Published on November 1st, 2022 | by Subhash Nair

BeyonCa – A New Chinese Car Brand With Ex-VW Talent

BeyonCa has serious Volkswagen talent behind it and looks like it means business.

New Chinese automakers are a dime a dozen and few ever expand beyond their home province – fewer still last beyond a few years. That being said, here’s one new Chinese car brand you might actually want to pay attention to. They’re called BeyonCa and as their name suggests, their business model goes beyond just cars. The company has ambitions to go beyond manufacturing and marketing cars. They also want to serve the market as an OEM and even have a toe in the food business somehow. BeyondCar has a registered capital of US$200 million.

Although the company was just shown to the public recently, BeyonCa was founded back in 2021. The head of this company is former executive vice president of Volkswagen Group, Su Weiming. He was in Volkswagen Group for 16 years and was the highest ranking ethnically Chinese executive at the German company. You might remember Su Weiming from our piece on Appollen.

Besides Weiming, other former Volkswagen employees have joined BeyonCa. This includes ex-board member Christian Klinger, ex-R&D chief Hans-Joachim Rotenpieler, and ex-design head Dirk van Braeckel. These are very talented and experienced, having worked with Volkswagen Group brands Audi, Skoda, Bentley, Porsche, Lamborghini, and Bugatti.

BeyondCa GT Opus 1

Although this new car company is still some time away from launching a product they have a concept car to show called the GT Opus 1. The BeyonCa GT Opus 1 is scheduled to hit the market with manufacturing help from Dongfeng in 2024 with a price tag of 1 million yuan – roughly RM650,000.

The GT Opus 1 features non-traditional but very upmarket styling. A strong sloped roofline, a kinked chrome strip along the bottom of the glasshouse, 5-spoke dual tone alloy wheels, a tapered boot section and a sharp pointed nose characterise the GT Opus 1’s design.

The GT Opus 1 will be 5,200mm long with a wheelbase of 3,000mm, making it slightly larger than the Porsche Taycan it probably aims to compete against. In terms of its electric architecture – expect it to feature an 800V platform with up to 300kW DC Fast Charging and a 130kWh battery. There will also be a performance version called the GT Opus 1 R, but not actual performance stats have been shared thus far.

What do you think of the BeyonCa GT Opus 1? Can a car with no legacy and no extraordinary breakthrough technology command such a price? Do you think the Volkswagen talent will make a huge difference in the product’s execution?