For a long time, consumers have been debating whether Chinese brands have caught up with the joint venture.
Some say that they have caught up, below 150,000 levels, the presence of joint venture brands has been greatly reduced; some say that they have not caught up, European and American cars have developed for 100 years, and Chinese cars have only developed for 30 years, and it is impossible to catch up.
Yes, when Chinese cars were just starting out, the only way for Chinese cars to compete with joint venture cars was to cover up the lack of quality by providing a variety of configurations that were visible to the naked eye, such as handling, reliability, tranquility and so on.
However, there is no need to be arrogant. In fact, Chinese cars follow behind European and American cars, taking a mature road, and the growth rate is extraordinary. Today, in some ranges, it has gradually caught up with and surpassed the joint venture cars.
2015 was a very important year. That year, SAIC launched its first-generation automotive architecture, the A-architecture, which not only ended China's history of no automotive architecture, but also caught up with the platform developed earlier by the joint venture car companies.
In 2021, SAIC motor launched the second-generation automotive platform, the SIGMA architecture, which expands the need for intelligence and integrates a variety of power units. It only took five years to have similar capabilities to Volkswagen's MQB EVO platform, which means that for the first time, Chinese brands and joint venture car companies have truly stood on the same running line.
As the first SUV on the SIGMA platform, MG ONE represents a new height for Chinese cars in all aspects.
Still competing with configuration?
In the past, Chinese brands left Chinese consumers with the impression of rich configuration, low price, poor reliability, lack of quality, high fuel consumption, high noise and so on. Although Chinese brand cars can always squeeze the joint venture on paper data, once the actual experience, all aspects of performance will be hidden.
Parameters are not competitiveness, quality is. The quality here includes safety, reliability and handling, and these extremely hidden product qualities are difficult to replicate.
Chinese automobiles are not unaware, but suffering from the lack of sufficient strength, can only imitate and learn from the mature models of joint venture car companies for secondary development. Although the performance can only reach the level of 60% of the joint venture car company, it can be sold at a lower price because there is no technical cost.
Now this routine will soon become unworkable. In the process of upgrading the automobile industry, Chinese automobile consumers are also slowly maturing, and a large number of automobile companies are gradually eliminated.
In the big wave of the automobile industry, MG has not been eliminated, but has become better and better. In 2015, SAIC launched the A architecture, MG launched ZS, HS and other products, a change in the past product image, and exported to Thailand, the United Kingdom and other places, achieved very good sales. In a sense, MG has become a global brand, and MG ONE will be launched as a new generation of global models.
Global models mean meeting the most stringent standards in all regions of the world. Exports to California must meet super stringent emission standards; exports to Europe must meet local crash safety tests. This proves that MG ONE has been able to achieve the quality of the joint venture brand, has a very strong strength in safety, reliability and handling, and competes head-on with the joint venture brand in various markets around the world.
In fact, the maximum torsional stiffness of the MG ONE body reaches 30,000 Nm per degree, which is the top level of the automotive architecture, and the torsional stiffness that is strong enough brings very good responsiveness and integrity. The chassis features a composite full-frame subframe, and based on impact mechanics analysis, three transmission paths are designed to quickly disperse loads and ensure that they can pass the most stringent crash tests.
The MG ONE will be a model that changes people's traditional impressions.
Let the design, roll it up
Many automotive designers believe that MG is a brand designed with a highly coiled interior. On the MG6 PRO and MG ONE, a large number of designs are used that only luxury brands will adopt, such as the exterior design of mg one, which is not inferior to the higher-priced Mercedes-Benz. MG knew mg one had to do that.
Because MG ONE has to face not only fuel vehicles, but also new energy vehicles. Due to the inherent structural advantages of new energy vehicles, they can often design more advanced shapes, and at the same time, the threshold for consumers to car design has also increased a lot. MG ONE had to adopt a more ingenious design to establish a design advantage.
MG ONE's current look has made a lot of efforts. In order to make the vehicle move enough, it is necessary to adopt a relatively low and wide body approach, but this will compress the space and reduce the practicality.
In order to solve this problem, MG ONE starts from three aspects.
At the beginning of the platform design, we considered the miniaturization of major components such as engines and gearboxes, reduced the volume of the engine compartment as much as possible, and improved the overall layout efficiency, such as exhaust, fuel tank and other components. Through a series of efforts, mg one has reached a maximum efficiency of 70% in the entire space, ensuring the ultimate performance of the shape.
Although positioned as a compact SUV, mg one has achieved a wheelbase of 2670mm, a sufficiently long wheelbase can not only provide excellent longitudinal space inside the crew compartment, so that front and rear passengers have enough knee space, but also can shape a short front suspension, short rear suspension, more slender and sporty appearance. This feature tends to only occur on pure electric models.
The reduction of the height of the body is bound to affect the performance of the head space. MG ONE does not blindly pursue the sense of sportiness and abandon the space, using a panoramic sunroof. By increasing the lighting and reducing the thickness of the roof, the purpose of solving the head space is achieved.
