► Denza is aiming at Europe
► It begins with the Z9 GT
► But will its plan work?

Eurocentric evidence would suggest that the automotive industry is on its knees. Although the UK market saw marginal year-on-year rises in new car sales in March, they’re still way below pre-pandemic levels. 

It’s the result of many factors intersecting: the cost-of-living crisis, global conflicts, tariffs, and a lack of consumer confidence in a regulation-driven push towards electric cars. The upshot is that most established European car manufacturers are feeling considerable pain. 

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Ford of Europe is currently in the midst of a restructuring that will see 4000 jobs cut across the continent, including 800 in the UK, by 2027. Stellantis has repeatedly paused production of several models over the last 18 months or so due to a lack of demand. Even the great Volkswagen is having to deal with falling profits, leading to 50,000 jobs in Germany being made redundant by the end of the decade. 

But shift your focus from Europe to China, and it’s boom time. Specifically, it’s boom time for sales of Chinese cars in Europe, adding to the woes of those European manufacturers.

In March, a Chinese car became the UK’s best-selling model for the first time, in the form of the Jaecoo 7. It’s a big deal: a brand that didn’t exist on these shores until January 2025 is already making life tough for big names like the Kia Sportage, Ford Puma and Nissan Qashqai.  

And that is no anomaly. Data will tell you that multiple brands from China are quickly rising into mainstream consciousness. Your eyes will tell you they’re appearing in just about every supermarket car park you visit. 

The formula for that mainstream success has been an easy one to pinpoint. Out-equip your rivals, undercut them on price, and back the product up with finance and warranty packages that should quash any doubts held by would-be buyers.  

For the price of a fully-loaded Jaecoo 7 SHS – a five-seat plug-in hybrid crossover with a 14.8-inch touchscreen, a full suite of driver-assistance technology and comfort features like ventilated seats – you couldn’t get even the most basic Volkswagen Tiguan. The Chinese manufacturers know what people want, or at least non-enthusiast people. 

BYD uses much the same formula and is also enjoying huge success, in a slightly different way. No one model has taken a headline-grabbing position on the model sales charts, but its diverse range has been attracting considerable interest, with a very healthy 21,337 cars registered in the UK from January through to the end of March. As a manufacturer, its UK market share is currently better than Renault, Mazda, Citroën, Honda, Dacia and Suzuki. For a brand that only seriously entered the passenger-car market in 2023, that is no mean feat. 

It won’t be resting on its laurels. Now it has given itself the difficult task of breaching the customer base of European premium manufacturers. In a segment that traditionally relies heavily on how the public perceives a brand, that’s going to be a trickier task for BYD to take on successfully. 

Denza is the brand name BYD is using for this latest venture. It recently launched on the Continent and is officially entering the UK market at July’s Goodwood Festival of Speed. Sales of its first car, the Z9 GT, will commence after that. 

Its approach is to offer a lot of car, with a lot of luxury and tech equipment, at a price that undercuts established names such as Mercedes, Audi, BMW and Porsche.  

Although the exact pricing of the new shooting brake/estate has yet to be confirmed, it’s likely to launch at around £95,000 for the hybrid version and £105,000 for the full EV. With a peak output of around 1140bhp, a quoted range of 373 miles, dual-chamber air suspension, lavish cabin equipment and the ability to go viral on TikTok with a crab-walk feature, the EV may sound expensive but it offers a lot. For similar money you can get a Porsche Taycan 4S with a lot less power and a lot less equipment.

But would you really go for the Denza, or would you still be drawn to the quality, prestige and proven dynamic excellence of the Porsche? It will certainly be an uphill task for Denza – but then remember how vigorous parent company BYD’s growth has been, and don’t be quick to dismiss this new ambition.

With Denza, BYD has borrowed a ploy from a brand that faced a similar challenge at the dawn of the modern EV, and pulled it off.  When Tesla introduced the groundbreaking Model S to the UK market in 2014, it had an advantage in being one of the first electric cars that could be seriously considered as usable day-to-day. Key to that was its revolutionary Supercharger network, which was not only a huge practical win, it also elevated Tesla’s image. 

For all the developments in the last decade, range and convenience remain key points to EV buyers. Perhaps critical to the success of Denza will be a generational leap BYD is gambling on with its new charging network. 

The Denza Z9 GT supports 1500kW ‘Flash’ charging, dramatically surpassing every other car on the UK market, allowing for a 10-97 per cent charge in just nine minutes. Brilliant in theory – and BYD plans to make sure customers can get the benefit in reality.  

It aims to introduce 300 Flash locations across the UK by the end of 2026, at Denza dealers and other locations, for a total of 600 charge points. If all goes according to plan, they will be the most powerful chargers publicly available in the UK. 

It’s an ambitious goal, given that there are currently zero Flash chargers in the UK, but one that would be hard to doubt BYD on, given its habit of making the impossible possible.