What you’re looking at here is not a Volkswagen Up! It is, in fact, a low-speed electric vehicle (LSEV) called the Weikerui V7 and it is the latest perpetrator in the now famous Chinese cloning epidemic. This particular one, however is a bit more blatant as it makes use of exactly the same design.
Not only does this car look like the Up!, but its dimensions are near identical (the V7 is of identical length, 4 mm wider and 17 mm taller).
Inside the V7, the copycat approach is a bit less notable. The Chinese knock-off boasts an eight-inch touchscreen infotainment system and a pseudo-wood-trim finish. It’s assumed that the perceived quality, however, is not up to the Volkswagen’s class-leading standard.
The Weikerui V7 is available in two trims, an LSEV and a conventional EV. The LSEV sports a 12 V/100 Ah lead-acid battery which delivers power to a 7 kW motor. It can do 40 km/h and has a range of 100 km. This power output can be increased to just under 9 kW, which lifts the top speed to 50 km/h and the range to 120 km.
The vehicle was discovered by Car News China at the 2017 Jinan EV Show. It’s been developed and built by a company called Dezhou Weikerui Electric Vehicle Industries from Dezhou in Shandong Province, which produces 60 000 vehicles a year.
