China’s Hummer Copycats Are Making a 1,073-HP, Crab-Walking EV Too
From the company that brought you China’s knock-off Hummer H1 comes another suspiciously familiar-sounding EV.
China's been doing its own Hummer for a while now in the form of the Dongfeng Warrior M50, which by all accounts is just a reverse-engineered H1. Now that GM's brought back the Hummer as an underwhelming 1,000-horsepower EV though, Dongfeng has to have its own version of that too—with all the Hummer's gimmicks and then some.
Dongfeng revealed the super-EV in two forms on Saturday under a new off-road brand Mengshi, which means "warrior" according to Car News China. The M-Terrain as it's called was shown in both SUV and pickup (M-Terrain S) forms, but most attention so far has focused on the SUV for its extreme specs, conspicuously Hummer-like features, and yikes, that styling.
Like the Hummer, the M-Terrain is based on a skateboard platform, in Dongfeng's case, one housing a 140-kilowatt-hour battery. It powers quad-motor all-wheel drive, which can simulate locking axles and a locking center differential. Peak power is reportedly 1,073 hp (the Hummer makes 1,000 hp), with a zero-to-60 time of 4.2 seconds. That seems high considering the M-Terrain reportedly weighs 6,834 pounds, which'd make it a ton lighter than the Hummer. It should be quicker unless tires are the limiting factor.
Further in the Hummer's vein, the M-Terrain has air suspension that can lift up 4.1 inches, and rear-wheel steer, so it can crab walk—Dongfeng showed it doing as much in the demo reel above. Car News China reported that the M-Terrain would have the same payload (1,323 pounds) as the Hummer, and seats six as it's a three-row SUV. The Hummer has some of the best ADAS on the market, GM's stellar SAE L2 system Super Cruise, but Dongfeng claims better, that the M-Terrain will have L3 assistance. Stranger still, Dongfeng says the M-Terrain will be compatible with a range extender, boosting the range from an estimated 311 miles to 497 miles.
Dongfeng will have to put its money where its mouth is if the Mengshi M-Terrain's going to enter production in 2023 as reported, and apparently sell 4,000 units a month. For reference, the titanic GM is only building about a tenth as many Hummers, and even those have some significant problems. Suffice it to say, building at that scale is such a tall order that it'll be a surprise if this SUV gets anywhere other than the recycle bin on its designers' computers. The CAD files for its body belong there at the very minimum, because damn.
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