This is a Zotye M300 Langyue EV, a rare Chinese electric vehicle launched in 2011. I met this beige example in Beijing in 2018. It looked pretty good for its safe, still on the original alloy wheels and even the factory stickers were still partially visible. The Zotye M300 Langyue EV has Italian roots.
The Italian heritage goes back to the facelifted Fiat Multipla, also called Nuevo Multipla and Multipla 2. It debuted in 2004 but sales were slow and Fiat was in financial trouble. In 2008, Fiat and China’s Zotye Auto reached an agreement.
Under the agreement, Zotye would produce the Multipla 2 from CKD (Completely Knocked-Down) kits in 2008 and 2009. Starting in 2010, Zotye would start full production in China after Fiat shipped over the production line. The deal included a Fiat 1.6 liter engine and all the intellectual copyrights to the design.
Around this time, Fiat also sold the rights to the platform of the Alfa Romeo 166 to GAC, where it was used to kickstart the Trumpchi brand.
The first Chinese Multipla debuted in 2008. It was renamed Multiplan, with an ‘N’, because Fiat hadn’t sold the rights to the Multipla name. Zotye didn’t change a whole lot more. It got the Zotye badge on the grille and wheels, which was about it. Even the wheels remained the same.
The Multiplan was received with some hesitation in China. Like in Europe, opinions about design were divided, and the odd 6-seat setup didn’t help. The price in 2009 started at 138.000 yuan. Under the bonnet was a Fiat 1.6 liter petrol engine with an output of 103 hp and 145 Nm. The gearbox was a five-speed manual.
In 2010, when local production started, Zotye made more serious changes. The car got new lights, a new grille with the then-new Zotye Z logo, and new wheels. It also got a new name: the Zotye M300 Langyue (朗悦). The wuzzy Multiplan name was gone and never returned. The 1.6-liter engine remained unchanged. Zotye sold a five-seat version and a six-seat version. Price went down dramatically. The base five-seat car sold for just 69.800 yuan, almost half the cost of the base CKD model.
In the late 2000s, Zotye started making small series of electric vehicles based on their various petrol-powered cars. One of those was the Zotye M300 Langyue EV. It debuted in 2011. Interestingly, Zotye reverted to the original Fiat alloy wheel design for the EV version.
Note the sticker on the side of the show car. It says in Chinese: 众泰纯电动汽车, which means: Zotye Pure Electric Vehicle. The English text says: Electric Vehicles M300. And guess what? The production cars got the same stickers:
The Chinese characters faded away for the most part but the English words were still visible.
The sticker situation was the opposite on the opposite side: the characters were readable but the English words were gone.
The EV version was completely developed by Zotye. Fiat never made an electric Multipla. The Z300 had a single electric motor located at the front. Output was 82 hp and 250 Nm, which was pretty good for 2011. The top speed was 120 kilometers per hour. It had a 35.2 kWh battery for a 160-kilometer range. The battery was located under the floor.
The interior of any Zotye Z300 was a sea of gray plastics. The EV version had a small screen in the center stack to show battery status and range. It also had a faux-wood drive selector instead of the gear lever. The middle front seat is folded up here, so this is a six-seat version.
The drive selector was in the same place as the gear lever in the petrol version, so it looked a bit odd.
How many Zotye Z300 Langyue EVs were made is not entirely clear. Zotye produced a couple of dozen cars for all sorts of demonstration projects and even developed a separate battery-swap taxi version with a battery pack in the trunk. But the Z300 Langyue EV was never officially launched on the private Chinese car market, so normal folks couldn’t buy it.
The car that I saw in Beijing has license plates from Zhejiang Province, which is where Zotye was based. So this likely was an ex-demonstration car that somehow ended up in private hands. Or perhaps the owner was a Zotye employee who took it out for a long ride: Zhejiang-Beijing is at least 1100 kilometers by road. That requires a lot of charging on the way!
The badge on the back is 众泰电动汽车, which means Zotye Electric Vehicle. Compared to the sticker (众泰纯电动汽车), the character for pure was left out, for reasons only known to Zotye.
Characters: 朗悦 (Langyue).
The battery pack is visible in front of the spare wheel.
The Zotye M300 Langyue EV was an interesting experiment with a cool car and a fascinating background. Sadly, it didn’t get any further. After only a few years Zotye gave up on electric cars and started their infamous copycat period. The brand all but disappeared in the late 2010s, but recently there have been some rumors about a resurrection, with plans for a new series of… electric cars! Imagine what could have become of Zotye had they continued with EVs in the 2010s. They would have been at the forefront of the EV revolution in China right now.