Did you know that General Motors has been involved in a joint venture with Chinese firms SAIC and Wuling Motors since 2002, building budget cars under the Wuling and Baojun brands mostly for the Chinese market?
No? Well, you do now, not least because the newly unveiled Baojun Yep’s just an adorable-looking thing. You may have actually already seen this before from the preview a few months ago.
OTHER STORIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:
This week in cars: Mitsubishi’s compact SUV, Omoda 5 EV preview, new Kia pickup
Stencils will no longer be required for LTO registration renewal
Just look at it! It’s a teeny 3.3m long, three-door, four-seat SUV with uber-cute styling and a very decent-sounding electric powertrain underneath.
Okay, it may only have one motor that drives the rear wheels with 67hp and 139Nm of torque. And it may only manage a top speed of 100kph, but it’s got a 28.1kWh battery and can apparently manage 303km on a single charge. Nice. Plus, it only weighs 1,006kg.
And yet there’s literally all of the tech that you’d expect to find in a modern SUV. You get LED headlights, DC fast charging, cruise control, active safety systems and two 10.25-inch screens on the dash for the infotainment and dial display.
Plus, there’s one extra bit of tech that you might not expect—Baojun refers to it as “the industry’s first car-watch,” but essentially it’s a giant screen across the rear of the car that’s inspired by smartwatches and used to display things like messages, the time or just funky changeable graphics.
And here’s the best bit. Prices for the Yep start at 79,800 Yuan in China, which equates to P631,000. What a bargain. And that isn’t a base-spec version with nothing on it either. You get all the aforementioned tech, plus 15-inch wheels and a full leather interior that Baojun refers to as the ‘Joy Box.’
Yep, we’ll take one.
More photos of the Baojun Yep:
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
