Can you believe it? In the space of a few months, Ford's mighty Ranger Raptor has fallen all the way done to 8th position.
The GWM P300 PHEV announcement was made at the Kyalami Festival of Motoring. Picture: Supplied
Great Wall Motors (GWM) South Africa has announced that their P300 plug-in hybrid will be available in South Africa from the third quarter of this year.
Positioned as an alternative to the 135kW/480Nm 2.4-litre turbodiesel P300 derivative, GWM’s first electrified bakkie will also break straight into the country’s Top 10 Fastest Bakkies.
Turbo petrol and hybrid combo
The GWM P300 PHEV made its world debut at the Beijing Motor Show in April. It offers a 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine developing 180kW of power and 380Nm of torque.
But thanks to the addition of a 33.1kWh battery pack that powers a single electric motor. Another 130kW of power and 495Nm of torque is lumped on top of that.
The combined output now comes in at 310kW and 750Nm. As expected, the claimed 0-100km/h times are impressive. The two-wheel drive derivative is said to get there in 6.4 seconds. And the four-wheel drive in a mere 6.1 seconds.
Long gone are the days of 12- and 15-second top-of-the-range performance bakkies, it would seem. You want to run with the big dogs now; you need to come in under 7 seconds.
As with the 2.4-litre turbodiesel, drive is routed to the rear or all four wheels through a nine-speed automatic gearbox, with the latter once again privy to a BorgWarner-sourced part-time four-wheel drive system.
Fuel efficiency
The GWM P300 PHEV in two-wheel drive configuration is also said to offer an all-electric range of 100km according to the WLTP cycle, while the faster and heavier four-wheel drive derivative has a claim of 95km on electricity alone.
As no official tank size has been made known yet, we asked AI to try to work it back from the claimed consumption numbers on the internet, now also knocking on that now-standard number of 1000km on a single tank of fuel. The answer we got is that the GWM P300 PHEV probably has a 70-litre tank.
And this ties back to the claim of 947km for the two-wheel drive and 886km for the four-wheel drive.
No pricing yet
Details are thin on the ground, as is always the case with the Chinese, who launch a product over there in one trim and then tweak it for here.
So, other than we expect it here this year still, as said earlier, we can only guess it will cost quite a bit more than the current P300 range that starts at R414 950 and finishes up at R699 900.
