A few days ago, GAC Aian's medium-sized pure electric SUV - AION LX Plus was officially launched, and a total of four models were launched for the new car, with a price range of 28.66-459,600 yuan after subsidies, and the starting price increased by 57,000 yuan compared with the previous AION LX.
In Xiao Lei's view, the launch of this model has epoch-making significance for GAC Trumpchi, and for consumers, the value increase brought by 57,000 yuan is also worth it.
As a modified model of AION LX, AION LX Plus has many changes in terms of intelligence and endurance. In terms of intelligence, AION LXPlus is equipped with a total of 35 autonomous driving perception hardware, which can be described as the ceiling of the current intelligent driving production car.
Among them, it includes 3 zoom lidar, 4 surround view cameras, 6 millimeter wave radar, 8 automatic driving cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars and 2 independent high-precision positioning modules, together with Huawei's intelligent driving computing platform with a computing power of up to 200TOPS, which can realize the auxiliary function of urban NDA pilot and achieve high-speed and urban full-scene coverage.
It is worth mentioning that in addition to AION LX Plus, Xiaopeng Automobile, the leader of autonomous driving among the new car-making forces, will also open the city pilot auxiliary function in the first quarter of this year. It is foreseeable that in 2022, the competition of domestic auto giants on the intelligent driving track is no longer limited to high speed, but is about to cover the more common urban road car scene.
In addition to intelligent driving technology, battery life is also the main selling point of AION LX Plus. In terms of endurance, according to the different configurations, the comprehensive mileage of the new car is 600km, 650km and 1008km respectively. Endurance anxiety has always been a pain point that plagues pure electric vehicle users, in order to solve this pain point, ultra-long endurance has become the main research project of new energy vehicle companies.
In addition to GAC Aean, new car-making forces such as Weilai and Zhiji have released power battery technology and pure electric vehicles with a range of more than 1,000km as early as last year. Obviously, although the AION LX Plus is not the first new energy vehicle released by the industry to break through the 1000km mark with a pure electric endurance, it is the first mass production car with a pure electric endurance of more than 1000km.
GAC Aean's 1000km endurance is first to arrive
In fact, we can see from the release of new cars by Weilai, Zhiji and GAC Aean that the new forces of car manufacturing are different from the traditional car companies in their style of acting. Playing "futures" seems to be a common practice among new car-making forces.
Taking Weilai as an example, it released a 150kWh semi-solid-state battery pack that can make the ET7's endurance exceed 1000km as early as last year. However, the ET7 released at the beginning of last year will not be delivered until March 28 this year, and the 150kWh battery pack will not be delivered until the fourth quarter of this year.
Compared with most new car-making forces, traditional car companies are usually more pragmatic. The result of this difference is that the AION LX Plus, which was released at the beginning of this year, is a step ahead of the WEILAI ET7 and Zhiji L7, becoming the first mass production car that can break through the 1000km endurance mark.
In Xiao Lei's view, the reason why there is such a style difference between the new car-making forces and traditional car companies is mainly because of capital. As we all know, at present, the vast majority of new car-making forces are selling cars at a loss, and their main way is to transfuse their blood through capital.
However, not only the new car-making forces need to transfuse blood through financial means such as financing and listing, but also the investors who transfuse their blood also need to launch new products to enhance their investment confidence. In fact, almost every time the new car-making forces hold a "futures" conference, their market value will rise by a certain extent.
Compared with the new car-making forces that are not self-sufficient for the time being, the dependence of traditional car companies that have been able to rely on themselves is not so strong. Traditional car companies often have sufficient production capacity reserves, as well as technical reserves. Therefore, they usually do not need to issue "futures" to over-cater to capital and stock prices.
From a product level, futures certainly have the benefits of futures. Also taking THE NIO ET7 as an example, NIO informed consumers as early as the beginning of 2021 that it would launch a flagship sedan called ET7 in early 2022, and explained the product strength of this flagship sedan with consumers one by one.
Source: Mob Institute
For the NIO brand, this move is like a trailer in the film and television field, which can effectively amplify consumers' expectations of it and help NIO predict market reactions. For consumers who want to buy this model, they can also book early, and even if they don't buy it, the deposit can be refunded.
In fact, most people will enhance their sense of belonging to this brand and product after placing a deposit, which is like the excitement we feel when we receive a courier. Even when we have just placed an order, we already know what is in the courier box, but we still have great expectations for what is about to arrive, and the car purchase deposit has played a role in settling the dust.
