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BYD will bring 1000kW electric car charging technology to the UK with the new Denza Z9 GT shooting brake.

Launched earlier this year in China on the new BYD Han L saloon and BYD Tang L SUV, the company's new 'flash charge' functionality can theoretically add up to 249 miles of range in just five minutes - several times quicker than any EV currently on sale.

Originally, BYD planned to install 5000 1000kW (one megawatt) chargers – which are 1000V and have a maximum current of 1000A – across China in the first year after launch, but Autocar understands the roll-out rate has been far quicker than expected and it's now targeting some 15,000 units there in the same period.

BYD is now planning to take the technology global, and vice-president Stella Li has said that, as "one of the most important markets", the UK is in the frame to be an early adopter, with BYD already preparing to install the first megawatt chargers in the country by the end of 2025.

The company hasn't given a timeframe for the UK roll-out but is understood to be in talks with companies that could partner it for the installation of the new devices.

It remains to be seen how they will be integrated into the UK's national grid, but Autocar understands that the devices can be powered – at least in part – by on-site battery packs, topped up by solar panels.

"We are doing the work now, and then we will start by the end of this year. You will see them in different places," Li said, without giving an indication of the size of the planned network.

The Z9 GT is due on sale in the UK from the first quarter of 2026, and the first megawatt chargers are likely to be installed at Denza's new bespoke dealerships to support that, ahead of a wider nationwide roll-out.

Li said "all the Denzas will have that technology", but the B5 SUV and D9 MPV that will follow the Z9 into the UK next year are plug-in hybrids, so that will apply only to all-electric Denza models coming later.

They will be by far the fastest EV chargers in the UK; currently that title is held by the 480kW devices operated by Helix Renewables in Blackpool.

BYD's 1000kW devices feature two 500kW cables that combine to give the maximum output when plugged in simultaneously to the Z9's two charging ports.

Li said that unlike the majority of Tesla's Superchargers, the new units won't be limited to Denza models: "The flash charging stations can also work with other cars. The only problem is that the car determines the power. Our cars can take all the power."

Ultimately, Li said, the introduction of such rapid charging technology means EVs need not necessarily have such a long range and buyers will say: "Don't give me more than 300 kilometres (186 miles), because I don't want to pay the cost."

While the megawatt charging is limited to BYD's premium EVs for now, Li suggested that as the technology becomes more prolific and costs come down, it could be rolled out to smaller and more affordable models - right down to the £18,000 Dolphin Surf supermini.

"I think BYD is the company that can always make a dream happen," she said.

However, Li didn't give any details of when other models in the BYD portfolio would receive megawatt charging capability. The Han L and Tang L aren't due to be sold in the UK.

Jaguar's internet-breaking Type 00 concept has made its UK public debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, just months before the firm reveals the production version of the radical electric super-GT that will start its new era. 

The concept was revealed late last year as a statement of intent for the reinvention of Jaguar, which has taken all of its models off sale for a year while it lays the groundwork for a new range of all-electric luxury cars in a far higher price bracket.

The first of these will be revealed at the end of this year as a sleek, four-door GT with up to 986bhp and a design that departs completely from Jaguar's past line-up - both inside and out, as previewed by the Type 00. Due in production in the middle of next year, it will be followed by two more luxury cars, thought to include a larger limousine-style saloon and a Bentley Bentayga-rivalling SUV.

The concept car is a two-door fixed-head coupé, a body type we’re told will not be built. But it has perhaps been artfully chosen because it loosely echoes the layout of the 1961 Jaguar E-Type, the car nearly everyone cites as the leader of a previous great leap forward in Jaguar design.

 

 

 

 

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Company insiders say the concept coupé’s size, proportions and, above all, its design style are all “very close” to the brand’s first next-generation production car: a blocky Porsche Taycan-rivalling super-GT that has been recently pictured testing. That car and its radical styling were first revealed by Autocar back in 2023, and the Type 00 concept shows how accurate our sources were.

