Another ambitious Chinese brand you’ve never heard of is going right hand drive. Is Human Horizons’ Technology tomorrow’s BYD?

MIGHT intention by a Chinese premium electric vehicle brand with no profile - but enough tech to make Teslas look like Model Ts – to enter right-hand drive markets flag interest from New Zealand?

Human Horizons’ Technology aired its ambition at the Shanghai motor show, where it yesterday revealed the HiPhi Y (above), its third model but also the first designed and engineered from the outset with global markets in mind.

HiPhi has found significant domestic success with the X, a sports utility wagon, and the Z, a grand tourer - it’s sitting pretty as China’s most favoured premium electric SUV maker. It’s now it is looking to reach beyond China’s borders with the ‘Y’.

That’s quite a ride. The Shanghai-based marque created by tech startup Human Horizons is a fast mover even by home market standards, as it only began vehicle production four years ago and the parent did not exist until 2017.

However, the same rate of progress occurred for BYD, which has wasted no time doing well in NZ, even with just one product to show for it.

While the brand is new to automotive, the founders are not. Ding Lei and Phil Murtaugh are two former senior executives at SAIC-General Motors. HiPhi chief technology officer Mark Stanton was previously head of Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations.

The marque’s three models (above) are all built upon a common architecture. While the HiPhi Y is the first car created for global use in mind, the make says the HiPhi X is now ready for international use, beginning with sales in Europe, with focus on Germany and Norway.

However, it is the Y that is expected to stand best chance as it targets a lower price point and thus is better positioned to achieve higher sales volumes. While cars will be left-hand drive initially, production of right-hand-drive cars will follow soon after.

In a recent interview with Britain’s Autocar magazine, Stanton explained the X and Z, as “high-end, top-of-the-range cars,” have “anchored our brand at that premium level”, to the point where most of HiPhi’s conquest customers previously favoured Mercedes.

“Having established that brand up there at the higher price point, and established our technology capabilities and our premium capabilities as well, we will be introducing relatively less expensive cars and more mass-production cars,” said Stanton.

Although smaller than the tech-laden X and Z, the Y will “still deliver a very competitive level of premiumness”, Stanton told the magazine.

A lot of the technology featured on other HiPhi cars is software-based so it would not be prohibitively expensive to roll it out to cheaper models, the make says.

Human Horizons is applying the concept of three ‘smarts’: smart cars, smart roads and smart cities. “Our cars are V2X, 5G-enabled, so they are ready for those smart roads and smart city technologies already.”

There are other element, including boldness to introduce innovations not seen on many other cars. The Z has the HiPhi Bot featuring a robotic arm holding an infotainment screen with four degrees of freedom and eight-direction high-speed motion. Facial recognition is in all models and goes beyond allowing a driver to operate the car.

Says Stanton: “It can monitor your blood pressure, and just by looking at your face it can tell if you’re happy or sad. It even knows how old you are, but we decided not to put that on the display because people might get upset…”

Of course, Human Horizons was not the only home brand making big noise at the exposition.

In addition to showing off the YangWang U9 all-electric supercar and the U8 electric SUV, both of which use an active suspension system to lift up the corner to avoid damaging the brake rotors in case of tire or wheel failure, BYD also displayed a model potentially far more relevant to NZ, the Seagull electric city hatchback (below).

Set to site below the Dolphin hatch that is coming here along with the Seal sedan, with launch details for both set to be announced soon, the Seagull is designated as a low-cost entry to electric driving. Though smaller in dimension, at 3780mm long by 1715mm wide and 1540mm tall, it is stylistically an obvious relation of the Dolphin and Seal as the latest entrant into BYD’s Ocean EV family. All are the work of BYD Group head designer Wolfgang Egger - best-known for the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione, Seat Ibiza and several Audi and Lamborghini models.

Other local makes playing in the premium sector all had high-end compact and medium electric sports utilities to showcase.

Nio’s ES6 – set renamed the EC6 in Europe following a legal challenge from Audi (because of potential confusion with Audi's sporty S line) – and the Xpeng coupe-styled G6 are competitors for the same customer, though the latter also aims at the Tesla Model Y. Zeekr’s X (above) will be sold in Europe to rival the Audi Q4 e-tron, BMW iX1 and Mercedes EQA.

Among international makes, Honda’s full-electric subbrand, e:N, had the e:NP1 and the e:NS1compact crossovers on show, while Lexus gave the latest edition of LM luxury van its international unveiling. Designed to rival the Mercedes-Benz V-Class, it is going on sale next year, with Australia already signalling acceptance. There’s no word about it from Lexus NZ.

Lexus’ parent Toyota put focus on two concepts previewing bZ electric cars coming into production next year – but only in China, where they have been developed. These sports utilities – known in concept form as the BZ Sport Crossover (above) and BZ FlexSpace (below) – are expected to take the same technology path as the bZ3 sedan, also a China-only car that while announced last October has only now hit production. Although the bZ3 is based on Toyota’s e-TNGA platform used for the bZ4X coming to NZ later this year, it utilizes a lithium-ion LFP Blade battery, electric motor, and electronic control system from BYD. The battery is in 49kWh and 65kWh sizes, one model with a 135kW power output and the other with 180kW, though torque is the same, at 303Nm. Cited ranges are 517km and 616km, these based on a domestic calculation rather than the WLTP scale accepted here.

Maserati showed off the full electric version of the Grecale mid-size sports utility about to launch in NZ in petrol form (the electric, designated Grecale Folgore, will likely follow).

Mini had the revamped Aceman concept with the added feature of a digital personal assistant that takes the form of a British bulldog character called Spike. Appearing on the circular OLED touchscreen to guide users through the digital features, the character will be included in future small electric Minis. Aceman will be built in China alongside a new all-electric Mini hatchback, both on a platform developed jointly with Great Wall.

Nissan gave pride of place to the Max-Out, a new EV concept specifically designed for China, and Smart’s #3 coupe-styled full electric spots utility represents a new joint venture between China's Geely and Mercedes.