With the New Year just around the corner, I would like to ask you about the fact that there was a model in the year that was "sought after" when it was released, but "controversial" after delivery. Which model would you come up with?
That's right, I'm going to talk about the first model of The Krypton today, the Krypton 001.
At the end of the year, I went to Xiamen to test drive the Kr 001 model, and unlike the previous regular test drive, I drove the Kr 001 on the Xiamen International Circuit.
You have the final say in this matter of appearance
According to the previous "writing routine", it is inevitable to talk to you about the design of the exterior interior. However, I believe that most people know this car very well, and the design is "benevolent people see wisdom", so I will not comment more, first look at a few pictures:
As for the design of the exterior interior, I would like to briefly say a few words of my opinion.
Because the vast majority of electric vehicles use the chassis layout power battery pack scheme, so compared to fuel models, the chassis is bound to encroach on some cockpit space. The easiest way to expand enough cabin space is to raise the cockpit, and Kr 001 does just that.
This can also be regarded as a pro and con:
Advantages: Compared with the same level of pure electric models, the performance of the cockpit space has indeed been improved. The extreme krypton 001 has plenty of cockpit space, including head and legroom in the rear.
Disadvantages: The increase in the cockpit makes the appearance look less agile, and the body height has approached or exceeded some SUV models. For example, the Lynk & Co 02 as a compact SUV has a body height of 1528mm, while the Extreme Kr 001 has reached a height of 1560mm.
However, the model I test drove this time uses a black roof design, which is more coordinated than the roof of the same color as the body.
P.S. It seems that the phrase "wearing dark clothes makes you look thin" is true...
Start with "Smart"
As a "smart electric vehicle" born in 2021, let's first talk about the aspect of intelligence.
Hardware layout
The first is the hardware part, the cockpit SoC of the Extreme Kr 001 uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820A chip. Before many people were "afraid" of the Krypton 001, it is because in 2021, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 crazy time on the car, the Krypton 001 is still using the "old" chip. As for this issue, I will express my opinion in the article.
The krypton 001's cockpit features two screens, including an 8.8-inch "slender" LCD instrument and a 15.4-inch touch center screen.
Driver warning lights are arranged on both sides of the instrument and adopt a design similar to the "tri-fold screen". The display information of the instrument is relatively simple, there is no superfluous detail embellishment, and it is more conducive to the driver's reading of the core information of the driver.
On the square control, in addition to the ADAS adjustment and voice and sound related physical buttons, most of the interaction is interacted through the trackpads on the left and right sides of the square control, which supports sliding and pressing two interaction methods.
In the Central Control Nakajima area, in addition to the wireless charging pad, the Kr 001 is designed with touch buttons for front and rear windshield defrost, dashcam and glove box.
Vehicle-machine interaction
The engine system equipped with the Kr 001 has a strong "Lynk & Co flavor", because the supplier behind this car and machine system is geely's royal supplier - Yi Jia Tong.
The HMI interaction design of the car-machine system is relatively simple, biased towards the use habits of mobile devices, and is relatively easy to get started.
A Doc bar is designed at the bottom of the car, including a shortcut entrance to common functions and settings in driving scenarios such as home page, vehicle settings, navigation, seats, air conditioning, music, volume and more applications.
The home page adopts a card-style UI design, and the "widgets" of each page support user-defined layouts, and each widget can choose large and small according to personal usage habits.
Ecological applications
The map navigation of Extreme Kr 001 is Baidu Map, which in addition to the regular functions, supports team travel, one-click home, one-click to go to the company, and also supports the seamless connection of navigation information on the car and mobile phones.
In terms of ecological applications, Kr 001 currently offers both online audio and video applications. The online audio application integrates music, news, and listening to books, of which online music is provided by Kuwo Music, and online video application is iQiyi.
At present, the only ecological applications I find in the car machine system are these, which is indeed to meet the daily car use scenario. However, compared with the expansion of other brands in the content ecology, the performance of Extreme Kr 001 does have some deficiencies, and some of the ecology that can expand the convenience of using the car has not been on the car, such as: convenient charging, convenient parking and so on.
Voice assistant
The voice assistant on board the Krypton 001 is called "eva", which supports awakening through "hi, eva" and can modify the wake word.
Wake-free interaction is supported in some scenes and applications such as music playback and map navigation, such as the cutting of the previous and next songs.
Eva's voice interaction performance is still very satisfactory, and I was impressed when I experienced Lynk & Co and Geely models before. EVA supports natural semantic understanding, multiple rounds of conversations, contextual understanding, automatic error correction, and even small talk with it.
On the left side of the car homepage, the conversation with eva will be displayed as a dialog box.
It can not only control hardware devices such as car windows and air conditioners, but also control software functions such as music, navigation, in-car settings and other applications, and has high recognition accuracy and recognition speed.
Some problems
Having said all that, let me tell you about the problems I encountered when I experienced this smart cockpit of Extreme Kr 001.
