BYD Offices Raided Over Defender Lookalike
But we have already have a Land Rover Defender at home
Western automakers aren't just worried about Chinese brands stealing their sales in Europe. Jaguar Land Rover thinks BYD is pinching its designs too. Court-appointed bailiffs acting on behalf of the British luxury brand raided BYD's offices in the Netherlands ahead of a legal showdown to decide if one of the Chinese brand's SUVs looks rather too much like JLR's own Defender.
The SUV in question is BYD's Ti7 SUV, which was revealed in China last year, but has now made its way to Europe. The Ti7 is a big, boxy utility that looks suspiciously similar to the reborn Defender, right down to its body-color panel behind the C-pillar. Sure, it's not a straight rip-off, but place your fingers over the lights and grille, and you have to admit there's an uncomfortable similarity between the designs.
News of the raid broke at the weekend, only days before BYD and Jaguar Land Rover head to court in The Hague. But The Times reports that it happened back in August, when JLR's legal team hoped it would find documentary evidence of BYD reverse engineering a Defender before any files were destroyed.
JLR has every right to be concerned. It's not just that the Ti7 looks very similar to the Defender, but that BYD's version costs thousands less. The Chinese SUV starts at £47,995 ($64,300) in the UK, but a base Defender 110 will set you back over £16,000 ($21,500 more). European Ti7s come with a BYD "Super Hybrid" powertrain that combines a 1.5-liter inline-4 and four electric motors to generate 402 hp (408 PS). Zero to 62 mph (100 kmh) takes 4.8 seconds, and the 35.6 kWh battery is claimed to deliver 74 miles (119 km) of range. As a package, it's a real threat to JLR.
Not the first time
The Defender isn't the only JLR SUV with a doppelgänger. The 7 SUV built by Chery's Jaecoo brand has been dubbed the "Temu Range Rover" for its low price and visual similarity to the Range Rover Freelander and Evoque. The recipe has been a big hit with European buyers, who snapped up so many SUVs that the Jaecoo 7 became the first Chinese vehicle ever to top the UK car sales chart. But so far JLR hasn't instigated legal action.
It did, however, take China's Jiangling Motor Corporation (JMC) to court in 2016 over the similarity between that automaker's $19,000 Landwind X7 and JLR's own $54,000 first-generation Evoque. The court ruled JMC had copied five distinct Evoque design details and found in JLR's favor, forcing an immediate halt of X7 production. JLR argued that the X7 was confusing customers. Though maybe they were just confused about why JLR was asking them to pay more than double for the real thing.
The Landwind X7 was one of dozens of Western designs copied by Chinese brands who were struggling to find their own identity in the early years of the new millennium. Others included the Zotye SR8, a homage to the Porsche Macan. But it's not only the vehicle designs themselves that get the Xerox treatment. Earlier this year, Great Wall Motor's (GWM) chairman Wei Jiangjun publicly apologized after his company published an advert for its Wey V9X SUV that was a blatant copy of an ad JLR produced to promote the Range Rover Sport.
"There can be no justification," Jiangjun said, and he vowed to take "full legal and financial responsibility" for the gaffe. It doesn't look like BYD is ready to do the same, but the court in the Netherlands might force its hand.