BYD’s luxury brand Yangwang has officially named its upcoming flagship sedan, which until now was known by its internal codename HU. It will be called the Yangwang Altior in international markets and Dingyao (鼎曜) in China, and the company has released the first official teaser image to go with the announcement.
The poster, posted on Yangwang’s official Weibo account, shows the car in profile with a bronze silk sheet draped over its rear half. You can make out the rear-hinged coach doors, a roof-mounted lidar sensor and a front end that follows the “ding” design of the U8 SUV, which takes its cue from an ancient Chinese bronze cauldron. Yangwang calls it an “ultra-luxury executive flagship sedan”.
Yangwang general manager Hu Xiaoqing said “ding” stands for stability and the ability to carry weight, as well as a belief in constant creation that eventually produces something great. “Yao” means brilliance, or the light of distant stars. Altior comes from the Latin word for “higher”, which ties in with the Yangwang name, meaning “to look up”. Hu has also said the front end alone went through more than 100 design proposals.
The Altior will make its world debut in the UAE in early November. Yangwang is already sold in the UAE through local distributor Al-Futtaim, and the U8 recently joined the Dubai Police luxury patrol fleet.
Technical details have not been announced. The sedan is said to be around 5.5 metres long, and Autohome previously reported that it will be BYD’s first car with a solid-state battery, as we covered when camouflaged images of the car were shared in September.
The Altior will take on the likes of the Rolls-Royce Ghost, Mercedes-Maybach S-Class and the Maextro S800 from Huawei and JAC, and is tipped to cost around two million yuan (about RM1.2 million) in China.
