Not content with monopolizing their home market and turning young Chinese buyers off traditional luxury brands, China’s automakers are now planning to pull the same trick in the West. The latest to make real progress in that department is HiPhi, which has announced European prices for two of its electric models, and they’re punchy enough to give Tesla pause for thought.
Even by Chinese standards, HiPhi is a relatively new brand, having been established in 2019 by Shanghai-based Human Horizons. But it’s come up with three polarizing designs to ensure its trio of EVs get noticed.
Related: New HiPhi Y EV Breaks Cover With The Weirdest Split Rear Doors You’ve Ever Seen
All three will be coming to Europe eventually, but the first to land are the X, an SUV with gullwing rear doors that’s a shameless attempt to steal the Tesla Model X’s dinner, and an aggressive four-door coupe called the Z that’s aimed at the Model S and Porsche’s Taycan.
HiPhi has released prices for both cars in Germany and also EV-mad Norway, and if we compare them with their two Tesla rivals, the Chinese cars are substantially cheaper.
HiPhi X
The HiPhi X SUV costs €123,000 in a luxurious four-seat form in Germany, or €109,000 with six seats, with HiPhi claiming that the last row can accommodate adults as well as kids. A five-seat Tesla Model X carries a €113,490 sticker in the same country and you have to add €7,000 to that if you want six seats €4,200 extra for seven chairs.
The twin 220 kW (295 hp / 299 PS) electric motors give the X the same 3.9-second zero to 62 mph (100 km/h) time as the stock Model X (HiPhi doesn’t have a Plaid rival yet), but the Tesla’s 358-mile (576 km) range does beat the HiPhi X’s 286-mile rating (460 km) by a fair margin.
HiPhi Z
Moving to the HiPhi Z sedan, which looks a bit like a customized Nissan GT-R from the front, we again get a choice of seating configurations, the five-seater costing €105,000, and the more opulent four-seat version, €107,000. The Z’s 120 kWh battery is much bigger than the 97 kWh pack in the X, so the driving range grows to 345 miles (555 km), while the 494 kW (663 hp / 672 PS) combined power output of the dual-motor drivetrain hauls the low-slung EV to 62 mph in 3.8 seconds.
The Model S trashes the Z with its 394-mile (634 km) range and 3.2-second 0-62 mph and only costs €490 more, but the HiPhi’s bold styling and an infotainment system mounted on a robotic arm that can rotate between landscape and portrait orientations is sure to sucker in a few buyers who are bored with the Tesla’s decade-old design.
HiPhi’s cars have passed their TÜV safety checks, are now available to order in Germany and Norway, and the brand is preparing to open its first sales hub at Munich airport soon. It sounds interesting, but things won’t really heat up until later in the year. The even more crucial Tesla Model Y-rivalling HiPhi Y (seen below), which also gets crazy back doors and was revealed at the recent Shanghai Auto Show, goes on sale in Europe by the end of 2023, and that’s sure to have a big impact.
Beyond that, the firm wants to extend its reach to all of the major European countries by 2027. How do you rate HiPhi’s chances?
