of the D-class car in the world.
The Z9GT industry pioneered the "compass turn-around". When dealing with narrow turn-around roads, the vehicle can support the locking of a single front wheel, and it is infinitely close to completing the "in-place turn-around" operation of Easy Sifang, solving the problem of the D-class car with a 5-meter car length dealing with narrow urban and rural roads.
In addition to being more flexible, Easy Three’s technology also makes dynamic driving safer.
Z9GT supports dynamic safety functions such as intelligent chassis vector control, 140km/h high-speed tire burst stability control, internal eight-brake stabilization, intelligent crab row and low-attachment road stabilization.
In the official test, the Z9GT’s elk test score reached 93.6 km/h, successfully challenging the world’s fastest elk test speed and breaking the world record.
Finally, there is the intelligent architecture of the entire vehicle.
The Z9GT is equipped with a total of 33 smart driving sensors, including:
LiDAR * 2
Millimeter wave radar * 5
Ultrasonic Radar * 12
Camera * 14
Yang Dongsheng, president of BYD Automotive New Research Institute, believes that the current mainstream human-like intelligent driving can only be regarded as narrow intelligent driving, and after joining the coordination of Xuanji architecture, BYD can achieve true generalized intelligent driving.
Yang Dongsheng’s generalized smart driving refers to BYD’s new BAS3.0 + system. On the basis of the original 3.0, the BYD smart driving team has added nearly 100 kinds of sensors and carried out "end-to-end" processing on the architecture for the first time.
The Z9GT will be equipped with the BAS3.0 + superhuman driver assistance system for the first time. In the announced launch rhythm:
BAS3.0 + can be mass-produced to deliver high-speed pilot, automatic parking and AEB automatic emergency braking functions. At the end of this year, it will push the national city pilot, valet parking, and high-speed flat tire stability control functions. It is expected that in Quarter 1, 2025, the Easy Three-way Parking and Extreme Elk functions will be fully updated.
Another "9" of Dengshi
Wang Chuanfu once described the particularity of the Tengshi brand as follows:
Tengshi is a brand born on the shoulders of giants.
In 2010, Mercedes-Benz and BYD each invested 50% to jointly establish the Tengshi brand. Relying on Mercedes-Benz’s luxury heritage and BYD’s accumulated Sandian technology, the mission of Tengshi since its birth is to explore the domestic pure electric luxury market.
The qualifications of Tengshi are not new even if they are new:
In 2014, the first pure electric model of Denza was launched in Beijing, and models such as the Denza 300, 400, and 500 were successively launched
In 2019, TENSE launched the Concept X at the Shenzhen Auto Show
In the same year, based on the concept of Concept X, Denza launched the new SUV Denza X
In that era of domestic new energy, Tengshi’s layout of luxury pure electricity was ahead of its time.
But "pioneering" is a difficult thing, since 2014, the first model of the market, the cumulative sales of the six years of the company is only 14,000; brand established 12 years, the cumulative loss of the company reached 5.20 billion yuan.
In 2021, Mercedes-Benz decided to end the joint venture project of Daimler and sign a share transfer agreement with BYD, changing the share ratio of the two parties from 5:5 to 1:9, which basically announced the withdrawal of Mercedes-Benz, and Daimler also changed from a "child of Daimler and Mercedes-Benz" to a "single parent child".
Staggering and bumpy, this is the 1.0 era of the Tengshi brand.
The turning point took place in 2022, when Tengze Automobile released the brand’s first MPV model, the D9, and offered both pure electric and plug-in power forms.
Extreme Krypton has an impressive slogan: Don’t build boring cars.
In 2021, Extreme Krypton released the brand’s first model, 001, which was positioned as a pure electric hunting car. It did not choose to cut into the most mainstream pure electric track. At that time, Extreme Krypton was considered an unusual path and opened up a niche track. Ultimately, Extreme Krypton became famous with the 001.
Tengshi, in fact, is also.
Before the D9, most people were not optimistic about the prospects of domestic MPVs. At that time, the domestic MPV market had two distinct characteristics: small share and strong brand solidification. This also means that the D9 needs to face the most intense competition in the 5% volume market.
But very similar to Extreme Krypton, Tengshi’s sword went sideways and also worked:
In the first full month of delivery of D9 listing, Tengshi handed over a total of 3451 new cars, and the average price of transactions broke through 400,000 and came to 415,000
In 2023, Denza once broke into the top three sales rankings of new forces with the D9
In the middle of the same year, the D9 replaced the Buick GL8 as the domestic MPV monthly sales champion (domestic new energy MPVs achieved a sales overtake for joint venture MPVs for the first time).
By the end of 2023, nearly 120,000 new cars had been delivered for the D9 single model
The construction of unconventional explosive products has become the key to Tengshi breaking the situation, and has also helped Tengshi gain a foothold in the fiercely turbulent new power market.
After leaving Mercedes-Benz, Tengshi has lived better, which can be roughly divided into the 2.0 era of Tengshi.
It is naturally encouraging that the D9 has become an explosive product and a domestic new energy MPV. But then, the second question facing the D9 is – how to prove that the success of the D9 is not accidental?
The success of the D9 has not been replicated in other models of the DENSE as hoped.
The two new cars both sold "halberds" for different reasons:
Sales of six/seven-seat SUV N8 were less than 500 units during the year; the crossover model N7 sold nearly 2,000 new cars during the year, with an average monthly sales volume of less than 1,000 units.
Zhao Changjiang, chief co-creation officer of Tengshi Automobile, once said in an interview: The annual sales target of Tengshi Automobile in 2024 is 200,000, and Tengshi will release 3 flagship new cars during the year, and the product series will be expanded to 6 models.
As of the end of July this year, the car has sold a total of 69,900 new cars. More than half of the year, the sales target of the year is about 34.95%. To achieve the sales target, in addition to D9, the car needs to open up new sales growth sources.
The Z9GT series is one of the three flagship new cars of Tengshi Automobile. Before the launch of the third "9" series model, Tengshi will rely on the Z9 and D9 to form a "double 9 flagship" to maintain the average transaction price while digesting sales pressure.
The Z9GT is not only a "new" design concept, but also an innovation in the product line.
With the release of Z9GT, Tengshi will enter a new era of 3.0.