Voyah Free is a Chinese EV with claimed 730 km of range

First things first - Voyah Free is not a new car, it has been on the market since 2020 and it’s one of the first large electric SUVs out there. Voyah is a brand of DongFeng and in China, it is called Lantu which means a blueprint - a fitting name for a pioneer.

With that out of the way - let’s focus on the car. Voyah Free Long Range is a new addition to the lineup and it gets its name from a rather large 106.7 kWh battery pack. The manufacturer claims it affords the car a whopping 730 km of driving range but there’s a catch - there always is a catch. You can squeeze out of the Free 730 km as long as you drive at a constant 60 kph. The marketing department clearly has run out of ideas.

The already optimistic CLTC testing regime gave the Voyah Free 631 km of range which in real life will be more like 550 km at best. It is a decent range if you consider that car is nearly 5 meters long and weighs closer to 3 metric tons. That on its own would have been a good result, no need to come up with 730 km at 60 kph. What’s next? 1,200 km at 30 kph? Guess what - it can have an infinite range as long as you don’t drive it.

The Voyah Free LR is a good-looking SUV, it has a reserved design - nothing fancy or outrageous - just nice classic lines to help it to appeal to as many customers as possible. The Interior is classy and comfortable, there are no huge screens to distract the passengers from the car’s nice lines and quality materials. It is a very nice place to be.

The dashboard is composed of three screens behind a single slab of glass, sort of like in the Mercedes EQS and EQE but less ostentatious. Dare I say Voyah Free is more classy? No, I don’t dare but it really looks good. The driver gets his own instrument cluster, the center screen takes care of infotainment and vehicle control and the front passenger gets a dedicated screen as well.

The brain behind the three screens is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155, the car support OTA updates, and Huawei HiCar is responsible for providing a smooth user experience. The usual items such as heated seats, heated steering wheel, and wireless chargers are all present.

Voyah Free is powered by two electric motors with a total output of 360 kW and 730 Nm of torque. That’s enough to catapult it from 0 to 100 kph in 4.4 seconds - it is always an experience when a large and heavy car like this one, skirts away from traffic lights as if it was a full pedigree sports car. It never gets old.

$56,200 at current exchange rates is not a small amount of money but in exchange, we get a large, comfortable electric SUV with bags of equipment and a decent range. Is that enough to buy a car from a company without a service network outside of China and Norway? Not yet, no. But once they sort that out, there will be plenty of people lining up.

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