BYD brought its Denza Z to Goodwood and handed the keys to Supercar Blondie, which is how a car with three electric motors and just over 1,600 horsepower ended up doing laps with a presenter who says on camera she had never driven on a track before. The Z comes in three forms according to the video: a coupe, a convertible called the Spider, and a racing version. Pricing is given as roughly 150,000 to 200,000 euros. The comparison the video draws is the interesting part. Getting that kind of output from a European hypercar, the presenter says, means spending closer to two million, which puts the Denza at something like a tenth of the price for a similar headline number. Most of the segment is spent on the track and in the passenger seat, and very little of it on the things a buyer would normally want to know.
Chinese performance cars have been undercutting European ones on paper for a while now, but the Denza Z is a clearer test than most because BYD is showing it outside China with European pricing rather than keeping it a domestic halo. What the video does not cover is the part that decides whether a car like this is usable: there is no battery capacity, no range figure and no charging speed given anywhere in the segment, and on a 1,600 horsepower car those numbers move fast under load. There is also a regulatory question the video leaves open. The remote and autonomous functions demonstrated here depend on local type approval, which differs between markets, and the presenter herself notes that the drift mode is not something owners can use freely and that doing it in a public car park would be illegal. Availability in Europe is not the same as availability everywhere.
The car is described as arriving fully specified, with the only choices being exterior color, interior, brake calipers and wheels. The voice assistant runs on Google Gemini and, according to the video, handles context and accents rather than fixed commands. Most of the segment goes to the shooting brake variant, which the presenter says makes over 1,100 horsepower and is more than five meters long. An engineer demonstrates a self drifting function from the passenger seat, then a turn and spin routine controlled from a button, then a self parking sequence run from a phone app with nobody in the car, into a bay deliberately narrowed with a concrete pillar to imitate an underground garage. The video says the phone has to stay within Bluetooth range for the parking function to keep running. The tires needed changing after the drift demonstration. Earlier in the piece the presenter rides in the racing version with a professional driver who tells her, on camera, that nothing he has driven accelerates like it, and she takes a slow lap herself in a helmet. Smaller details land too: a seat and steering wheel that move to let you in, and an exterior cooling system she points out in 30 degree heat at Goodwood.
Bottom line: The horsepower is the headline and the least interesting thing here. Any company with enough motors can build a fast electric car. What BYD is actually demonstrating is a software stack that will park in a bay you would not attempt yourself, and that is the feature people would use every week rather than once at a track day. European brands charging supercar money should be more worried about the parking trick than the 1,600 horsepower. Until BYD publishes range and charging numbers, though, treat this as a capability demo rather than a shopping decision.
Commentary on a third-party video. Figures and claims are as presented in the source and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.