Category Archives: News

News

Chery Adds Lepas to Its Growing UK Lineup

If you thought the UK had reached peak Chinese-car saturation, Chery would like a word. The fast-expanding automaker has confirmed that Lepas, its fourth brand for Britain, will land later this year, joining Omoda, Jaecoo, and Chery itself in what’s quickly becoming one of the most aggressive foreign market pushes in recent memory.

Lepas isn’t just another badge-engineering exercise. Chery says the brand was conceived specifically for Europe, and its name—apparently a mash-up of leopard, leap, and passion—suggests it wants to feel more energetic, more aspirational, and more premium-adjacent than your average budget import. Whether it lives up to that promise remains to be seen, but the intent is clear: this is Chery aiming for mainstream dominance, not niche curiosity.

Two Crossovers, Three Powertrains, One Big Strategy

Lepas’s UK debut will be built around two compact crossovers, the L4 and L6. They’ll ride on Chery’s T1X modular platform, which also underpins the Omoda 5, Jaecoo 5, and Jaecoo 7. That might sound like corporate copy-paste, but it’s actually the point: massive shared volume equals lower production costs, which equals more competitive pricing.

Both models are expected to be offered with internal combustion engines, plug-in hybrids, and full battery-electric drivetrains—what China calls “new energy vehicles.” In other words, Lepas isn’t picking sides in the powertrain wars. It’s selling whatever the customer wants, which is exactly how you grow market share fast.

Styling: Familiar, But Not Accidental

Design-wise, Lepas walks a careful line. The cars take heavy influence from Chery’s Tiggo SUVs while also nodding toward European brands like Audi, with smooth surfaces, rounded edges, and a quietly upscale vibe. That’s not a coincidence. Chery wants Lepas to feel like a European-market brand, not a Chinese transplant.

The tricky part is internal competition. When you already sell multiple crossovers at similar sizes and prices, things can get messy. Chery’s management knows it—so much so that one internal presentation was literally titled “Too many brands?”

Their solution? Reposition everything.

  • Tiggo will go chunkier and more family-focused.
  • Omoda will lean into sharper, more aggressive, polygon-heavy styling.
  • Jaecoo will keep its outdoorsy, rugged image.
  • Lepas will sit in the sleek, modern, urban space—more style-led and tech-forward.

It’s not unlike what Volkswagen Group has done for decades, only Chery is doing it at hyperspeed.

Volume Is the Weapon

Chery isn’t pretending this is about art or brand purity. It’s about numbers.

“By offering different brands on the same platform, the volume is very big and that gives us a good price,” said Chery International president Zhang Guibing—and that one sentence explains the whole strategy.

And it’s working.

Last year, Chery’s three UK brands captured 2.65 percent of the British new-car market, beating Mini, Tesla, and BYD. That’s not a foothold—that’s a beachhead. With Lepas joining the party and more models coming across the board, Chery could soon be rubbing shoulders with brands like Renault, Skoda, and Kia.

Lepas isn’t just another crossover brand. It’s a signal that China’s carmakers are done playing on the fringes of Europe. They’re not here to sell a few bargain EVs—they’re here to compete head-on with the industry’s biggest names, in the heart of one of the world’s most brand-loyal markets.

If Chery gets the pricing right—and history suggests it will—Lepas could become the one that finally makes buyers stop asking, “Why would I buy a Chinese car?” and start asking, “Why wouldn’t I?”

For a company already outpacing Tesla in the UK, that’s a terrifyingly plausible future.

Source: Autocar

News

FAT Ice Race 2026 Delivers the Ultimate Porsche Mash-Up

By the time the first Cayenne Electric slid sideways across a frozen airfield in Zell am See, it was clear this wasn’t going to be a typical Porsche press debut. Snow dust hung in the air, the Austrian Alps framed the scene, and a 1,156-horsepower electric SUV was drifting in front of a crowd more used to air-cooled 911s and rally legends. Welcome to the FAT Ice Race, where history and the future collide—sometimes literally.

The Ice Race has always been a glorious contradiction. It mixes priceless historic racers, rally cars, and weird one-off Porsche creations with a modern car-culture festival vibe. So the debut of the all-new Cayenne Electric here wasn’t just marketing—it was a statement. Porsche wasn’t politely introducing its next electric SUV. It was throwing it sideways on ice in front of some of the most demanding enthusiasts on the planet.

And the numbers suggest it had every right to be bold. The Cayenne Turbo Electric packs up to 850 kW (1,156 horsepower) and 1,500 Nm of torque, which means it delivers more twist than a GT3 Cup car multiplied several times over. On ice, that could easily become chaos. Instead, Porsche made it look controlled, playful, and oddly graceful.

