Chinese companies have knocked off Western vehicles for years, but the tide of such clones has slowed as the Chinese auto industry has transitioned from its infancy to a more boisterous toddlerhood. But that doesn’t mean the tap has totally switched off, as evidenced by the Youxia Motors Ranger X, a claimed all-electric sedan that looks an awful lot like a Tesla Model S.
Youxia’s website proclaims—according to Google Chrome’s language translation function—that the Ranger X is “YOUR.BIG.TOY!” We don’t know what that’s all about, but there’s little doubt about Youxia’s intention to mimic Tesla beyond the way its cars look and operate. The company’s blog is filled with references to becoming “the Chinese Tesla,” and how the fledgling automaker needs to engineer its own chassis because it has no “way to directly use Tesla’s.” Straight-up copying actual Tesla bits having apparently been thwarted, Youxia nonetheless is positioning itself as a hot startup that will soon sell a hot electric car in China.
Beyond looking much like a Tesla Model S, the Ranger X shares its track and wheelbase dimensions with its American inspiration. The interior, too, is a near dead-ringer for the Model S’s, complete with a colossal central touch-screen display and a digital gauge cluster; the graphics on both are also straight copies of Tesla’s, from the driving range indicator to the gauge-cluster layout of speed, energy usage, and media information. Even the Ranger X’s logo, a sort of bent Y shape (“Ranger” is “Yóuxiá” in anglicized Chinese), closely mimics Tesla’s stylized T badge. A photo on the website even depicts a naked X chassis, which unsurprisingly bears a close resemblance to the Model S’s skateboard architecture. And either the Chinese have excellent wheel-copying skills, or someone’s eBay account has a used set of Model S wheels in its order history.
From what we’ve gleaned, the Ranger X is rear-wheel drive and boasts “asynchronous electric motors” making a total of 362 horsepower. Using a battery of unspecified composition and assembly (using the awkward Chrome translation, the site refers to a “18650 battery”), the X can allegedly reach 62 mph in 5.2 seconds and travel up to 285 miles per charge. All of this, it says, comes with operating costs 80 percent lower than what we must assume is a typical gasoline-powered automobile. Driver-assistance systems are based upon those from supplier MobilEye, and include what sounds to be lane-keeping assist and adaptive cruise-control functions. Further down the rabbit hole are references to a HAL 9000–like human-machine interface that prompts the driver with voice messages and which will “will take the initiative to dialogue with you.”
But, hey, screw the nonbelievers, right? When your tag line is “Subvert Everything, Just to Transcend Everything. Unusual, but Better,” you can do you. And is the Tesla photocopying really so blatant? Since Tesla Motors itself opened up its patents to all, Ranger’s story isn’t so much one of intellectual property infringement, but rather a peculiar tale of America’s startup culture jumping the Pacific. In fact, other than lots of digital renderings of the X and but a single photo of what looks to be a completed prototype, the Ranger website’s only other real content is a mess of bizarre and futurist missives from the person we assume is the company’s founder. Sure, there aren’t any Hyperloops or stillborn battery-swapping ideas, but the overwhelming theme? Musky.
In fact, there are so many posts about Tesla and Elon Musk that, were Ranger’s site printed on paper, the pages might stick together. We particularly enjoyed one post that paints in broad strokes the apparent vacuum in the massive Chinese auto market into which luxurious and quick electrics like Tesla’s would naturally be sucked, were it not for Tesla’s ass-dragging around with a mere 35,000 annual sales. Citing Ranger as the company to fill that void while improving on Tesla’s cars, business model, and eco-conservatism, the company’s blogger/founder comes off as more than slightly quirky.
Even so, the company at least seems to have a car, even if said car’s existence seems to have only invited more skepticism—and from native Chinese, no less. For the past few months, Youxia’s blogger/founder has devoted a massive amount of effort to dispelling criticisms, fact-checking, and general apprehension to the company’s future while also trying to point out—in vain, by our assessment—the minute differences between the X and Tesla’s Model S. At least Youxia has the right attitude, if this quote on the outfit’s site is any indication: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” Indeed.
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