The birth of the SUV to meet more demands of car owners, its multi-purpose, multi-functional attributes, compared to the main urban attributes of cars and MPVs, SUVs provide a more diversified car scene, but most consumers are difficult to have time to experience the characteristics of vehicles outside the SUV city, which also prompts more brands to focus on the city attributes, dilute the performance of the vehicle at the off-road level, to a certain extent, contrary to the all-round attributes of the SUV model itself. Of course, there are still some models in the market, retaining multi-scene, multi-purpose products such as SUVs, such as the protagonist of our test drive today, the Changan Ford Explorer, which is a good interpretation of what a modern SUV should look like.
Changan Ford Explorer has been listed for a year, during which we have conducted a number of detailed test drive evaluation reports on it, including the evaluation of urban roads, as well as the test drive of non-paved roads such as deserts, interested partners can click here for a review (Explorer article). Today we followEd Chang'an Ford again to the beautiful grassland city of Ulan Butong, in this cold winter, to feel the performance of explorers in the ice and snow road conditions.
After the introduction of the sixth generation of explorers, it was equipped with a 2.3T EcoBoost engine that won the title of Ward's top ten engines and is also used in many Ford performance cars, with a maximum power of 203kW (276 hp) / 6000rpm and a peak torque of 425Nm. Looking at the large number of 2.0T engines in the same class, this engine has very beautiful book data, in our previous tests, the Explorer 0-100km/h acceleration ran an excellent performance of 7.89 seconds, which is enough to show its power.
In the drivetrain, the Explorer matched a 10-speed automatic transmission, which also appeared on many of Ford's models. The gear shift is built with an electronic knob structure, and the transmission offers manual mode that the driver can control via paddle shifters on the steering wheel.
The chassis section, using the front double-section ball spring shock absorbing pillar suspension, and the rear multi-link independent suspension, can see that the chassis parts are heavily made of aluminum alloy material, further reducing the under-spring mass, and in order to provide better driving maneuverability, the explorer's front and rear configuration ratio reached 50:50.
As a full-road SUV, the Explorer provides a very rich driving mode, TMS terrain management system provides economic, standard, anti-slip, sports, simple road, snow/sand 6 modes, to meet the use of different car owners, and different road conditions under the passability. The ice and snow road we drive will use more anti-skid and snow/sand mode, and the power and four-wheel drive system in both modes can better cope with the ice and snow road we are on.
The Explorer is equipped with a timely four-wheel drive system commonly used in this level, but the Explorer from the CD6 longitudinal rear-drive platform naturally uses a rear-drive four-wheel drive, which is significantly different from most front-drive platform SUVs of the same level. Structurally, there is an open differential between the front and rear axle wheels, and a transfer case with a multi-piece clutch in the center, allowing the explorer to achieve 0-100% power distribution on both sides of the rear wheel and 50%-50% on the front and rear axles.
Explorer's original tire size reached 275/45 R21, the larger size of the tire inner diameter, can not replace a larger flat ratio of the snow tire, but in order to cope with the ice and snow road, the brand side or replace the winter tire, compared to the original four seasons tire has better snow performance, and can get better comfort than the snow tire on the road.
On the day of the test drive, although the current winter temperature in UlanButong has not yet entered the minimum temperature, but the vehicle instrument shows that the outdoor temperature has reached -18 ° C, in order to ensure that the oil and battery can be in a reasonable working temperature, the activity party put most of the vehicles in the indoor garage. But in fact, such a temperature for the explorers, there is not much to worry about, I deliberately found a vehicle in the outdoor "frozen" overnight, a cold start, the vehicle ignition "a hand" is very smooth, and the engine has not yet entered the optimal working temperature, the steering wheel heating is already a little hot.
Explorer Ice Test Drive
I have to admit that the explorer is very good at driving on the road, and its positioning is still the main urban attribute. Compared with ordinary road test driving, ice and snow road driving not only tests power and control, but also measures the best environment for the vehicle's four-wheel drive system and electronic system to be used.
2.3T engine power is very strong, we test drive the snow road, the thickest position even exceeds the explorer's chassis height, strong and continuous output of power, can easily push more than 2000kg of explorers, largely avoid because of the tire resistance is too large, resulting in vehicle stall traps, for the driver, such ice and snow test drive will be more fun.
Driving on snowy roads is the most taboo heavy oil rebrasion, and the explorer's acceleration and brake pedal settings are very suitable. The initial stage of the brake pedal does not bring very sensitive braking, which allows the driver to more reasonably control the braking force, obtain more appropriate braking force, and avoid tire locking and slippage.
The accelerator pedal adjusts the engine response to different modes, which is also a manifestation of the cleverness of the Explorer TMS terrain management system. The snow/sand mode we use, the accelerator pedal is relatively sensitive, the engine power will come earlier, and the gearbox will also reduce the frequency of ups and downshifts, lock the gear, in this large resistance road surface, to ensure that the engine maintains sufficient power output.
