May set pacemakers alight.
When asked of American marque Buick, you’d likely have conjured up an image of a rather unremarkable-looking saloon, probably in beige, with an equally brown cabin and and elderly person behind the wheel. You probably also pictured the sunny state of Florida as a backdrop, where many ageing Americans like to retire, because if it were any cooler it would antagonise their arthritic joints.
The Buick that the company has announced in China ahead of the upcoming Beijing auto show though… it’s basically the antithesis of the Buick you just imagined. Not only is it not beige, but there is also no big, lazy petrol engine to be found. The Buick Enspire Concept is a fully-electric vehicle, the kind that would give companies like Tesla a headache.
Cutting-edge technology and innovation are the orders of the day, and the Enspire doesn’t disappoint in either regard. Under the skin you’ll find a raft of batteries and a rather powerful motor, the latter delivering up to 410kW of shove and the former up to 600km in range. And when you’ve maxed out the battery, you won’t be left stuck for too long: The batteries charge from nought to 80% in just 40-minutes. Not bad, eh?
Inside, you’ll find something called a “surround skyline interior theme and suspended theatre-type seating,” which to us, just looks very pretty. There’s a variety of OLEDs dotted around the place that allows the projection of driver information onto the screen, as well as 5G connectivity in place to supply said information.
The smarts don’t end there though. The Buick Enspire also packs the Super Cruise semi-autonomous driving system that first debuted on the Cadillac CT6. Critics who’ve sampled Super Cruise from Cadillac feel that the system is on par with similar offerings from Volvo and Tesla, though a Buick spokesperson clarified that its debut on the Enspire was not an indicator that the feature would be introduced on any Buicks anytime soon.
Buick’s parent company, GM, has stated on multiple occasions its intention to introduce some 20 new electric cars by 2023. If the reception to the Enspire is inspiring, it may just make it into production, which is something we’d like to see very, very much.
Stay tuned to CarShowroom for more updates as they come.
