Passenger car with longest range covers 1800 miles on full charge and tank

The new Hongqi H7 sedan has officially become the production passenger car with the longest range that has ever hit public roads, according to Guinness.

FAW's flagship EREV squeezed out 2,916.171 km (1,812 miles) on a single tank and a single charge, smashing the previous mark set by the Geely Galaxy A7 EM by well over 300 km. Priced from the equivalent $27,000 in China, the H7 pairs a typical 1.5T engine with dual battery options (ternary lithium or LFP), delivering 240 km of pure electric range and a claimed 4.4 L/100 km fuel consumption once the battery runs dry. All these range numbers are on the local CLTC cycle, which should be shaved by a third to arrive at the EPA's more realistic range estimates for driving in the US, but that would still leave the H7 able to cover 1,200 miles when fully topped up.

Extended range electric vehicles, or EREVs, are having a moment there, largely because they dodge range anxiety without demanding a nationwide flash charging network that is still being built. They rely on some of the world's most efficient gas-powered engines, with the 1.5T unit on the H7, in particular, returning a thermal efficiency of 45.21%. The kicker is that it can run on cheaper 92-octane gasoline, too, as it only serves as a generator for the sedan's electric motors.

Even brands that built their identity on pure EVs, like Xiaomi or XPeng, are jumping in. XPeng's G7 SUV currently holds the crown for longest pure electric range in an EREV SUV at 430 km, though Xiaomi's upcoming Skynomad line is gunning for that title with a 76 kWh battery good for 505 km on electrons alone, before its generator engine even wakes up.

Hongqi's own HS6 SUV set the SUV range record at 2,327 km months before its H7 sibling topped the sedan chart. Nissan took the hybrid crown with its Qashqai e Power, driving 1,980 km across Colombia, while in pure EV territory, Ford's Mustang Mach-E covered 916 km on a single charge using efficiency tires.

Needless to say, none of these numbers reflect daily driving realistically, but if records like these keep piling up, range anxiety may become a thing of the past as EREVs have become a surprisingly successful stopgap measure until energy density improves with the advent of solid-state and other battery technologies.

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