Coming to anti-slip mode, the power response to the accelerator pedal will become much lazier, which can better control the power output, prevent excessive power from causing tires to slip, suitable for low-speed driving, and mild get out of trouble. In general, the explorer's TMS terrain management system is set up very reasonably, and it can reasonably cope with different road surfaces and scenes through the control of the electronic system, which is very useful for off-road whites.
Four-wheel drive system with rear-drive characteristics, compared to the front-drive four-wheel drive system, more power will be delivered to the rear wheel, with more driving pleasure on ice and snow roads, snow/sand mode, the vehicle's electronic stability system will be turned off by default, explorers can easily complete the drift, not only on the road, the explorers in the ice and snow have a very high playability.
The steering setting of the sports car makes the explorer's drifting behavior more controllable. The steering feel is light, and in this level of SUVs, the explorer has a very small steering ratio, which can bring a good body response at the beginning, and for the driver, improve the controllability of the vehicle.
The four-wheel drive system is very reasonable for the power distribution on the wheel, and the electronic system will ensure the grip to the greatest extent and distribute the power to the four tires reasonably. However, as the driving form of the main rear drive, in different modes or some specific states, the four-wheel drive system will allocate more power to the rear wheel, so that the vehicle will have a certain degree of sliding, on the one hand, to ensure more abundant power and avoid being trapped; on the other hand, when the body slides, it provides a certain degree of traceability within the range controlled by the driver.
As a large-size SUV of the United States, the rough muscle feeling is always the same for explorers, and the wide front of the car is matched with Ford's iconic "big mouth" grille, presenting a strong recognition and aura. The test drive is a top-of-the-line platinum version with bright and thick rims, which is a pure American style.
The contour of the headlights is connected with the front and grille lines, making the overall sense of the front of the car stronger, the lighting configuration Explorer is equipped with a full LED light source as standard, and provides automatic headlights, adaptive near and far lights, headlights delay off, headlight height adjustable, whether it is an everyday car, or an extreme environment like ice and snow, its functions are very practical.
The explorer's body size data is basically the largest in the same class, and the wheelbase is more than 3000mm, but this does not make the explorer's body look clumsy, thanks to the lines of the side and top, as well as the design of the suspended roof, the visual senses presented still have a very distinct sporty style.
The minimalist design of the rear, although it does not have such a strong recognition of the front, but this shape is also the inheritance of the explorer's previous models, small taillights, directly exposed double exhaust, 30 years of successive models are constantly evolving, but also pay tribute to the classic.
The symmetrical interior layout is also the explorer's signature design, the simplified style can not see too many buttons, the 12.8-inch central control LCD screen has become the focus of the interior, the vertical layout looks a little abrupt, but it does look larger than the horizontal screen.
The steering wheel feels good to hold, including a very soft leather, a rich range of instrumentation, central control and driver assistance buttons on both sides, and it also supports electric four-way adjustment.
The 12.3-inch full LCD gauge is very powerful, it provides a separate theme style for 6 driving modes, and also has a certain animation effect when switching, the instrument provides a lot of information display, in the simple road, snow /sand mode, can also display four-wheel drive, gyroscope, pitch angle, etc.
The car-machine system is equipped with the SYNC+ zhixing infotainment system, which provides a very rich third-party APP and many functions for life scenarios. It can also control navigation, media, telephone, air conditioning, etc. through voice, and in order to cope with the way different car owners speak, the voice system has more than 70 kinds of fuzzy semantics. In the test drive in these days, the car machine system has a good user experience.
The vehicles in this test drive have been upgraded by OTA, and this time they have been upgraded for 5 aspects, including artificial intelligence assistant, "Xiaofu Online" upgrade, the addition of Ford vehicle-road collaboration system, mobile phone car search, and intelligent Xinfeng system. The key upgrade is the launch of the "Ford Blue Basin Friend" VPA smart partner, which is Ford's world's first visual virtual artificial intelligence assistant, and the focus of ordinary speech recognition is that it is more like a virtual assistant, which can interact with the owner, learn the habits and preferences of the owner, and complete the corresponding purpose through voice dialogue.
In terms of comfort configuration, the explorer also has a good performance, the front two seats provide heating and ventilation functions, whether it is facing our ice and snow test drive, or going to the hot desert, it is definitely one of the happiest configurations on the road trip.
For rear passengers, the Explorers are provided with separate air conditioning and two-stage seat heating on both sides. There is a USB and a Type C interface below, as well as a 230V power interface, which are also necessary for long-distance travel.
Editor's comments: Before the introduction of domestic production, for domestic users, the Explorer is not a familiar model, but it has a history of 30 years, and the global sales volume has exceeded 8 million vehicles, which can be said to be the status of "a generation of grandmasters" in this level. After the sixth generation of explorers were domestically produced, they had a further advantage in price. In this ice and snow test drive, it is a good demonstration of the explorer's comprehensive product strength, the longitudinal rear drive layout brings enough fun driving pleasure, the TMS terrain management system copes with more and more complex road conditions, and the OTA upgrade brings a more intelligent car scene. Explorer retains a strong American flavor, but also conforms to the market, to meet the needs of users, is an all-round SUV that can meet the needs of multi-scenario use.
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