The Russian company Motorinvest, which is already engaged in Dongfeng, Voyah and Evolute cars, has again announced an expansion of the range. SUVs under the new M-Hero brand will be on sale. These are also products of the Dongfeng concern, but the Mengshi brand is used for these machines in the home market. It was originally created for the “Chinese Hummer”, but a year ago it began to be used for civilian vehicles.
The Mengshi M-Hero 917 electric SUV, which debuted in its homeland at the end of last year and entered the assembly line last August, will come to us under the M-Hero brand. The frame car has a brutal design and rather large dimensions: length — 5066 mm, width — 1934 mm, height — 2080 mm. It has an air suspension, a full-control chassis and 20-inch wheels with high-profile tires. The passport ground clearance is 221 mm, and the depth of the ford to be overcome is 900 mm.
M-Hero is available in two versions. The first is a sequential hybrid, in which the 1.5 gasoline turbo engine (197 hp) is not connected to the wheels, but operates only in generator mode to recharge the traction battery with a capacity of 65.8 kWh. The wheels are rotated by three electric motors (one in front, two in the rear) with a total output of 816 hp and 1050 Nm. The claimed range with a full tank of gasoline and a charged battery is 750 km on the WLTP cycle, acceleration to “hundreds” takes 6.0 seconds, and the maximum speed is 191 km/ h.
The second version is purely electric. It has four electric motors (one for each wheel), which in total give out 1088 hp and 1400 Nm, and the traction battery is designed for 143 kWh. This M-Hero is even more dynamic: 4.2 s to 100 km/h and 195 km/h maximum. But the passport power reserve is only 450 km on the WLTP cycle.
Motorinvest will become the official importer of M-Hero cars, cars can be bought from 18 Voyah brand dealers in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir, Krasnoyarsk, Yaroslavl, Chelyabinsk, Tolyatti, Kazan, Samara and Izhevsk. The first batch of 100 cars will be available for order in December, prices have not yet been announced. In China, the hybrid Mengshi M-Hero 917 costs 638 thousand yuan, that is, 8.1 million rubles in direct translation at the current exchange rate, and for the electric version they ask for 698 thousand yuan (8.8 million rubles). Unofficial suppliers in the Far East are already offering to bring cars from China at a price of 10.5 million rubles, but there are also no live copies available yet.
By the way, the M-Hero in the original Chinese specification will fall into the “cargo” category C, because the total mass of the hybrid is 3740 kg, and the electric car is 3800 kg! The curb weight in both cases exceeds 3.1 tons. To enter M-Hero in category B, passport data will have to be adjusted.