Your Questions Answered: Will a Denza B8 handle a lap? 

Question: I’m looking at a Denza B8 for my next car. I am planning to tow a tandem axle off-road caravan with it. Is the B8 any good for towing and travelling for a year on the big lap? - Joseph

Answer: Hey Joseph, we haven’t tow-tested the Denza B8 as yet, but so far there are some promising things about it for towing heavy trailers long distances and some things – rather significant ones – that aren’t so great.

First, a 3500kg braked towing capacity, with 350kg maximum tow ball down weight, are great numbers – as good as any other large SUV.

Even better (for towing something heavy, if not vehicle dynamics) is that the B8 weighs 3.3 tonnes on its own; towing a trailer heavier than the tow vehicle is always an unequal partnership, where the heavier mass wins. Which you don’t want if trailer sway occurs.

So most trailers will likely weigh less than the B8, which is a good thing. The payload, about 700kg, isn’t great, but typical. Most SUVs and utes don’t have much payload. The GCM, just a tick over 7000kg, is again, not exceptionally good but industry-typical.

Like almost any other large SUV towing heavy stuff, you can’t carry everything and some and be legal. You have to keep an eye on the scales. With 425kW/700Nm to play with, even with its big kerb weight, the B8’s towing performance is very promising.

The plug-in hybrid B8 also has a 91-litre fuel tank, so that is theoretically a good thing (for fuel range). However, initial reports suggest that the Denza B8 is quite thirsty towing a heavy (3000kg-plus) trailer, supposedly returning a range of barely 350km.

Even though it can run on cheaper 91RON unleaded, it would likely consume a lot on a big lap, and its range is somewhat limited. That gets to front-of-mind when you have a 400-500km distance between towns and fuel stops.

Lastly, because the Denza brand is quite new to Australia, getting parts and servicing in more remote regions might be more difficult than with an established legacy brand.

I’d suggest a Denza B8 would be potentially a far better proposition for recreational weekend towing where you’re not doing massive kilometres, and can benefit from the far more efficient electric-only operation the B8 affords when running around town without a trailer.

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