Mullen Qiantu 50
It’s the Pininfarina Battista of China! Maybe, it could be, who knows? We had never heard of the Mullen Qiantu 50 until now. But there it was, sitting at the New York auto show. (Qiantu means future in Chinese, by the way.)
The carbon-fiber-bodied electric supercoupe sports 430 hp. It has two electric motors, one driving the front wheels and the other driving the rears, with power supplied by a 78.8-kWh battery pack. Based on that, a good guess would put range at easily over 200 miles. But that's just a guess, not a figure from the manufacturer.
You can see a video of the car here, including a few more details, some side shots and interior shots, plus a view of the car racing a great white shark. Brakes look like they’ll be supplied by Brembo, and tires look like Pirelli P Zeros on 19-inch rims. It will offer “Dynamic Torque Vectoring” and a form of electronic stability control.
The battery runs longitudinally down the middle of the car and then piles up in two big stacks behind the two seats.
Mullen Qiantu 50 exploded view. The wheels fly off!
The car has been on sale in China since last August, with about 1,000 sold in that time. Those cars were manufactured in China by a company called CH-Auto. Mullen is “a strategic partner of CH-Auto with an exclusive cooperation agreement.” CH-Auto is not an investor or owner of Mullen. (Also, interestingly enough, there’s a used car dealership on Garvey Avenue in Rosemead here in SoCal called C H Auto, but it appears that’s just a coincidence.)
Here in the U.S., Mullen has a staff of 60 engineers at an R&D facility in Monrovia, Calif., and further staff at its U.S. headquarters in nearby Brea. The plan is to homologate, assemble and distribute the North American-spec Qiantu 50s here, though exactly how much manufacturing will be done in the U.S. is not yet clear. Once finished, the Qiantu 50s will be distributed through a network of U.S. retailers. There are currently five retail outlets in California, with more coming as the car gets closer to U.S. release in the second half of 2020.
We're looking forward to a test drive sometime soon.
