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Watch: BYD’s self-driving hypercar leaps 20 ft over road spikes
By Utkarsh Sood
January 09, 2025
The Yangwang U9 is traveling at a speed of 74.5 mph (120km/h) in the test
Screengrab from Car News China
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Remember the Yangwang U9? Yeah, the same 1,287-horsepower electric hypercar from China that made headlines a few months back for doing bunny hops and spinning in a circle at a standstill. In a recently released video, the BYD hypercar is seen driving autonomously and jumping over a variety of obstacles, including road spikes like in a game of Moon Patrol.
The US$236,000 EV is sold in China under BYD’s premium Yangwang brand. Previously, it was spotted driving on three wheels and hopping around in a sort of dance thanks to its Disus X active suspension setup.
Now, in the latest clip posted to YouTube by the Chinese publication CarNewsChina, the hop-happy car has been spotted demonstrating another party trick: jumping legit obstacles while flying down the road entirely autonomously – like it has a Game Shark built in. https://www.youtube.com/embed/hW6lFowulFw?enablejsapi=1
BYD’s Yangwang U9 jumps over spike strip while self-driving in a crazy test
The U9 is seen tearing through a straight course with three obstacles. Visuals from the car’s interior show that both of the front seats are empty, implying that the car is maneuvering on its own.
The first obstacle is a massive 8-ft (2.5-m) pothole filled with water. The BYD is traveling at 74.5 mph (120 km/h) and just as it looks like it’s about to suffer some serious rim damage, it drops lower to the ground as its Disus X suspension system compresses, then springs up to launch its five-and-a-half thousand pound (2,500 kg) weight into the air.
It travels more than 20 ft (6 m) while airborne, clearing the ditch like it was purpose-built to cheat gravity.
The next obstacle, however, is every bad guy’s dream and not great news for law enforcement: a 13-ft (4-m) stretch of metal spikes – the kind of thing police use to thwart high speed chases. These spikes, which are 1.4-in (3.6-cm) tall, are followed by a similarly sized patch of brightly colored chalk stripes on the ground.
As the video shows, the U9 clears both of these remaining obstacles without breaking a sweat – and without anyone actually driving the car.
All of this is made possible courtesy of Yangwang’s Intelligent Damping Body Control in conjunction with Intelligent Hydraulic Body Control, which it says gives the U9 exceptional handling and stability.
There are many reasons why you might want a car to be able to quickly jack its wheels up and down like this thing can. Performance-wise, there’s anti-squat under acceleration, anti-dive under brakes, and anti-roll in hard, fast cornering. In daily driving, it can get low for more efficient highway aerodynamics, or pop up higher for scrape-free driveways and speed bumps. And if you’ve ever had to wedge yourself into the cockpit of a ground-hugging supercar, you’ll know that every inch of lift represents a small shred of dignity on ingress and egress.
Looking beyond the suspension, the car is powered by four electric motors that produce a ridiculous 1,287 hp and 1239 lb-ft (1,680 Nm) of peak torque. As mentioned earlier, it can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in 2.36 seconds and does the quarter-mile (400 m) in 9.78 seconds at about 140 mph (225 km/h). Top speed? Yeah, it has one: 243.54 mph (391.94 km/h) at Nordschleife.
Speaking of which, the Yangwang U9 recorded a blistering 7:17.9 Nürburgring Nordschleife lap in November 2024. That makes it faster than the Nissan GTR or Porsche’s GT2 and GT3, although not nearly as fast as the Rimac Nevera. However, because the U9 isn’t available in the European market, the time hasn’t been officially recorded on the leaderboard. Dot a few i’s and cross a few t’s, and BYD can certify the car as a production vehicle worthy of some of the fastest-ever recorded times at Nordschleife.
It’s also the second vehicle Yangwang has made that has the unique ability to float on water, just in case it doesn’t jump far enough across that river you’ve had your eye on. The first was the off-road capable U8 SUV.
The obstacle-hopping capability is impressive, to say the least. But it’s not clear whether the U9’s jumping abilities are just for marketing purposes, or whether drivers will get access to a jump button in the real world. They’d better; who needs a $236,000 hopping hypercar that only takes flight when you’re not around?
Source: CarNewsChina
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