This will be the first of three models to be launched, with about a year between them, on the new purpose-designed JEA architecture. That platform will, Jaguar estimates, offer as much as 430 miles of range and the ability to add 200 miles with 15 minutes of charge. This would suggest power being drawn from a battery in excess of 100kWh, but Jaguar has yet to confirm a pack size.

This concept is the product of an exhaustive process that led designers to produce 13 full-size models on the way, and its maturity shows. All were avant-garde, according to design chief Gerry McGovern. “Anything iterative would not have taken us where we wanted to go,” he said.

Its name, which reprises the word ‘Type’ used for so many great Jaguars, also suggests that future nomenclature won’t stray too far from the past.

Although the Type 00 is a two-door car with forward-hinged dihedral doors and built on a shorter-than-production wheelbase, it tells us plenty about the forthcoming saloon. We already know this is a low, lithe car in the old Jaguar mould, with a raked roof, a long wheelbase and a uniquely long bonnet.

It’s also one of a new wave of cars that ditches a heavy and fundamentally useless rear window and uses twin side cameras, and a digital rear-view mirror like that offered in its Defender cousin.

The Type 00’s shape is defined by long, confident lines that spell out beautiful, opulent proportions, according to its maker. The modernist surfaces are starkly simple, almost flat in places, but they incorporate sleek compound curves where needed.

The overall effect is boldness – a key aim of the designers – yet the surfacing and sparse details carry impressions of sophistication and restraint, as befits a Jaguar selling in the £120,000 bracket, more than twice the price of an outgoing-generation Jag.

The glasshouse stresses the theme of lowness. The Type 00 has a fairly high waist and a flattish roof with a ‘fast’ rear panel (without window) that gives it almost a chop-top look. In that one way, it faintly resembles one previous Jaguar: the XJS.

The car has a bluff front with no ‘proper’ grille, using Jaguar’s new 16-bar Strike Through design device as frontal embellishment. The same device is used again atop the long bonnet and it even flows through the raked windscreen to become a fascia-topped feature. The massive 23in alloys also use the same multi-line Strike Through as part of their own design.

Inside, it is a stunning, cream-coloured compartment for two that shuns leather in favour ofmodern, sustainable textiles such as Kvadrat (already popular in production Defenders and Range Rovers). It features a pair of elegantly designed bucket seats, constructed in a way that avoids visible stitching (as in the Defender Octa). There’s also a surface called Travertine Stone on the centre console (a genuine stone veneer) and a brass spine runs along the length of the cabin.

The concept’s controls and instruments are comprehensive, rethought but minimised in what has become a very JLR way. “Just as on the outside, deployable technologies are a hallmark of the interior,” said interior design chief Tom Holden.

This is shown by two rearview screens (“that glide silently and theatrically”), which save the Type 00 from having untidy exterior rear-vision mirrors. The door releases are in the roof console next to a long panoramic roof. And instead of choosing your driving mode from a switch, you drop a brass token into a slot in the centre console.

Some of it is beautiful, some features are gimmicky and, unlike with the exterior, it’s far from clear how influential the Type 00’s cabin will be on the 2026 production car.

Overwhelmingly, the Type 00 fulfils its mission to be “a copy of nothing”, to employ once again that grievously overused quote from Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons. It also brings a new logic to the much-discussed rebranding elements: the Device Mark, the Strike Through, the Maker’s Mark (the new ‘leaper’ and simpler ‘JR’ medallion).

The new ‘jaGuar’ script looks okay on the car, despite its middle capital letter, and the Strike Through provides interesting detail for the car’s frontal surface – where traditionally a grille would be – while also giving the rear body panel an unmistakable ‘new Jaguar’ identity. The new brass leaper provides detail on each of the car’s front flanks and the ‘JR’ medallions are used as wheel centres. It all comes together far better than many critics might have imagined a few weeks ago.

In most ways, the Type 00’s design collides head on with the proportions of the outgoing I-Pace, Jaguar’s first full EV that was launched only six years ago and whose creators took pains to emphasise their car’s forward-control layout (and consequent short nose) and to brand it an SUV. This allowed it a sleek but high-riding shape with plenty of space for the battery below the cabin floor. We have yet to discover how the new-generation Jaguars will accommodate their batteries while retaining their low-slung stance.

