BYD just handed Porsche a problem it can’t easily engineer its way out of. At the Goodwood Festival of Speed this week, the automaker’s premium Denza brand pulled the cover off the Z, a four-seat electric supercar that produces more than double the horsepower of a Porsche 911 Turbo S and costs less than a mid-range 911 GTS to buy. That’s not a typo, and it’s not a cheap knockoff either. It’s a purpose-built, tri-motor machine that Denza says is engineered to make European exotic car buyers rethink where their money goes.

I’ve been following this for a while, and honestly, the numbers still don’t feel real when you say them out loud. The Denza Z uses three electric motors, one up front and two independently controlled units at the rear, to produce a combined 1,604 PS (that’s 1,582 horsepower in the more familiar unit). For context, a Porsche 911 Turbo S makes 701 horsepower. The Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe tops out at 1,153 horsepower. Denza just walked in and doubled the most powerful car in Porsche’s lineup, then priced it below a 911 GTS.

Denza Z pricing undercuts Porsche by a wide margin

Here’s what’s interesting. UK pricing for the Denza Z starts at £142,900 for the base coupe, climbing to £159,900 for the open-top spider and £172,900 for the track-focused racing variant. A Porsche 911 Carrera 4 GTS costs £145,900 in the UK, meaning the entry-level Denza Z actually undercuts a Porsche that makes a fraction of its power. Even the range-topping Racing trim comes in well under the £199,500 that Porsche charges for a 911 Turbo S.

What most articles missed is just how aggressive this pricing strategy really is. Denza isn’t positioning the Z as a budget alternative. It’s positioning it as a car that outperforms Europe’s best on every measurable spec while asking for less money. That’s a very different pitch than the one Chinese automakers have made in the West so far, and it’s the kind of move that tends to make legacy brands nervous.

The Coupe sprints from 0 to 62 mph in 2.25 seconds, already quicker than Porsche’s claimed 2.5 seconds for the Turbo S. Move up to the Racing trim with its optional semi-slick tires, and that time drops to just 1.96 seconds with a top speed of 217 mph. The standard coupe and spider top out at 186 mph. When I first heard about this, I didn’t think much of it, but after digging into the actual test claims, I changed my mind completely. These aren’t paper numbers pulled from a press release. They’re backed by a public demonstration run at one of the most scrutinized car events in the world.

Charging speed is the real headline for the Denza Z.

Power and price are one thing, but the Denza Z’s charging capability might be the detail that ages best. Every Z comes with a 76 kWh second-generation Blade Battery paired with Denza’s FLASH Charging technology, which on BYD’s new 1,500 kW chargers can take the battery from 10 to 70 percent in five minutes flat, or up to 97 percent in nine minutes. That’s edging startlingly close to the time it takes to fill a gas tank, and it’s a number that gasoline sports car buyers have used as their main argument against going electric for years.

Industry insiders hint that this charging infrastructure rollout, while currently limited to China, has already been confirmed for a European expansion. If that holds, the range anxiety and charging wait time excuses that have followed EVs around for a decade start to look a lot weaker. I actually think this is the part of the story that changes the conversation more than the horsepower figure does, because horsepower wars have happened before. Nobody has closed the charging gap this fast.

Denza also confirmed a fourth model sitting above the Racing trim, a special edition aimed squarely at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Sources suggest this variant will push past 1,973 horsepower, or roughly 2,000 PS, with a 0 to 62 mph time under 1.7 seconds. Denza hasn’t released full pricing or specs for it yet, choosing instead to save those details for closer to a rumored attempt at an EV lap record at the famous German circuit.

What the Denza Z means for Porsche and Europe’s exotics

The Denza Z isn’t arriving in a vacuum. BYD’s Stella Li, the company’s executive vice president, introduced the car alongside 2009 Formula One champion, Jenson Button, a pairing clearly meant to signal that Denza intends to be taken seriously as a performance brand, not just a value brand. And the timing matters. Porsche’s China sales fell sharply last year, with the company citing a difficult economic climate, giving BYD an opening to make its case exactly when the German brand is least able to defend its home turf advantage.

This is one of those things I genuinely got excited about the moment I saw it, because it’s rare that a challenger brand shows up with a product that wins on power, wins on price, and wins on the charging metric that usually works against EVs. The Denza Z measures 4,780 mm long, 1,990 mm wide, and 1,350 mm tall on a 2,780 mm wheelbase, making it slightly larger than a 911 but roughly the same footprint as the Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe. Inside, it runs an 8.8-inch driver display alongside a 12.8-inch infotainment screen with Google built in, plus a 12-speaker sound system in the coupe and racing variants.

If the current trajectory holds, the Denza Z won’t be the last Chinese supercar to specifically target a named European rival on spec sheet and sticker price at the same time. Deliveries are scheduled for late 2026, with Chinese pre-orders already open and UK order books expected to follow shortly. For drivers who’ve spent years assuming a supercar meant a European badge, the Denza Z is a genuinely serious argument that the calculation has changed, and it’s backed by numbers that Porsche itself can’t currently match.