BYD’s luxury-focused Yangwang brand is about to welcome a new model, and it’s poised to push the brand even further upmarket. Evidently, BYD is no longer satisfied with taking over the mass market, snatching sales from legacy rivals like Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Ford, and others, but it now also wants to convince Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Mercedes-Maybach shoppers to buy Chinese.

The new uber-luxury sedan has been previewed through images of a heavily disguised prototype at a mystery testing facility. Much like a Rolls-Royce Phantom, the new YangWang model is big and imposing, giving it an air of exclusivity most Chinese car manufacturers have so far failed to achieve.

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Despite the camouflage, we can see the front end will feature a large upright grille and headlights similar in shape to YangWang’s current U8 SUV. Set within these headlights are cubed-shaped crystals, hinting at just how serious the brand is about making this sedan feel special, even by European standards.

Coach Doors, Just Like A Rolls-Royce

Viewed from the side, the car’s wheelbase appears absolutely massive, although it’s hard to say if it’ll be as long as the extended-wheelbase Rolls-Royce Phantom. Nevertheless, we can see it rocks one obvious Rolls-Royce-inspired feature, namely coach doors at the rear. It also features large windows behind the C-pillars, suggesting it will focus heavily on maximizing comfort and luxury in the second row.

The new YangWang also rocks a LiDAR sensor above the windshield and is expected to use the company’s advanced DiPilot 600 semi-autonomous driving system.

Unlike a Rolls-Royce Phantom, YangWang’s next luxury sedan is tipped to be sold exclusively as an EV. According to CarNewsChina, it could be one of the most advanced EVs on the market, potentially launching as BYD’s first model with solid-state batteries.

In September, BYD executive vice president Stella Li confirmed the brand would launch its first solid-state-battery-powered EV in 2027. Given that the technology has yet to be commercialized at scale and will therefore be quite expensive, debuting it in a flagship luxury model like this one makes perfect sense.

Do Rolls Royce owners even open their trunks, or do they have someone to do it for them? We’re not rich enough to know the answer, but whoever is tasked with stashing and retrieving luggage from the automaker’s coachbuilt Nightingale roadsters won’t have to worry about the trunk mechanism going wrong. By our estimation it will have seen 200 years’ worth of action before being delivered.

The Nightingale is a fully electric convertible that must be the sportiest thing to feature the Spirit of Ecstasy since Henry Royce was still steering the ship in the early 1930s. It kicks off the brand’s Coachbuild Collection series and is limited to 100 units. Each one is estimated to set its owner back a staggering $9.5 million, and that’s before Rolls adds any really special personalization requests to the bill.

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At a colossal 226.8 inches (5,760 mm) long, and offering space for only two passengers, the Nightingale has the kind of length to seats ratio that makes even Detroit’s most wasteful 1970s land yachts look as space efficient as a Japanese Kei car. But because the design draws inspiration from luxury watercraft, it kind of works. Hey, we said “kind of.”

My favourite feature is the tiny cashmere top that’s been designed to let the sound of raindrops through, while blocking out what little mechanical noise the electric powertrain generates. But the most arresting feature is certainly that huge boat-tail rear end and the “piano boot” (trunk) that opens sideways like the lid on a baby grand.

Rolls Royce says the mechanism is subjected to 15,000 cycles of opening and closing, ensuring repeated use “never interrupts the perfect theatre and effortless operation of this hallmark gesture for generations to come.”

Two Lifetimes Of Use

Assuming these cars are used maybe once a week (and that’s probably a generous assumption), and the trunk is used opened and closed twice on each of those days, Rolls has probably tested the hardware for the equivalent of around 150 years of use.

But that’s not the only testing the automaker has planned for the Nightingale, which translates as Le Rossigni in French, and was the name of Henry Royce’s villa on the Riviera. Royce and his team used the villa as a testing base when putting cars through their paces across Europe, and the modern Rolls claims it will spend 350 weeks testing the coachbuilt convertibles in similar locales.

They’ll be subjected to twisty Mediterranean roads, snowy Arctic Circle ones and even tackle North African deserts and 2,750 m (9,020 ft) mountains. Most of which, owners will never do, just as they’re unlikely to test the accuracy of the 155 mph (250 km/h) speed limiters. But when you’re trying to sell someone a car costing the thick end of $10 million, you damn well better get it right.

Rolls Royce