The lowness of the Type 00 and the similarly low-riding production models to come promise a relatively small frontal area (despite a very upright, bluff front) as a way of delivering decent aerodynamic performance.

But good aero is not the only priority, it seems. Jaguar managing director Rawdon Glover said it was a key objective from the project’s earliest days to resist – for concept and production models – the arch-conventional, somewhat hackneyed use of high-riding, forward-control shapes that had “spent too long in the wind tunnel” and been adopted by many current EVs as a way of delivering Jaguar’s avowed “fearless creativity” of design.

Though everyone at JLR takes pains to credit the whole 600-strong JLR design group for work on this project, the influence of McGovern, JLR’s chief creative officer whose success with highly profitable Range Rover models has underpinned the four-year-old Reimagine plan, is clear. The idea to “think Range Rover” at Jaguar has driven the adoption of its reductive, modernist approach to the new cars.

While promoting something “very different”, McGovern sympathises with the plight of his design predecessors at Jaguar, pointing out that the company’s product objectives 10 years ago simply wouldn’t have allowed this bold approach. “Back then, the company thought very differently,” he said, “and was aiming at very different competitors.”

The target was to grab sales from BMW and Audi with good but mainstream premium models like the XE and XF saloons and the E-Pace and F-Pace SUVs. In the past months, all of those cars, as well as the I-Pace have been ditched.

Understandably, none of Jaguar’s bigwigs wants to get into a discussion about the size of the risk they’re taking with Jaguar, though most admit there is one. JLR CEO Adrian Mardell takes a determined tone by insisting that “there will be no success for JLR without Jaguar”. That’s probably just in case any of us thought JLR people could have a happier life at Gaydon by shutting Jaguar, selling the name to the Chinese and concentrating on making super-successful Range Rovers for a living.

While the reinvention risks alienating some of Jaguar’s traditional customers, the firm seems determined it will win over a new clientele of car lovers with £120,000 to spend. With its completely new products, this Gaydon team wants to live up to Enzo Ferrari’s age-old quote about their predecessors’ E-Type being the most beautiful car in the world.

Glover, who has spent a year telling people how excited he is by the size of the challenge ahead, cites copious research to back his view of the people who will buy a new-gen Jaguar.

“First and foremost,” he said, “they’ll be independently minded. They’ll have an appreciation of design and will be looking for exclusivity. We expect them to be young and wealthy, connected and more likely to live urban lives. They’ll be cash rich and time poor, so every aspect of their journey with us will need to be effortless.”

In the light of today’s EV slowdown, does he have fears for Jaguar’s acceptance? Not really, it seems. It’s all a matter of timing. Jaguar is talking about models that will be in their prime in 2030, he explains, not 2025.

“Besides, our product will be game-changing,” he said. “Up to 430 miles of range, and in excess of 200 miles of charge possible in 15 minutes. That makes it fundamentally different from what’s on the market today.”

It's a tough time for city cars. Over the past few years, we've lost several great ones to ever-changing CO2 regulations and new safety regulations – and it doesn't help that car makers simply make more profit from higher-riding SUVs. 

It's a shame, because the best city cars generally consume less fuel and use the least amount of resources in their construction. 

Still, the city car genre isn't going down without a fight, and despite the increasing challenge of making these mini marvels meet law makers' demands, the current crop includes some of the best ever.

Choosing the perfect city car can make all the difference for navigating busy streets, tight parking spots, and stop-and-go traffic with ease. But city cars are also getting much more accomplished at travelling long distances, delivering better fuel economy and utilising smarter technology than ever before.  

What’s more, with their skinny tyres, low mass and peppy engines, these machines often deliver driver thrills way out of proportion to their humble place in the automotive pecking order.

So which is the best city car on sale today? Our top 10 is packed with charming models – but our pick of the lot is the Fiat Grande Panda, which we've also named as the best small car on sale. It takes eye-catching style and blends it with an all-important dose of fun on the road. 

Read on to see which models stand out in 2025 for their urban agility and everyday convenience.