From Zeekr’s absurdly capable LFP battery packs to Yangwang’s jumping supercar, incredibly interesting things are happening in the Chinese EV market, and here’s a new attention-getter to add to the list. This is the Denza Z9 GT, a 952-horsepower electric wagon with a hybrid option for people who don’t want a full BEV, and it has a ridiculously cool way of helping drivers parallel park.
We’ve seen automated parallel parking systems before, but not only do they all work in the same way, they’re all fairly slow. Detecting an open parking spot then working the gears and pedals while the car figures out the steering can take longer than simply doing it all yourself, but this BYD-built electric car promises to solve that by throwing out the rulebook.
Here’s how it works: pull the nose of the car into a parallel parking spot, then pick a front wheel to pivot off of, rotate an outline of the car on a screen, and presto — the system does the work to slide the back end of the Denza Z9 GT into the parking space.
BYD’s new Denza Z9 GT EV can parallel park in place by turning and spinning its right rear wheel forward and left rear wheel backward. It can also crab walk through tight spaces.
Deliveries have already begun in China and start at $47,000 USD. Photos of interior in thread below. pic.twitter.com/kWAyfOdWAN
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 4, 2025
Tri-motor all-wheel-drive plays a key role here, because by having one motor for each rear wheel, the rear tires can truly rotate independently. By applying forward drive to the inside rear wheel and reverse drive to the outside rear wheel, the Denza Z9 GT starts to yaw, with rear wheel steering helping to guide its way into a parking spot.
If you’ve ever been young and dumb and power-braked the back end of a rear-wheel-drive automatic car into a parallel parking spot, this is essentially a more sophisticated version of that, one that should reduce tire wear. The slip here is more intentional, more optimized, more along the lines of the electric G-Class’ tank turn function than juvenile burnouts.
While it’s cool to watch this system at work, there is one big lingering question: with four-wheel-steering and a litany of camera systems, is this feature really necessary? It seems more like a technological flex than something that will truly replace traditional parallel parking techniques. However, something age-old counters that doubt — necessity doesn’t really matter because this parking mode is cool. After all, who ever said that car features need to be massively useful to be desirable?
You’re almost never going to use launch control, but it’s fun to have. There are few opportunities out there to legally use drift modes on all-wheel-drive vehicles, but it’s cool to know the engineers were thinking of fun. Most drivers with multiple drive modes will rarely, if ever, put their vehicles in their sportiest or most off-road-focused settings, but it’s nice that the options are there. This torque vectoring-based parallel parking system is born from the same philosophy, and that’s enough to get stoked on.
(Photo credits: Denza)
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Let me guess these sell for $10K in China? I get it we don’t like them yada yada, but it would be awesome if we could buy these in the US. It would light a fire under the BIG 3 to get their shit together. I am aware China has no environmental or labor laws to deal with, but I still just want a cheap electric car.
So they’ve discovered the Line Lock.
Parallel parking isn’t that difficult. If the driver knows exactly where the corners of their car are, and if the driver turned the steering wheel all the way.
It is very hard for most drivers to estimate where the corners are
This isn’t fun. They’ve engineered the fun out and replaced it with nonsense like this. Not too bad looking, though.
Could care less about the parking or EV aspect but that’s a nice looking car!
It would be even more amazing if they had an enormous windshield washer reservoir and nozzles over the rear tires to wet the tires when it needs to.
And just as electric cars are making gas stations obsolete, we could fill the gas pumps with Rain-X. 😀
I don’t understand the automated parallel parking systems that make you work the gas and brakes. Seems nerve wracking and awkward.
The i3 has auto-park where all you do is hold down a button, and it fits into a spot only 22” longer than the car. This makes it an actual worthwhile feature, because even many competent parallel parkers don’t like to squeeze in that tight.
“ spot only 22” longer than the car”
Yeah, like you are going to find that sort of extravagance in Brooklyn.
8 inches all the time, 3 inches sometimes.
Sounds like a lot of strain on all the components involved, but it’s a cool calling card. What a good looking car!
my only worry would be the tire wear, but the rear steering would be very handy even for “manual” parallel parking, would be quite enough help for me
Yeesh, bunch of spoil-sports in the comments here. It’s not like you *have* to park it that way. It’s cool the engineers decided to give you the option to do that since it has dual rear motors, full stop. More options more better.
In other news, Chinese EV makers are eating everybody’s lunch on the design and innovation front. I don’t care about the JDM forbidden fruit anymore, I want the CDM EV forbidden fruit!
China has some absolutely fantastic-looking EVs, both in appearance and performance. It’s a shame we can’t get most of them here.
Not a fan of Chinese stuff but a Ferrari FF ripoff with 900+ horses starting at 47k USD and doing this parking trick grabbed my attention. This is cool.
I remember having to leave my friends house in a blizzard. There was one path plowed into the lot for the apartments, and no where to turn. I didn’t want to back onto the street as it was very blind. I backed up to a giant evergreen bush, turned my LeSabre’s wheel hard right, and pinned it in reverse. The front swung around 90° and pointed us straight out. Easily a top 5 driving moment, putting the physics of all thos reverse donuts i “practiced” with to use.
Cool, but I’d rather have an EV that doesn’t catch on fire constantly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKa8mVOe5so
It’s cool but I’m pretty tired of “crutch” technologies that cross the line from convenience to compensating for someone who can’t properly operate their own vehicle.
BYD Denza should get Tony Danza as a spokes-bro.
Ha that’s pretty fun. Also, wagon, nice.
And I thought EV tires had a short lifespan now