This Is Buick’s Other New Chinese Crossover You Don’t Want

No word if it might come here.

Following Buick’s debut of the utterly stunning Enspire Concept, the brand followed it up by unveiling the relatively mundane—albeit production ready—Velite 6 crossover ahead of Auto China 2018 in Beijing. It joins the Velite 5, which is basically just a Buick-badged Chevrolet Volt. The Velite 6 is another one of those China-only Buicks you don’t really want anyway. However, it is the first General Motors product to be offered with both plug-in hybrid and full electric powertrains.

The plug-in hybrid will arrive first, featuring a 1.5-liter engine, two AC permanent-magnet synchronous electric motors, and a liquid-cooled lithium-ion battery pack. Buick says the Velite 6 plug-in can travel an estimated 434 miles. Buick was noticeably hushed about the pure electric Velite 6, except that it’s likely to arrive in Chinese showrooms sometime next year. The brand did say, however, the Velite 6 will “adopt a new-generation pure electric drive system,” which will be built at the new state-of-the-art SAIC-GM Power Battery Development Center in Shanghai also responsible for the CT6 PHEV’s battery pack. I

Both models under the Velite 6 umbrella will feature a new cloud-based Buick eConnect system that now enables over-the-air updates and allows for the entire vehicle to be managed via a smartphone app. The system gives users the ability to create multiple accounts, which enables personalization for navigation and audio system settings. The Buick Velite 6 is the production realized version of the sharp and shapely Velite Concept the brand first showed at the Guangzhou Motor Show in late 2016. The Velite 6 plug-in and Velite 6 electric will be displayed at Auto China 2018 in Beijing, which begins in earnest on April 25th.