Yangwang makes a play for luxury and speed in the desert with the new Altior and U9 Xtreme

BYD assembled the world’s media in Abu Dhabi to make a one-stop-shop play at capturing every facet of the luxury automotive experience – speed, ruggedness and sybaritic splendour. Hoping to knock Range Rover, Rolls Royce and Bugatti down in one fell swoop, BYD – and sub-brands Denza and Yangwang – debuted a new competitor in the superluxury sector, claimed a world speed record and demonstrated its off-road supremacy in a territory that really knows its 4x4s.

Not so much a rumble in the jungle, but an upset in the desert, was spread thinly across a four-day event, which, it transpired, was about three days more than it really needed to get the message across.

The first announcement to be made was the recent record-breaking run by the Yangwang U9 Xtreme, conducted on Abu Dhabi’s own E11 highway (closed for the purpose) just a few days earlier. With a one-way maximum speed of 503.17 km/h (312.65 mph), the U9 Xtreme can now claim to be the fastest production hypercar and fastest electric car on the market.

In deference to the Emirate’s rulers, who rather liked the fact that the record was broken in their backyard, the news was broken in the baking surroundings of a car park just outside the UAE Presidential Palace. Stella Li, BYD’s executive vice president, said a few words and a certificate was presented by a lady from Guinness World Records (an organisation clinging onto relevance and credibility by its fingertips) and we all sweated under black Denza-branded brollies as heat exhaustion trumped technical innovation.

The record-breaking U9 Xtreme roasted gently alongside us, with driver Marc Bassen standing gamely by. Even the influencer coterie, adept at stitching silk purses from sow’s ears, struggled to find something engaging to direct their DJIs at.

The U9 Xtreme’s record was crudely malleted into the global media pipeline, where everyone wants a snappy soundbite accompanied by personalised imagery to create their ten-second hot take: a colossal technical achievement was reduced to a piece of disposable clickbait.

This car is pretty much dedicated to driving very, very fast in a straight line, with special aero and unique tyres capable of withstanding the forces at play. At best, it's simply another trophy for a car collection (as well as a nicely framed Guinness certificate for BYD’s engineering department). With 3,000hp on tap, the Xtreme model is around ten times more expensive than the ‘standard’ U9, around 20 million yuan (c £2.2m). Just thirty will be made.

A celebration of speed beneath the Burj Khalifa

That evening, the assembled media made the lengthy coach journey to Dubai to attend another event, a ‘Celebration of Speed’ that might just as well refer to BYD’s approach to business as the car itself. BYD’s vast suite of products, which also includes two more sub-brands, Fangchengbao and Linghui, have all the depth and lore of a complex IP, arranged into three ‘series’ of models, Dynasty, Ocean and e Series. In the UK, the Ocean series will be the most familiar through aquatically monikered models like the Dolphin, Seal and Sealion 7, along with the Atto 2 and Atto 3, and Ti7.

Across Europe as a whole, there’s also the Atto 1, Han, Tang and Shark, with a mix of pure electric powertrains and hybrid ones – usually designated by the suffix DM-i. In China, the options proliferate, including the tiny Seagull (also known as the Dolphin Mini and the Dolphin Surf, depending on the market), well over a million of which have been sold since its introduction in 2023.

Whether it’s compact city cars, taxicabs, minivans, SUVs, pick-up trucks, saloon cars, or light trucks, BYD builds it. The business’ rapid expansion parallels China’s rise to economic and technological domination. Started as a battery company in 1995 by Wang Chuanfu, BYD Company shifted to lithium-ion battery production in 1997.

Five years later, it became the first Chinese company to become a Tier 1 supplier for Motorola and Nokia, both then at the summit of the mobile industry. Before the decade was out, BYD was manufacturing handsets for both companies; today it's the second-largest electronics manufacturer in the industry, an OEM that supplies Apple, Samsung and Huawei, among many others.

The company’s venture into the auto industry had an inauspicious start. In 2003, the company acquired Xi'an Qinchuan Automobile, a venerable auto maker by Chinese standards with origins in military equipment manufacturing back in the 1950s. BYD’s shareholders didn’t approve and the company’s stock swiftly halved.

But the company persisted, launching its first plug-in hybrid model (the world’s first PHEV), the F3DM, in 2008. Its first pure EV, the BYD E6, rolled out the following year. Today, BYD is the world’s fifth largest auto maker, with over 1 million employees, 10 per cent of which are engineers.

In 2025, the company sold 18.7m ‘new energy vehicles’ around the world (the Chinese designation for EVs and PHEVs). That figure obviously excludes the US, the world’s second largest car market, where BYD, like its fellow Chinese manufacturers, are persona non grata. This is lucky for the American auto industry, frankly, for BYD's army of engineers could probably whip up something that outperforms and undercuts the Ford F150 over a long weekend and still have time to make a couple of minivans on the side.

To the unfamiliar outsider, this combination of speed, intent and scale feels unstoppable; as the events in Abu Dhabi demonstrated, BYD is not slowing down. The Denza brand was introduced in 2010, originally as a collaboration with Mercedes-Benz. The name, derived from the word for ‘power’, has refined and distilled its line-up into premium, sporting machines, including the Z9 GT fastback and forthcoming Z sports car. The brand was launched in Europe in 2025 and landed Daniel Craig as brand ambassador earlier this year.

