Denza D9: Business class seats on wheels, the Chinese way

Automotive brands from China, especially BYD, have been on a splendid roll in recent years. Unless you’ve been living in a rock, chances are you’ve seen – or yet to be in one of their many well-selling models. The low-price, high-feature approach has proved very appealing to the mass market, and it shows when you go out and inevitably see a BYD plying the streets sooner or later. 

One less popular but newer brand, however (but a prospective disruptor nonetheless), is Denza. They’re BYD’s luxury arm, analogous to Lexus and Toyota, Acura and Honda, Infiniti and Nissan, and so on. They’re quite new to the local scene, but they already have a three-model lineup locally that aims to shake up the smaller yet more discerning luxury car market. 

Denza Philippines tossed us the keys to the Denza D9, their premium minivan designed to elevate the experience already well-appointed BYD eMAX 9 DM-i is offering. Priced at Php 4,298,000, the Denza D9 commands over a million-peso premium over its more “pedestrian” relative, even in the eMAX 9’s top-spec configuration. Do the changes made to the D9 add up to make a properly luxurious experience, and are they enough to sway the typically brand-conscious customers in the luxury segment? Let’s find out.

Off the bat, the D9’s exterior definitely looks more upscale, with splashes of bright silver trim here and there around a silhouette that reasonably exudes road presence. Presence is definitely imposed at the front, with a very commanding cheesegrater-esque grille that very nearly covers the entire fascia of the minivan. It’s a sight that you might really not appreciate seeing filling up your entire rearview mirror, we believe. Imposing, yes, but we think that it’s a little too derivative of a similarly priced competitor: the Toyota Alphard. 

Around the side, Denza definitely broke up the otherwise slab-sided profile with a nice character line that cuts from the front all the way back to the tailgate, and a chrome garnish down the bottom of the doors. The wheels are 18 inches, with a premium-looking two-tone design that has so many spokes that you’ll be well asleep before you finish counting. 

The back of the D9 is neatly composed also, with Denza clearly completing the look of the D9 with more restraint in mind as opposed to the typically overdone looks we get from Chinese models. The taillights are intricately designed but not overbearing, although we can’t quite wrap our minds around why both bottom corners of the rear bumper have integrated fake vents in them. Oh well, we can’t really have it all, can we?

Step inside, and it’s immediately apparent how Denza really did their homework on how to make a premium cabin. The seats from the front all the way to the third row are wrapped in plush Nappa leather in brown. Seemingly bespoke wood trim adorns the dashboard, the door cards, and even the back of the seats. Material choices are generally well thought out, with hard plastics kept to a bare minimum, and are only ever found in areas where you won’t frequently touch.

Sitting up front, you’re greeted with a nice-looking two-spoke steering wheel that proudly showcases the Denza logo. Screens abound here, with a 10.25 inch 3D instrument cluster neatly integrated into the dashboard, and a 15.6 inch center infotainment display serving as the pièce de résistance at the front.

Music is pumped out through a 14-speaker Dynaudio system that balances good clarity and bass, even if you’re just playing from Spotify. The dashboard is comically massive, and you definitely feel this sitting up front since the windshield sits so far away from you, in a different postal code. Still, a very legible 12-inch heads-up display resides in this behemoth of a dashboard, along with wrap-around ambient lighting. 

A crystal-like gear selector is found on the center panel below and somewhat leans toward gaudy rather than classy, but the bigger sore point here is how the surrounding panels are composed of piano black material. In a very highly interacted portion of the cabin, protective films are definitely an option worth considering if you wish to keep it scratch-free in the long run.

The second row, however, is where the attention of the designers and engineers was clearly most spent, as this is understandably where the clientele of the D9 will spend most of their time. Denza rips a page straight off Nissan’s playbook and puts two Zero Gravity captain seats here, but with a lot more gizmos to boot. 

First off, these captain seats are adjustable in ten different ways, and just like the front row seats, they feature massage functions with heating and cooling. A high-speed wireless charger is integrated into each seat, and each seat has an armrest with an integrated display that serves as your control panel for the seat, and even has control over the music playing from the infotainment screen up front. They’re definitely the place to be in this vehicle, as the comfort levels are definitely up to scratch with the segment that Denza is aiming for. 

Well-built folding tables are attached to the back of the front seats and definitely scream business class, but we wish that Denza found a way to incorporate these instead into the captain seats themselves, as any placed food or laptops can be a full arm’s reach away when you move your seat back for legroom.

You also get your own climate zone here in the second row, but best of all, you get a power extending and retracting mini refrigerator at the back of the center console. We haven’t tested wine bottles here, but multiple Perrier bottles definitely do fit, and they really do get chilled quite well. Perfect for those instances should you be caught in a  ̶o̶n̶e̶ twelve-hour jaunt through NLEX in the pouring rain, when refreshments are hard to come by. 

