06:41 06-08-2026
Denza D9: cheaper than the Lexus LM, but its 5-minute charge needs a station you may not find yet
Denza opens UK orders for the seven-seat D9 DM-i from £75,000 — £22,645 less than the Lexus LM. Its 5-minute top-up only works on BYD's own Flash Charging network.
A £22,645 price gap — around $30,400 — makes the Denza D9 a serious rival to the seven-seat Lexus LM. But the Chinese minivan’s headline trick, topping the battery up from 10% to 70% in five minutes, only works on BYD’s own Flash Charging stations, a network still being rolled out across Europe. The savings land immediately; the infrastructure edge doesn’t — not everywhere yet.
Autocar reports that UK orders have opened at prices starting from £75,000, or roughly $100,800 at the Bank of England’s August 3, 2026 rate. The range-topping Ultimate trim is priced at £85,000 — about $114,200. By comparison, the official Lexus LM 350h AWD with seven seats starts at £97,645.
The Denza D9 DM-i pairs a 1.5-liter turbo engine rated at 88 kW with two electric motors. Combined output is 260 kW, or 353 hp, with a 0–100 km/h sprint of 8.6 seconds. Its 58.5 kWh battery delivers 210 km of WLTP electric range, and total range with the 64-liter fuel tank reaches 950 km.
There’s a catch, though. The full 559 kW is available only on Flash Charging, while the onboard AC charger is rated at just 11 kW. A full battery top-up from a standard three-phase station would theoretically take at least 5 hours and 19 minutes, ignoring losses — a far cry from the advertised nine minutes for a 10–97% charge.
Even the base D9 comes with power sliding doors, a panoramic roof, and second-row control screens. The Ultimate adds seats with 14-way adjustment, 16-point massage, and a near-flat recline. 32CARS.RU previously covered the D9’s update for the Chinese market. In the UK, the choice won’t come down to equipment alone: the Lexus premium buys a well-established dealer network, while the Denza discount partly rests on trust in a charging network that’s still being built.