Yangwang is younger still. Introduced in 2023, it is BYD’s first truly premium brand. With a relatively austere line-up of just four models – the U7 sedan, U8 SUV, U9 supercar and now the Altior – Yangwang’s focus is on luxury, craft and, above all, heritage.

Beneath the Burj Khalifa’s cyclic lightshow, Stella Li took to the stage to announce the record yet again, ahead of the U9 Xtreme rolling down a catwalk amid a sea of raised smartphones. Some 3,700 friends of the brand and media from 50 countries were there to worship at the altar of speed, image, flashing lights and cheesy techno. After a performance by popular Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram and a custom light show on the world’s tallest building, we melt back into the night to find our return coach.

From celebrating speed to launching a new luxury era

The following night, Yangwang’s event team were kept busy by a third gathering, this time for the global debut of the Altior, held at Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace hotel. By this point the media contingent was starting to feel a little bit more like a rent-a-crowd than a group of trusted reporters, flown out to provide a sea of faces and a backdrop of polite applause, plus the all-important parade of glowing screens that dutifully captured and hash-tagged the proceedings (#u9xtreme, #yangwang, #thepursuitbeyond, etc, etc, etc).

Stella Li is one of the most powerful automotive executives on the planet, with an almost personality-cult-like following in her home country. She returned to the stage, this time to extol the virtues of Yangwang’s flagship, a statuesque all-electric limousine with a creation story calculated to knock the fulsome heritage of European manufacturers for six. Although Rolls-Royce's Phantom and Ghost are obvious antecedents here, Yangwang’s design team, led by former VW Group maestro Wolfgang Egger, have found a way to strike back.

An oft-used analogy from the heyday of traditional British luxury automotive design was that cars like Bentley and Rolls-Royce were akin to 'gentlemen's clubs', rolling representations of the burnished leather armchairs, polished wood panelling and deep pile carpets of the very best of Pall Mall.

Yangwang has gone one further, describing its new Altior limousine as a 'palace on wheels', drawing explicit comparisons between the forms, craft and ambience of the Altior and the traditional residences of the country’s ancient rulers. Why hark back a couple of centuries when you can draw on tradition and imagery that dates back millennia?

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The new Yangwang Altior

The new Yangwang Altior

The new Yangwang Altior

As Li says, 'a palace is built for power, for ceremony, for history. Tonight I want to show you a palace that moves. A Yangwang!' The name itself means to ‘look up’, with a logo derived from the Chinese character for ‘lightning’ or, appropriately, ‘electricity’.

Another traditional character that runs throughout the visual identity of Yangwang is the ‘ding’, an ancient form of vessel or cauldron that not only serves as a receptacle for food but for storage and ritual offering. The ding character, 鼎, is referenced in the light graphic of both the U8 SUV and the Altior. According to Li, the ding has stood for 'unity, stability, and peace for 4,000 years’.

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Yangwang Altior interior: the car will be mostly chauffeur driven

Yangwang Altior interior: the dashboard incorporates a 'gallery space'

Yangwang Altior front seats

Yangwang Altior interior design details

Yangwang Altior interior design details

Yangwang Altior Limited Edition launches the car

Having played its heritage trump card, Li doubled down on the unique Chinese craft and design elements that have found their way into the flagship, from the Suzhou embroidery originally found in the Imperial court (when 'years of work went into a single garment’) to the front grille, which incorporates 137 jewellery stones, each cut with 51 facets.

Real gold is used in the badge. Yangwang’s designers trialled no fewer than 150 leather suppliers around the world to find the right hides, while the 39-speaker stereo system includes four personally tuned speakers in each headrest, designed so that adjoining passengers can’t hear messages and notifications.

Cars like this are all about superlatives of manufacture, effort, componentry and features. There’s a fragrance dispenser on board ('a palace speaks to every sense') and what Li called the 'one-button paradise', a feature that enables all the personal settings to whirr into place when you get into the car. ‘It is a car that can take care of you,' she said. Another function, one-button privacy, will shut off the interior from the outside world. ‘Power is not being seen everywhere – power is being able to close your palace and be in peace in the middle of the city,' Li adds.

Certain elements – the coach doors, the doorhandles, the two-tone paintwork, the vertical front end, even the dashboard with its integral artwork gallery and prominent analogue clock – come straight from existing luxury playbooks. However, there’s no denying that the palace on wheels metaphor is a smart one, even an apt one. According to BYD chief designer Wolfgang Egger, the Altior exerts a 'Royal attitude' of vertical elements with 'a laid-back silhouette, a posture of timeless authority'.

Allegedly starting with 'a white sheet of paper, thanks to Stella', Egger explains how the car's identity comes from this ceremonial vessel – we extracted the symbolic core of the ding and used it in design. This is not decoration, it is heritage… thousands of years of aesthetic heritage rendered in the details.’ The interior was partly inspired by the symmetry of Chinese architecture, ‘turning every journey into a private retreat’.