In terms of functionality, functional integrity, and interaction design, I actually think that "the problem is not big." Because these functions and applications equipped with The Kr 001 are at least enough to meet our daily car scenes, and the interaction mode is relatively easy to get started. But its biggest problem is that the car engine system is "slow to respond", and during my test drive on the day, most of the situations I encountered were:
1. Length of dark/light theme switching process;
2. Slow playback/pause response of the music playback interface;
3. iQIYI apps are slow to open.
However, I do not think that this point is the "pot" of Qualcomm 820A, but more of a problem of engine system optimization.
As for my reason, it is because the Xiaopeng P7 also uses the Qualcomm 820A chip, and at present, the Xiaopeng P7 has more functions and applications than the Extreme Kr 001, but on the Xiaopeng P7 model, it seems that there will be no problem of "slow response to the new car".
After talking about the smart cockpit, I should have continued to talk about the content of the intelligent driving part. However, because the intelligent driving-related functions of the current Krypton 001 mass production version of the model have not been opened, we cannot experience it for the time being.
However, the follow-up Extreme Kr 001 will open up the intelligent driving function in the form of OTA, and I will share my experience with you at that time.
Let's talk about driving
In terms of driving, I will talk about both daily city driving and track driving.
Everyday driving
First of all, daily driving, which is also the main car scene of the vast majority of electric vehicle consumers, the model I tested on the open road this time is the krypton 001 single-electric version.
The krypton 001 single-motor model has a maximum motor power of 200 kW and a maximum torque of 384N·m, which is enough for our daily driving needs.
Driving modes include comfort, economy, sport, personalization and single pedal. In the economy and comfort mode, the power response is not so aggressive, relatively soft, the economic mode is still enough to use when driving in the city, even if you need to accelerate the overtaking situation, the output of the motor is more direct than most fuel vehicles.
The sports mode is more suitable for running mountains on holidays and high-speed acceleration and integration. While there is no powerful acceleration experience of the dual-motor version, the Extreme Kr 001 single-motor version already has a good power output performance in the sport mode when driving in the city.
Speaking of the comfort performance of the driving experience, the Kr 001 is very good in this regard, one is the tranquility of NVH, and the other is the comfort of air suspension.
The adjustment of the air suspension can isolate most of the fine and affect the road feeling of the driver, and when passing through the undulating road, the toughness of the air suspension is strong enough to provide a better passing feeling. However, when passing through acceleration belts and potholes, the feedback to the interior of the car is a bit too direct.
In the process of urban test drive, the round-trip route is not far, but I simply recorded the energy consumption data of the round trip:
27.9km for the journey, with an average energy consumption of 19.8kWh/100km;
The return journey is 22.7km, and the average energy consumption is 16.8kWh/100km.
Track driving
Speaking of track driving, this is also the first time I have driven a car to the Xiamen International Circuit, and it is also an electric car.
The model test drive on the track was replaced by a dual-motor version of the Krypton 001, first watching a small video, the first half of the video is a warm-up lap, the last segment is my flying lap, and the fastest lap is 01 minutes and 03 seconds:
When driving on the track, the power advantage of the dual motors is fully revealed, the maximum power of the system is 400 kW, the maximum torque is 768N·m, and the zero hundred acceleration capacity is 3.8 seconds. In addition to its powerful power, the Krypton 001's chassis tuning can also satisfy anyone's driving desires.
On the track, the advantages of air suspension and CCD electromagnetic damping systems can be clearly felt, as well as the precise steering system. In sport mode, the air suspension will automatically decrease, reducing the wind resistance while making the entire suspension more "tight", but when bending the shoulder lightly, you can feel the chassis tuning of the Extreme Kr 001 still retains a certain degree of comfort.
At the same time, due to the characteristics of the motor, when accelerating in a straight line, the electric vehicle can reach a higher speed than most fuel vehicles; when cornering, the electric vehicle will have a faster cornering speed than the fuel vehicle. But when it comes to driving pleasure, the radical driving pole Krypton 001 is full of fun, the only thing missing is the roar of the electric car without the engine.
Think about it carefully, when more and more OEMs begin to launch new energy models and start to "add and reduce cylinders", perhaps the era of roaring is getting farther and farther away from us.
At last
After a day of test drives, take stock of the impression that Extreme Kr 001 left on me.
In terms of exterior interior design, I am acceptable, and it is also within my aesthetic range, except that the body proportions are slightly out of balance after the cockpit is raised.
The performance of the smart cockpit is decent at present. There is not much ecological content, but the design of cockpit interaction and the ability of voice assistants are still very good. The problem encountered is the slow response of the car machine, which is also criticized by most users of the car. But my point is that although the 820A chip is not as capable as the 8155, the 820A's capabilities are not weak. So, if the software OTA can solve the problem is not really a problem, but the current experience to the user is not good.
The driving experience is placed at the end of the article, everyone just read it without too much analysis, to sum up: the overall driving adjustment of The Krypton 001 balances the two levels of comfort and sports, but in my opinion, even in the intense driving, it still maintains a certain degree of comfort.
Although the Kr 001 was controversial after the opening of delivery, as the first model of a high-end pure electric brand backed by traditional car companies, the Kr 001 actually has a high product strength. What Kr needs to do in a timely manner today is to "find problems and improve problems."