In the end, MG ONE made a compact SUV in the style of a hipster, with a body length of 4576mm and a body width of 1866mm, under the more sporty shape, the actual space is further expanded than the MG ZS.
To be controlled, or to be comfortable?
In MG's view, MG's past products have tended to be sporty, reducing comfort. In fact, although Chinese consumers care about manipulation, they are far from giving up comfort for the sake of manipulation. To this end, as a sports model, the MG ONE needs to be improved and optimized in style to achieve a balance of comfort and handling.
MG ONE is equipped with a new generation of MEGA Tech 1.5T high-power "China Heart" top ten engines, the maximum power of 181Ps, the maximum torque of 285N·m, 100 km/h acceleration of 8.1 seconds, matching the new generation of MEGA Tech CVT325 high-torque stepless transmission, completely solved the problem of slight frustration of the previous generation of models, to achieve on-call.
Structurally, the MG ONE is 1617mm wide, which can be arranged with a more complex suspension system than its peers. The MG ONE rear suspension features a third-generation E-type multi-link suspension with a large amount of high-strength steel to ensure the support capacity of the suspension.
The entire rear suspension is connected to the body at 6 points, and the three-beam design ensures the rigidity and integrity of the entire rear and enhances the sense of handling. Thanks to design efforts, the height of the hood of the body has been reduced by 30mm, the center of gravity has been reduced by 30mm, and the handling has also been improved.
Logically, the SIGMA platform is the same as the Toyota TNGA platform, which is a way to reduce the center of gravity, reduce the adapter, and directly hard connect to ensure the handling of the entire rear.
However, sports models pursue handling, and users may complain that the suspension is hard, noisy, and not comfortable enough. MG ONE adjusts the damping stroke, especially the rear, to enhance the cushioning capacity of road impacts. At the same time, the diameter of impact bushings, rubber parts, etc. is maximized to ensure comfort while avoiding unnecessary noise.
In fact, simply adjusting the vibration damping and increasing the bushing are just a "dead sheep" measure. The real solution starts with the suspension structure. Although the suspension mainly deals with longitudinal and transverse forces, the use of a very good structure can decompose this part of the force as much as possible, so as to bring about the bonus feeling in different situations, so as to achieve low-speed comfort and high-speed movement.
This part of the ability has always been the soft underbelly of Chinese car brands. In the past, the pursuit of comfort was very soft, and the pursuit of sportiness was very hard, because the structure was too simple. MG ONE, based on SIGMA, actually uses a very good suspension structure, the whole set of structure makes the control and comfort is no longer the trade-off, but also means that mg ONE's suspension design capabilities have risen to a new height.
MG has achieved that "as long as you mention the Chinese brand of sports, you must be able to think of MG".
The new power of fuel vehicles
Today, in 2022, the joint venture car company is still unable to come up with a set of car engine systems that satisfy Chinese consumers, and MG has called out to be a "new fuel force". The development of Chinese brands in intelligence has surpassed the joint venture brand, which is a certain fact.
The so-called new fuel force means that intelligence is not the patent of new energy vehicles.
MG ONE is equipped with Qualcomm 8155 flagship chip, thanks to the SIGMA platform electrification architecture update, MG ONE can play the full potential of this chip, to ensure the operation speed and OTA capabilities of the entire car-machine system, to achieve the car and the cloud in series. Underpinning MG's idea is the Roselle Intelligent Cockpit System.
Roselle intelligent cockpit system adopts a 30-inch surround type triple screen, the dashboard and the central control screen are combined into one, and the screen and the screen are coordinated with each other. Built-in music, video, map, life and other large number of Internet APP including NetEase cloud, B station and other applications to meet the daily needs of users.
The core of roselle intelligent cockpit system - Dharma AI semantics, which is a set of speech systems that can be T+X self-learning and self-upgrading. Through continuous communication and contact with car owners, AI semantics will become more and more familiar with the habits and preferences of car owners, fundamentally solve the problem of not understanding and not understanding, and truly realize "a thousand faces".
In terms of intelligent assisted driving, MG ONE adopts the fifth generation of German Bosch millimeter wave radar, 360 ° high-definition surround view camera, ultrasonic sensor sensor composed of sensor system and SUPER TJA super traffic congestion assistance system, etc. The follow-up MG PILOT3.0 will use China's largest digital map provider - NavInfo newly developed high-precision map, which can realize high-level driving assistance functions such as light lane change, autonomous up and down ramps. MG ONE also cooperated with Huawei to formulate an industry standard for sensorless car keys, realizing the first sensorless mobile phone car key for fuel vehicles.
MG ONE breaks the monopoly of pure electric vehicle intelligence.
Asteron summary
Have Chinese brands caught up with the joint venture? The answer is obvious. Although new energy vehicles are overtaking in curves, in the 30 years of China's automobile development, fuel vehicles have also caught up with the pace of joint venture brands.
From platform to intelligence, from performance to reliability, the emergence of MG ONE means that Chinese brands no longer rely only on configuration to win the favor, have the strength to create high-quality, high-performance, high-tech automotive products, and compete with joint venture brands in the world.
Figure | Sourced from the web
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