Technically, we wouldn’t bet against BYD’s engineers being able to surpass the legendary ride quality of the Altior’s rivals. Amy Hu, general manager of Yangwang, sets out some of the Altior’s abilities, from its four-wheel-drive and suspension system, to the car’s emergency flotation capability (just like the U8 SUV).

The car can also do ‘tank turns’ on the spot, as well as ‘crab walk’ sideways into parking spaces, while the electrical architecture is compatible with BYD’s lightning-fast Flash Charger system. There was no word on performance figures or battery size, but a range of 1,000km-plus (miles) was quoted.

Wolfgang Egger talks Altior with Wallpaper*

Wolfgang Egger has been with BYD for exactly ten years. The silver-haired German designer now oversees a creative team of around 1,200 people, the majority of whom are based in the company’s main studio in Shenzhen. Satellite operations in Shanghai, Los Angeles and Milan supplement BYD’s vast creative output. ‘One of my motivations for coming to BYD was not to continue existing traditions but the chance to build new brands from scratch,’ he tells Wallpaper*. ‘There were mountains of opportunity from the very beginning. Ten years ago, we were just 80 people.’

Questionned as to whether the relatively conservative appearance of the Altior is a repudiation of the inherent flexibility of an EV platform, Egger clarifies the car’s role. ‘I think for super luxury, [design] cannot be too futuristic – it needs a classic touch and a balance and an attitude in the proportions,’ he says, ‘[a car like this] can’t have a sporty nose – it needs verticality.’

Inside, it’s a similar story. The Altior ‘is a real story of Chinese culture’, Egger continues. ‘There are thousands of years of history here – it’s extremely beautiful from the stitching to the ginkgo leaf logo. This car contains symbols of beauty, of luck, of attitudes to life.’ Acknowledging that the majority of owners will be taking a back seat to a chauffeur, Egger describes the Altior as having a ‘feeling of expanded space’.

As for the limited-edition launch model, the designer stresses how important it has been to draw on local tradition and symbolism. ‘You cannot do such design in a casual way. We’ve been researching Chinese culture and diving deep for many years,’ he says. ‘We have the opportunity to do this right and bring art and beauty into the car, from porcelain to the stitching patterns. Our vision is to bring a vision of Chinese culture and philosophy into the car for our customers in China and internationally.’

Out come the models and the fireworks and the bombastic light and music once again ('round of applause everyone!'), while drones whirr overhead as content is captured. Despite the glaringly obvious parallels with other manufacturers, BYD has succeeded in bringing a full-size hyper-luxury electric limousine to market before Rolls or Bentley or anyone else for that matter.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and the unkindest thing you could say about the Altior is that it looks like an AI blend of the Phantom, Ghost and maybe a Bentley or two (or even a GTA mash-up?).

Manufacturers based in Goodwood and Crewe sometimes seem to take a similar approach to litigation as the British Royal Family – ignore it and hope it goes away – but it's not hard to imagine that both companies currently have frantic ongoing WhatsApp groups of lawyers, designers and senior management. On the other hand, they might feel it’s worth taking a leaf from JLR’s playbook and look for some legal redress. We doubt it, however.

Off the beaten track

The final day was given over to yet another coach trip, this time out to an off-roading camp off the E20 highway, east of Abu Dhabi. From spots like this, which pepper the region’s deserts, recreational 4x4 driving, treks, and competitions take place, partly explaining the dominance of the high-powered SUV in the region (Toyota’s enduring Land Cruiser continues to be consider the top dog amongst local participants).

Inauspiciously, the activities on offer were rather curtailed in scope; a short drag race, an even shorter donut session, plus a 15-minute convoy up and down some nearby shallow dunes with an experienced Emirati at the wheel. The Denza B8 seemed to perform with aplomb – and very much to the driver’s satisfaction. It’s just a shame that we can’t give you our own driving impressions.

Occasional visitors to Abu Dhabi probably experience the city afresh each time around, such is the speed and dynamism of its commitment to change and renewal. Construction is everywhere. A few hundred metres across the bay from the Emirates Palace, the empty spit of land that hosted the U9 Xtreme's dusty certificate ceremony was already being scoured by earthmovers, while dump trucks unloaded a large mound of construction aggregate. Cranes are everywhere. Gehry’s posthumous mega-project, the Guggenheim, opens in just a few weeks, and scarcely any section of the inner city and coastal frontage isn’t delineated by the marks of roads and developments to come.

This is a part of the world where supercars can end up like discarded dishes at an expensive buffet, crowding the luxury auto dealerships strung out along Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road. Novelty is everything and the next best thing is always better than last week’s model.

The Altior is designed to arrest this strand of attention deficiency, if only for a moment. By summoning up four millennia of cultural history, BYD hopes to transcend one of the primary criticisms of Chinese brands, that they have no heritage. In the same way, the U9 Xtreme effectively ends the pursuit of meaningless performance metrics.

The scope and scale of BYD’s events for Yangwang and Denza might not have served up exactly what the media wanted or is used to getting. Nevertheless, Abu Dhabi was an undeniably apt location given the speed at which this company is moving.

BYD.com / Denza.com / YangwangAuto.com