Behind the wheel, Porsche test drivers and lucky passengers discovered what electric torque does when it’s filtered through serious chassis tuning. With instant response from the motors and a carefully calibrated off-road mode, the Cayenne Electric could meter out its power with surgical precision. Instead of spinning helplessly, it pivoted around its rear axle, carving clean arcs through snow and ice like a 2.5-ton drift missile.

Michael Schätzle, Porsche’s Vice President for the Cayenne line, was clearly enjoying the shock factor. After taxi laps, he described a car that feels balanced, sporty, and far more engaging than anyone expects from an electric luxury SUV. Watching it slide past a line of classic 356s and historic race cars, it was hard to argue.

Adding to the spectacle were Porsche legends Timo Bernhard and Jörg Bergmeister, hustling a resurrected 964-based buggy around the same course. One car ran on old-school internal combustion and mechanical grip. The other ran on electrons and software-controlled torque. Together, they told Porsche’s story better than any press release ever could.

The FAT Ice Race isn’t really about winning. Organizer Ferdi Porsche calls it “fun over speed,” and that philosophy shows. With about 8,500 fans, DJs, art installations, and food stands, the event feels more like a winter festival than a race meeting. But that’s exactly why it works. It keeps motorsport relevant to a generation raised on social media instead of pit lanes.

Porsche leaned into that idea with the debut of Porsche Youngsters, a new global community initiative designed to pull younger fans into the brand’s club culture. For them, watching a silent, sideways Cayenne Electric drift past a 1960s race car probably made more of an impression than any museum visit ever could.

And that’s the real point of the Cayenne Electric’s icy debut. It wasn’t about lap times or efficiency ratings. It was about proving that electrification doesn’t have to be sterile or boring. If a 1,156-horsepower SUV can drift on a frozen racetrack while surrounded by Porsche legends, then the future of performance might not just be electric—it might actually be fun.

Source: Porsche

News

This Xiaomi SU7 Just Drove 265,000 Kilometers—and Its Battery Is Still On 94.5 Percent Capacity

If you want to understand the future of electric cars, sometimes it helps to look not at shiny auto-show concepts but at a very tired driver and a very not-tired battery.

Somewhere in China, a Xiaomi SU7 owner known online as Feng has quietly done what most EV skeptics insist can’t be done: he drove his electric sedan 265,000 kilometers in just 18 months—nearly the distance from Earth to the Moon—and the battery still looks like it just finished its break-in period.

According to a diagnostic report issued by Xiaomi’s own service center, the SU7’s 94.3-kWh pack is still holding 94.5 percent of its original capacity. In battery-speak, that’s astonishing. Feng averaged almost 500 kilometers per day, every day, for a year and a half. That’s the kind of usage that normally turns lithium-ion packs into cautionary tales. Instead, this one came back with barely a wrinkle.

To put that number in perspective, most automakers promise that after eight years or roughly 150,000 to 160,000 kilometers, your EV battery won’t degrade more than 20 to 30 percent. Tesla, for example, guarantees its Model 3 and Model Y will retain at least 70 percent capacity over that span. Feng’s SU7 has already blown past those mileage figures—and it’s still sitting north of 94 percent.

A High-Mileage Stress Test

The service report suggests the battery has gone through roughly 506 full charge cycles. That’s not light use. That’s the sort of cycling you’d expect to expose weaknesses in cell chemistry, thermal management, or charging strategy. Instead, the SU7’s pack seems to be taking it in stride.

And it’s not just the battery that’s holding up. Xiaomi’s technicians also noted that Feng hasn’t needed a brake-pad replacement yet, a reminder of how effective regenerative braking can be when used this heavily. Even the cooling system passed with flying colors—the coolant showed no water contamination, a detail that quietly signals good long-term system integrity.

In other words, this SU7 isn’t just surviving. It’s aging gracefully.

Why This Matters

Xiaomi may be new to the car business, but this kind of real-world data is exactly what separates marketing promises from engineering reality. Anyone can quote lab numbers. Feng delivered something far more valuable: a brutal, everyday stress test.

High-mileage EVs are still rare enough that every one of them becomes a rolling experiment. And this experiment suggests that Xiaomi’s battery management and thermal systems are doing something very right. If a pack can keep more than 94 percent of its capacity after 265,000 kilometers of near-constant driving, that’s not a fluke—that’s a design philosophy paying off.

The Road to 600,000

Feng isn’t done. His next target is 600,000 kilometers, which he expects to reach within three years. When he gets there, he plans to publish another full wear-and-tear report, effectively turning his SU7 into one of the world’s most documented long-term EV tests.

If the battery keeps degrading at this rate, that future report might be even more impressive than the first.

And for an industry still fighting doubts about durability, that may be the most important data point of all.

Source: Xiaomi; Photo: EPA-EFE