The roof touts a massive 1.1m fixed panoramic moonroof in the middle of the cabin, which complements a power moonroof up front. They up the ambience and lighting by quite a lot in the cabin, but they ironically up the lighting even when the sunshades are closed, as the fabric used here is not fully opaque. A slight miss in our perspective on what otherwise is a well-executed feature in the interior of the Denza D9.

Under the hood, the Denza D9 hides a 1.5-liter turbocharged engine that works in tandem with dual electric motors front and back, along with a relatively massive 40kWh BYD Blade Battery, powering all wheels. Yes, the D9 is a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, and with the big battery, it has an NEDC-rated all-electric range of 180km, with a combined range of 980km.

The powertrain relies on the electric motors for the most part, but should you run low on charge or need every ounce of power the D9 can muster, the internal combustion engine springs into life. Engagement is totally seamless without any hitches or additional vibration, but the powertrain has this fairly audible hum that encroaches all the way to the second row. It’s by no means disruptive, but a bit noticeable in a quiet cabin, especially if you don’t have any music playing.

Total output is an impressive 401 horsepower and 681nm, and it translates well in the drive. Power delivery is linear and well managed, and not shoved into your face in one big lump as most electrified vehicles do. This curbs any possibility of nausea brought by the “EV feel” to a minimum, and makes the driving experience far more pleasant regardless of whether you’re a driver or a passenger.

Despite the lack of the instantaneous EV punch, power did not at any moment feel lacking, and the Denza D9 had more than enough steam to pass slower-moving vehicles even at highway speeds. During our time, we’ve seen fuel economy figures up to 18km/L – nothing record-breaking, but definitely respectable given the sheer heft of the vehicle plus the prodigious power output.

Ride quality of the Denza D9, however, is a mixed bag. Pockmarked roads that abound in most of our cities pose no problem to the D9 with its ultra-plush DiSus-C suspension tuning; however, ride composure falls short given how Denza took the typical Chinese waftiness and cranked it up several notches. As a result, any bounce-inducing elements on the road, such as speed bumps, take multiple bounces before the D9 settles down, giving a strong boat- or bus-like feel to the riding or driving experience. Funhouses with trampolines or bungee jumping experiences immediately come to mind.

An ironic way of tempering down the excessive bounciness of the suspension is to put the vehicle into Sport mode, which mitigates a good amount of the extra bouncing. Of note also was an experience we’ve had with the Denza D9 when it manifested knocking sounds up at the front whenever we’d pass through any form of pothole or speed bumps, akin to a really broken suspension component or two. Oddly enough, we managed to rectify the issue by simply turning the car off and on.

Safety was a department not left untouched as well by Denza, as you’d expect for a premium people mover. The Denza D9 is packed full of every imaginable safety acronym from the DiPilot suite, such as your usual suspects of Adaptive Cruise Control and Intelligent Cruise Control (yes, they’re separate features), Forward Collision Warning with Automatic Emergency Braking, Traffic Sign Recognition, and the list goes on. Despite the long list of electronic nannies, the DiPilot system never felt intrusive at any point during our testing period.

As you may have probably already noticed, we have high praise for the Denza D9. It’s by no means a perfect experience, but is otherwise a well-executed attempt at luxury. For over a million pesos more than the BYD eMAX 9, we believe that the experience is definitely a lot more elevated with the D9. But over a million pesos more for the premium badge? We’re not so convinced just yet. 

While we do believe that Denza has really done their homework in providing an experience to match the luxury positioning of the brand vs BYD, we’re not entirely sure if the BYD eMAX 9 and Denza D9 combo squarely goes up against the Toyota Alphard and Lexus LM duo just yet in terms of brand prestige and analogy.

The Denza D9 is about half a million off from the Toyota Alphard alone, and curiously during our testing period, we’ve been a lot more perceptive of Alphards around us, and to an extent, envious. Let’s leave the twice-as-expensive LM for another conversation.

Denza is still definitely in its infancy, just as Lexus and every other luxury arm of mainstream brands had been in their own respective timeline, and Denza has definitely hit the ground running with the D9. It’s a polished first-generation attempt at a luxurious minivan, and still a reasonable choice… against the Toyota Alphard. 

2026 Denza D9 | Key Information

Powertrain	1.5 turbocharged four-cylinder gasoline engine; dual electric motors, 40kWh Blade Battery
Output (Combined)	401 horsepower, 681 Nm
Transmission	E-CVT
Drivetrain	AWD
Seating Capacity	7 (including driver)
Price	Php 4,298,000 (as tested, as of September 2026)
Pros	Polished interior with a premium cabin atmosphere, comfortable seats, excellent feature list, and a powerful powertrain
Cons	Overly wafty suspension tuning that leans more on nervous than composed; badge prestige is not yet up to par with legacy luxury brands

^{Photos by Sam Surla}