What $100,000 gets you in China: Rolls looks, Maybach luxe, Huawei tech – and 850 hp

Westerners in-the-know look longingly at the affordable, value-packed electric cars rolling out of China – but what could you get if money was no object? If you were to spend 100,000 US American dollars on a Chinese EV, how good could these Chinese cars really get? Huawei’s 852 hp Maextro S800 is the answer.

Packing up to 852 hp and a cutting-edge technology stack developed by Huawei, Chinese luxury brand Maextro revealed its latest entry into the Mercedes-Maybach EQS and Rolls-Royce Spectre segment of ultra-luxe EVs, the S800, back in February. Now, it’s officially on sale, priced at 708,000 and 1,018,000 yuan (approx $97,500-140,000), and ready to make an entrance.

As I wrote at the car’s launch, the Maextro S800’s bespoke, purpose-built platform doesn’t share any parts with a lesser offering in the Huawei lineup in the same way a Mercedes or BMW or Volkswagen does with a Maybach, Rolls-Royce, or Bentley, respectively. And, while I admit that that may not mean much to you and me, I maintain that it might to the people shopping six- and seven-figure cars. And that might be especially true to people willing to shell out that kind of cash for a car in China’s generally lower-priced market.

That seems to be the kind of upmarket experience people of the People’s Republic want, if the S800’s two thousand initial orders (in just two days) are and indication. And, lucky for those buyers, the Maextro is set to deliver plenty in return.

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The vibe is immaculate

Those well-heeled buyers will get a choice of EREV or “pure” battery electric powertrains good for between 480 and 852 all-electric horsepower. 32 ADAS sensors including both radar and lidar compliment a suite of cameras analyze the road ahead and feed data to Huawei’s ADS road perception system, which is constantly adjusting torque distribution, suspension compression and rebound, and front and rear steering to deliver a tech-driven chauffeur experience that Huawei insists is second to none.

Huawei says its robotic driver is pretty handy when the weather gets nasty, too, thanks to an advanced sensor array that helps to increase the detection distance in rain, fog, and dust by 60% compared to the benchmarked competition.

While the car is its passengers around, they’ll get to enjoy luxurious, reclining rear seats with next-level mood lighting handled by a fully independent rear passenger system that supports intelligent track lighting, gesture dimming, and a panoramic “starry sky” moonroof that includes meteor shower effects.

The Maextro S800 also offers intelligent privacy glass and a unique door-closing function are also controlled with advanced gesture controls, in case you needed reminding that China is living in the year 3000 while the US is being plunged headlong into the 1940s by a pack of pseudo-conservatives too old to realize their gold standard policies will do nothing but hurt a fiat economy that’s consistently proved out the basic hypotheses behind modern monetary theory over the last five or six decades – but that’s a lot for an EV blog.

Instead of that, let’s ooh and ahh over the Maextro S800’s ultra-luxe interior in the photo gallery, below, then keep the debate to the relative merits of one of these over, say, a Mercedes-Benz EQS in the comments.

Huawei Maextro S800 gallery

SOURCES | IMAGES: Huawei Central; CarNewsChina.

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