2014 Beijing: BYD Tang, Plug-in Hybrid With Porsche Cayenne-Beating Performance

Earlier last week, we showed you the BYD Qin - the four door sedan plug-in hybrid from China that can out-accelerate a Ford Focus ST. It's quite an impressive car, and if you've missed it, you can read about it here. 

Seen here is the BYD Tang. Building on BYD's experience with the Qin, the Tang adds four-wheel drive capability on BYD's existing DM-II drivetrain, marketing the new drivetrain under the '542 Technology' name. Like the Qin, the Tang takes its name after Chinese imperial dynasties.

The numerals 542 refers to the performance targets of future BYD plug-in hybrid products - 5 for acceleration from 0-100 km/h in under five seconds, 4 for four-wheel drive, and 2 for fuel consumption of 2-litre/100 km or less.

BYD says the Tang is able to accelerate from 0-100 km/h in just 4.9 seconds. That's faster than a standard 4.8-litre V8 engine powered Porsche Cayenne S, which completes the century mark sprint in 5.9 seconds.

It also means that although the Tang is a larger car, it will out-accelerate the Qin's 5.9 second sprint.

Like the Qin, the key to the Tang's high performance are high torque electric motors. In the case of the Tang, there are three electric motors - one within the internal combustion engine and two electric motors that combine to deliver power to all four wheels.

As the Tang will only go on sale in China in the final quarter of this year, technical details are still sparse.

Still, we understand that the petrol engine will be a 2-litre turbocharged direct injection engine, possibly linked with a dual-clutch transmission (the Qin uses a six-speed dual-clutch transmission).

We do not know the power output of its triple electric motors, but the engine and electric motor combination in the Qin pushes out a combine output of 291 hp of power and 440 Nm of torque, so you can expect the Tang to produce much more than that.

The Tang's larger body and higher performance would imply that it is quite unlikely for it to match the Qin's 1.6-litre/100 km fuel economy. A slightly higher 1.9-litre/100 km, just a notch below BYD's target is more likely.