Concept about “80%-90%” of what the production car will look like.
If you haven’t heard of the Hybrid Kinetic Group, you’re not alone. HKG has long been a player in electric mobility, with its range of electric busses serving municipalities across the globe, run by Chinese billionaire Yung Benjamin Yeung of Brilliance China Automotive success. HKG has ambitions to get into the passenger car business though, as proven by its H600 concept car that it unveiled at this years’ Geneva motor show.
For a concept car, the H600 doesn’t look too concept-ey. Aside from the nubbins pretending to be door-mirrors, the H600 looks production-feasible, replete with wheels we’re reckoning were nicked off an Aston Martin DB10. There’s good reason for this, as HKG board member Carter Yeung has revealed that the H600 will be making production really very soon.
“A lot of Chinese companies overpromise and under deliver. We are going to be the opposite,” Yeung said to industry journal Automotive News. The H600 was designed by legendary Italian design house Pininfarina, and packs a range-extender electric drivetrain under its sleek physique. It’s claimed to use a “micro-turbine” range-extender engine, with power rated at 600kW. The century sprint is dispatched in less than three seconds (it claims), with a top speed of 250km/h.
With a full-charge and a full-tank, this REEV is expected to offer over 1000km of driving range, which puts it well-above the furthest-reaching Tesla Model S (just 632km in comparison). Yeung continued to say that the H600 will be brought to market in the US and China by 2020, and will take on established EV marques like Tesla, as well as conventional luxury carmakers like BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
The ever-chatty Yeung then said that HKG will be pulling the wraps off no less than two new models at next months’ Shanghai motor show. The impending launches will likely show off the potential lineup for HKG, which intends to produce “well over” 200,000 cars annually within the next decade. Manufacturing is slated for China, after first being tried out at the Pininfarina factory in Italy.