The symbolism of 1008km is greater than the actual meaning
From the perspective of the time of release to delivery, traditional car companies are indeed more pragmatic than most new car-making forces, but from a technical point of view, Xiaolei is not optimistic about the future sales of AION LX Plus. In Xiao Lei's view, the AION LX Plus with a 1008km endurance is more symbolic than practical for GAC Aean.
From the perspective of gac Aeon brand, the title of "the world's first pure electric vehicle with a battery life exceeding 1000km" is enough to make GAC Aean enter the annals of automobile history. Not surprisingly, GAC Aean's reputation and brand will get positive feedback because of his breakthrough in endurance.
However, from the perspective of GAC's Eian consumer group, the AION LX Plus thousand mile version model with the pure electric endurance of more than 1,000 kilometers as the main selling point may not be able to become a volume model in the car series. This is also the main reason why Xiao Lei believes that the 1008 km pure electric endurance is more symbolic for GAC Aean.
It should be known that the AION LX Plus Thousand Mile Edition model is priced at 459,600 yuan, but its configuration performance is even less than the lowest model priced at only 286,600 yuan, and the price difference between the two is as much as 173,000 yuan. This means that from the perspective of configuration, 1008km endurance is the biggest selling point and only selling point of the AION LX Plus Thousand Mile Edition model.
In terms of autonomous driving hardware, the lowest AION LX Plus 80 Extreme Edition is equipped with 1 intelligent driving camera, 4 surround view cameras, 5 high-precision millimeter wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic sensors. Such a hardware configuration is enough to meet today's L2 level autonomous driving capabilities.
Material source: GAC Aean APP
Unfortunately, the lack of high-precision maps and lidar has also made the AION LX Plus 80 Extreme Edition lose the ability to upgrade higher-level autonomous driving technology in the later stage. Nevertheless, from the price point and positioning of the AION LX Plus 80 Extreme Edition, its autonomous driving hardware configuration has also been called the conscience of the industry.
However, the automatic driving ability of the AION LX Plus Thousand Mile Edition cannot be said to be excellent, but can only be said to be crotch pulling. Its autonomous driving capabilities do not support L2-level adaptive cruises. Such autonomous driving capabilities are really unreasonable on a flagship model that costs up to 400,000 yuan.
Obviously, in terms of autonomous driving capabilities, the AION LX Plus Thousand Mile Edition is not as good as the AION LX Plus 80 Extreme Edition, and even not as good as most of the current 100,000 yuan level of self-owned brand cars. It should be known that the GAC Trumpchi Shadow Leopard, which also belongs to the GAC Group, has been equipped with L2-level adaptive cruise on the sub-low-end model priced at only 108,000 yuan.
Interestingly, although the most expensive AION LX Plus 1000 Mile Edition is not as smart as the cheapest selling AION LX Plus 80 Extreme Edition in terms of intelligent driving capability, the former's dynamic performance is completely copied from the latter. The maximum power of the AION LX Plus 1000-mile version is only 180kW, and the maximum torque is 350N·m, which is indeed able to protect daily household use for a pure electric vehicle, but it is definitely not excellent.
It can be seen that the performance of the AION LX Plus 1000 Mile Edition is not "flagship". In fact, exchanging battery life for performance is a conventional routine for new energy vehicles. However, usually the price of models with long endurance will be lower, and the price of models with main performance will be higher due to the addition of a high-performance motor.
Taking the Xiaopeng P7 as an example, the Xiaopeng P7 706G model, which focuses on long-endurance, has a maximum power of only 196kW, and the endurance can reach 706km, priced at 254,900 yuan. The main high-performance Xiaopeng P7562N performance version of the model has a maximum power of up to 316kW, but the endurance is only 562km, and the price is 339,900 yuan.
Xiao Lei believes that the reason for this pricing situation is mainly because most new energy vehicle companies, including Xiaopeng Automobile, have clear user portraits of their different model user groups.
For users who can sacrifice performance for longer endurance, their needs are often just home transportation, so the performance requirements are not high. For users who can sacrifice battery life for performance, they usually have more than one car in their home, so they pay more attention to the unique technology configuration and performance quality of pure electric vehicles.
However, GAC Aian's AION LX Plus Thousand Mile Edition is an alternative among pure electric vehicles, which not only performs mediocre in terms of automatic driving ability and power performance, but also has an outrageous price. It is difficult for Xiao Lei to imagine how many consumers will be willing to increase the price by 170,000 yuan, just for the power battery that can reach 1008km of endurance.
Note: The material in this article comes from the Internet