Is BYD Making a Better Ferrari? Denza Z Hits 1,582 HP at $70K

Ferrari is asking $640,000 for its first electric car. BYD's Denza Z just turned up in the 408th monthly MIIT regulatory filing with 1,582 horsepower and a price band that lands closer to a Ford Mustang than a Maranello invoice. The gap isn't 20%. It's roughly one order of magnitude.

What the MIIT Filing Actually Shows

The Denza Z runs a tri-motor configuration: a 500 kW motor on the front axle and two 340 kW motors on the rear, for a combined 1,180 kW. That works out to 1,582 horsepower in a 2-door BEV sports car segment that doesn't have much competition. Previously circulated 0–100 km/h figures put the car under two seconds. MIIT filings are regulatory paperwork, not marketing copy, the numbers there are the numbers the manufacturer has to defend to Beijing.

This is not BYD's first move at the top end. The Yangwang U9 Xtreme set the Nordschleife electric record at 6:59.157 in October 2025, which is the kind of receipt the segment historically respects. The Denza Z sits below the Yangwang halo as BYD's premium sub-brand, which is what makes the price expectation interesting. Denza is positioned for buyers who would otherwise look at a Porsche Taycan or an entry Maserati, not buyers writing seven-figure cheques for a prancing horse badge.

Put a band on it: I'd peg the Denza Z's likely sticker between $60,000 and $80,000 USD when it arrives in left-hand-drive markets, with the uncertainty driven by trim split and whether BYD offers a stripped base version at all. That band is an estimate, not a leak, but it's the band the segment math forces. BYD has spent a decade as a vertically integrated EV manufacturer learning how to price aggressively against incumbents, and Denza is the brand it uses to do that without diluting Yangwang.

Ferrari's Luce Problem

Ferrari's Luce is a €550,000 four-motor EV with a Jony Ive exterior and minimalist interior, and the launch generated significant buyer backlash from a customer base that didn't sign up for Apple-designed quiet. Stella Li, BYD's executive vice president, publicly said she prefers the Yangwang U9 to the Luce, a measured statement that did the work a louder one couldn't.

The price ratio is roughly 10:1. The performance ratio, on available specs, runs the other direction. Ferrari's brand logic has always been scarcity plus racing heritage, and neither translates automatically into a BEV where the powertrain is commoditising fast and the chassis tuning gap is closing every model cycle. A Ferrari without an engine note is selling design language and a waiting list. That's a real product, and it may sell out, but it is a different product from what the brand built its margins on.

The Denza Z doesn't need to outsell the Luce. It needs to exist at this price, with these specs, in a regulatory filing the press can read. That is what reframes the segment conversation. Once a buyer can see 1,582 hp and a Mustang-adjacent price on the same spec sheet, the €550,000 ask has to justify itself on something other than performance.

ThinkEV's Take

The Canadian angle is open. BYD holds the only Chinese brand registration in Transport Canada's Appendix G, which gives it the regulatory foothold to bring Denza north, but no timeline is on the table, and the post-January 2026 tariff structure (100% → 6.1%, 49K-unit quota) is still being read by every Chinese OEM looking at this market. Denza Z is unlikely to be the first car BYD ships through that quota; the volume case sits with cheaper models, and the trajectory of Chinese brands entering Canada suggests volume comes first, halo cars later.

The number to watch is the Denza Z's final Chinese-market sticker when sales open. If it lands inside the $60–80K USD band, Ferrari's Luce becomes a brand exercise, not a performance argument. If it lands above, the segment math changes and the comparison softens. Either way, the buyer who was looking at a Luce now has a question to answer that didn't exist six months ago, and that pattern of a Chinese entry reframing a Western segment is becoming the story of this decade in EVs.

Vlad Pereira