Earlier this year, BYD launched a new off-road model under its Fang Cheng Bao brand, calling it the Tai 3. This car was also the company’s first fully electric model aimed at the family adventure SUV market.
Now, less than three months later, the brand has teased another larger SUV with a teaser shot on its Weibo page.
In the shared image with a covered off-roader, the profile of the upcoming model can be seen along with the headlights and taillights seen through it.
The image, when translated, says: “The future can (__). Fill in the blank”.
It doesn’t say too much more, leaving many followers of the brand guessing what this model could be.
Some have speculated that this is the next electric model from the brand, a successor to the Tai 3 EV, and could be called the Tai 7.
In late March, BYD launched Tai 3 with great features, including a drone launch pad.
Prices of the new model start at the equivalent of $A30,500 and comes equipped with BYD’s lithium iron phosphate (LFP) blade batteries with 72.9 and 78.7 kWh capacities.
The higher-capacity pack is found in the special edition variant with the roof-mounted drone carrier system, and both models come with 501 km of CLTC range, which is likely to be closer to 420 km on the WLTP cycle, a more commonly used testing cycle in Australia.
On the charging speeds front, this model can achieve an impressive 237 kW at the right charger, allowing the car to charge from 30-80% in just 18 minutes. That makes it one of the faster charging BYD products to date.
On the Tai 3’s powertrain, the dual-motor variant can deliver up to 310 kW of power, which helps the car accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in just 4.9 seconds.
As for the style of the Tai 3, it’s slightly more curved for an off-roader. This changes in the Tai 7, which appear to look more utilitarian under that cover, bringing it closer to more serious off-roaders on the market.
With the Tai 3 featuring a fairly spacious frunk with power opening and closing, not often seen in many EVs on the market, the Tai 7 is likely to adopt this too.
BYD’s Fang Cheng Bao brand has already sold over 5,000 Tai 3 vehicles in just over a month since deliveries began at the end of April.
For the brand itself, it also recently celebrated its 100,000 sales milestone, driven of the back of its bigger PHEV off-roaders, the Bao 5 and Bao 8.
Details on the new Tai 7 are expected to be released closer to the pre-sales, which are set to start in the coming months.
As the company aims to grow its market share, including its off-roading Fang Cheng Bao brand, the new lineup of electric vehicles looks quite promising, creating more excitement around the world’s biggest new energy vehicle (NEV) company.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.