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YangWang, the luxury sub-brand of Build Your Dreams (BYD), is showcasing some impressive capabilities in its flagship U8 SUV it wants to float by you. The SUV has been on sale for months in China, but BYD wants to remind you that the U8 actually has an emergency mode in which it floats and can navigate back to solid ground. See more in the video below.

YangWang, which directly translates to “looking up” or “admire” is a new luxury brand under the BYD umbrella introduced earlier this year. Before it was making literal waves with its flagship PHEV, the U8 SUV, YangWang turned some heads, and some wheels at the Shanghai Auto Show.

It was there that the young luxury automaker showcased its new intelligent body control system, called DiSus, as well as unique usage of BYD’s proprietary individual wheel drive (IWD) technology platform is calls “e4.”

At the same time, the audience in China got to see the U8 perform a crabwalk feature that utilizes the DiSus system, as well as a u-turn mode that spins the vehicle 360-degrees on a dime. Not to be outdone, BYD then rolled out an all-electric supercar called the U9, that uses DiSus to dance, adjust its height, and even hop inches off the ground.

One other cool feature in the YangWang SUV in addition to its “Make a U-turn” feature, is its arguably amphibious capabilities in “Emergency Float Mode” showcased in the video below.

Credit: YangWang

Watch the YangWang U8 SUV easily cut through water

Today, BYD posted a video of a camouflaged YangWang U8 SUV performing Emergency Float Mode, which is passively triggered as a safety failsafe in deep water. 

When the vehicle’s intelligent wading detection system detects that the vehicle is floating, it automatically switches to the emergency mode, enabling driving, steering and U-turns in the water to help users reach safe land quickly. Have a look:

What’s interesting is that the YangWang U8 has already been on sale in China since April and the company website shows a brief clip of Emergency Float Mode without any camouflage (seen above), so it’s unclear why BYD chose to showcase a camo’d SUV now, but it’s still a marvel to witness.

Perhaps it was a response to this video of Tesla taking the Cybertruck out for a swim, just to remind everyone who was doing it first. We’ve seen other EVs endure deep water testing in tanks, but the U8 is genuinely floating and using its wheels as propellers in the wild. That’s pretty damn cool.

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More Cybertruck delays, GM and Hyundai break records, and a new electric classic

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More Cybertruck delays, GM and Hyundai break records, and a new electric classic

On today’s episode of Quick Charge, Tesla is delaying Cybertruck deliveries, 3rd time’s a charm for FSD transfers, EV sales are up all over, big trucks go far, and a classic electric Porsche.

We’ve got lots of Tesla news to get through today – some good, some bad, but all very much “on brand” for the electric carmaker we’ve come to know in recent years. Meanwhile, GM, Hyundai, and Kia and setting EV sales records, America’s big truck companies break ground on a new battery factory, Volvo clocks 50,000,0000 miles on its electric semis, and a classic electric Porsche 911.

Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple PodcastsSpotifyTuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded Monday through Thursday (that’s the plan, anyway). We’ll be posting bonus audio content there as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news!

Got news? Let us know!
Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show!

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China is building a mammoth 8 GW solar farm

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China is building a mammoth 8 GW solar farm

State-owned power company China Three Gorges Renewables Group will build an 8 GW solar farm as part of a nearly $11 billion integrated energy project.

To put the sheer size of the 8 GW solar farm in perspective, the three largest solar farms in the world by capacity are China’s Ningxia Tenggeli and Golmud Wutumeiren solar farms, with a capacity of 3 MW each, and a 3.5-GW solar farm outside Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. 

In addition to the massive solar farm, the $10.99 billion project will also consist of 4 GW of wind, 5 GWh of energy storage capacity, 200 MW of solar thermal, and (disappointingly) 4 GW of coal-fired power. It will be sited in Ordos, in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region, the Shanghai-listed company said in a stock filing.

China Three Gorges says that the enormous integrated energy site’s power will be dispatched to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster in northern China via an ultra-high voltage power transmission line.

The project will break ground in September and is expected to come online by June 2027.

China Three Gorges Renewables will take a 56% stake, and Inner Mongolia Energy Group will control 44%.

Read more: In a world first, China installs an 18 MW offshore wind turbine


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Hispano Suiza will do a hill climb and show off its new 1,114 hp Carmen Sagrera at Goodwood

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Hispano Suiza will do a hill climb and show off its new 1,114 hp Carmen Sagrera at Goodwood

Boutique electric hypercar developer Hispano Suiza announced it would return to the Goodwood Festival of Speed this month to showcase two of its latest vehicles. One on display will be its newest model, the Carmen Sagrera, which packs four motors that combine for 1,114 horsepower.

Hispano Suiza is a boutique automaker in Spain with well over a century of experience. Founded in 1904, the brand established a prominent reputation by producing luxury cars, aircraft engines, trucks, and weapons throughout the early to mid-1900s.

The brand has been revived in recent years with a keen focus on all-electric hypercars that deliver one-of-a-kind performance. Hispano Suiza’s venture into bespoke BEVs began in 2019 with the debut of the Carmen – a truly unique model of which only 24 examples were assembled, and no two are exactly alike.

As an encore, Hispano Suiza launched the even more exclusive Carmen Boulogne. Only five were built, and one was delivered to a customer in the US in 2023. It currently sits as one of the most expensive BEVs on the planet.

To complete the trifecta, Hispano Suiza teased a third hypercar called the Carmen Sagrera this past February as a driveable nod to its 120-year history in automotive design.

We only caught a glimpse of its massive spoiler at the time but got the full picture in June when the Spanish automaker officially debuted it to the public in Barcelona. Later this month, Hispano Suiza intends to debut the Carmen Sagrera in the UK for the first time during the annual Goodwood Festival of speed.

It is there that it also intends to do a famous hill climb in another one of its all-electric hypercars.

Hispano Suiza to compete (and show off) at Goodwood

According to news from Hispano Suiza today, it will return to the Goodwood Festival of Speed and bring along not one but two all-electric hypercars. The first will be the previously mentioned Carmen Sagrera, which will be presented to the media and authorities in the UK for the first time, including The Duke of Richmond, who founded the annual Goodwood event.

The new all-electric hypercar, piloted by former Formula 1 driver Luis Pérez-Sala, will pull out onto the stage of Hispano Suiza’s dedicated stand. The public will be able to see it up close and take advantage of a pre-sale of Hispano Suiza’s new Capsule Collection of branded merchandise.

Those hoping to see the Carmen Sagrera in action as Goodwood may be disappointed, as it will only be on display. However, the automaker shared that it intends to do a hill climb with Carmen Boulogne, which is a nice consolation.

This year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed will occur July 11-14. If you’re there, be sure to check out the new Carmen Sagrera in person and report back.

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