Image Credit: Huawei.
Common sense dictates that if you want to see the future of the automotive industry, you should look at Germany. If you want to see that same future but for the price of a mid-sized family shed and a packet of biscuits, you look at China. We all remember when they treated Range Rover's design department like a free buffet, and I genuinely thought they'd grown out of it. But no… Like a cheeky schoolboy copying his neighbor's homework, SAIC and Huawei have teamed up to give us the Z7 - a car that looks so much like a Porsche Taycan it might actually trigger a glitch in the Matrix.
I'm not saying they stole the blueprints, but I wouldn't be surprised if the designers were wearing "I Heart Stuttgart" t-shirts during the pitch meetings. The Porsche Taycan is a masterpiece of engineering that starts at a jaw-dropping $133,000. Meanwhile, this new Huawei-backed Z7 is expected to slide into the market between $36,200 and $50,700. You don't need to be a math wizard to realize you could buy three of these and still have enough left over for a very fancy dinner.
Image Credit: Huawei.
From the front, it has a bit of personality - sharp LED lights and a black grille. But move just an inch to the side, and suddenly, you're looking at a Porsche. The door shapes, the roofline, the wing mirrors, and even the door handles look like they were plucked straight from a Porsche parts bin in the middle of the night. It's "imitation as flattery" taken to a level that's a bit awkward for everyone involved. It reminds me of buying a "Rollex" from a man in a trench coat and then realizing it actually keeps better time than the real thing…
It gets even better - or worse, depending on how many Porsche shares you own. There's a "Shooting Brake" version too. For those who don't speak car-nerd, that's a sporty station wagon. This thing mimics the Taycan Sport Turismo so closely that if you saw the silhouette in a dark alley, you'd be reaching for your Stuttgart key fob. It's a beautiful shape, mind you, but it's about as original as a cover band at a local pub.
Image Credit: Huawei.
And then there's the color. In what can only be described as a direct poke in the eye to Xiaomi, they've painted the Z7 in a shade of pink so bright it could be seen from the moon. It even has matching pink rims. This is clearly a shot across the bow of the Xiaomi SU7, which sported the same "Barbie's Dream Car" aesthetic earlier this year. Pretty, colorful… and I absolutely love the drama of it. It's a soap opera, but with more lithium-ion batteries and fewer long-lost twins.
Step inside, and it's a digital wonderland. There's a thin instrument cluster for the driver, a massive central screen for the "important" stuff, and another screen for the passenger - to help them ignore your terrible driving and watch cat videos instead. The obligatory flat-bottom steering wheel is in charge of the Z7, because, as we know, every EV needs to feel like a Formula 1 car while you're stuck in traffic. All in all - clean, modern, and it has more computing power than the Apollo 11.
Image Credit: Huawei.
Under that copycat skin, we're looking at some decent "go" to match the "show." The final numbers are still hush-hush, but the word on the street is we'll get 80 kWh and 100 kWh battery packs - that's plenty of juice to get where you're going without a major panic attack. The Z7 will come in both rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive flavors, so you can pick between sensible commuting or mashing your lunch with a quick 0-60 sprint.
China has built a car that looks like a Porsche, tech-ed it up with Huawei's brainpower, and priced it like a well-equipped sedan. A bit cheeky? Aye, it's the cheekiest thing I've seen since my uncle tried to expense a pony at a wedding. But for $36,000, are people going to care about "originality"? I highly doubt it. They'll be too busy enjoying their "Taycan" while counting the $100,000 they just saved.
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