Two meters wide and five and a half meters long. The chunky design has plenty of room to impress. Although the brand name is in chocolate letters, the most frequently asked question from passers-by is which brand this Tonka truck is. ‘Maxus’ means nothing to most people as a car brand, probably because they don’t have an eye for the brand’s vans. Because there are quite a few of them driving around in our country. The brand belongs to the large Chinese SAIC group (of which MG is also a part), which collaborates with Volkswagen. But the brand has British roots. The Maxus was a Ford Transit-like van from LDV and that brand was acquired by SAIC in 2011. Dealer holding Van Mossel Automotive Group markets Maxus in our country. High weight As mentioned, the E-Terron 9 is not a small boy and with a curb weight of almost three tons, you should certainly not get it on your toes. The battery measuring more than 102 kWh is largely responsible for that heavy weight. Thanks to the generous power of 435 hp and 700 Nm of torque, the Maxus nevertheless moves very easily. Two electric motors provide this power: a 170 hp motor drives the front wheels and a 273 hp one sits on the rear axle. The E-Terron is therefore permanently four-wheel drive. In fact, it is just very smooth and accelerates easily and smoothly. But if you suddenly want to get that speed out, the heavy weight will be a problem. Press the brake and you will notice that the weight must first move forward and compress the smooth air suspension. Unfortunately, the BF Goodrich off-road tires do not provide the best grip, so it needs some space for an emergency stop. These tires undoubtedly do a good job on a construction site or on a muddy forest road, but on the asphalt they are particularly noisy and contribute significantly to the blurred steering feeling that you constantly experience. The interior has the atmosphere of a luxury passenger car. Leather on the seats (electrically adjustable and with massage function), a large panoramic roof, a JBL system and a large multimedia screen. The dashboard has a modern design and fortunately there are still a few buttons for the climate control. The multimedia system is not great and has been carefully formulated. It responds slowly and the texts came out of the translation machine very poorly and apparently were not proofread. Or do you know what ‘freight hopper lamp’ could be? Or ‘turn rear tungsten on/off’? And what would you check for ‘activate/deactivate the front print’? What nonsense and how that undermines the experience of an expensive car. Because it is not cheap: the Premium version you see here costs more than €76,000. Through that system, we ultimately managed to rid the Maxus of a very annoying setting: when the turn signals were switched on, the side cameras were activated. and you can see on the screen what is happening right next to the car. That can be safe. But at the same time, this system mutes the sound of the radio, so that every time you overtake, merge, drive around a roundabout, etc., the volume of the audio decreases significantly. Just as annoying as it is nonsensical and fortunately we managed to switch off the camera and thus also the intervention on the audio.Best boxThe Maxus E-Terron is a pick-up with a double cabin and so we also take a seat in the second row. There is little to complain about. You are in a good place and it is spacious. The outer seats are heated. The only closed luggage compartment is in the nose. The frunk opens at the push of a button and that is a great container in which you can at least store your charging cable and, with a bit of good will, also a full shopping bag. The loading container is accessible by opening the lid. There is a push button on the edge that allows you to unlock it electrically. Handy: if you hold the button down, you deflate the air suspension of the rear axle, which lowers the lift threshold. The box is neatly finished with a black covering and there are movable lashing eyes on the top edge. You cannot keep track of your cargo via the interior mirror, because it has a digital copy. You can look behind the car via a camera on the tailgate, but we long for a normal mirror. In the rain, the image is blurred by splashing water and in the dark the sensor cannot cope with the light from headlights and you get a completely bright white image. Pointless, unfortunately. Extra points for installing large, normal exterior mirrors! A pick-up is and remains a cool vehicle. They are quite rare on the streets and if you want to stand out, you can definitely do that with such a large tank. Especially if you take it in yellow, like the car we photographed. But this Maxus E-Terron 9 does have some flaws. On the plus side are the space, the trailer weight of 3,500 kg, the power and the luxury. But as far as minuses are concerned, it is quite a laundry list of minor annoyances, such as noisy tires, a long braking distance and mediocre multimedia. Moreover, it is certainly not a bargain.
Source: www.autoweek.nl
