Text/Shore Qing
At the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show, the WM brand released its first sedan, the WM M7, which is based on the Maven concept car, equipped with three lidars, and supports L3-level advanced assisted driving and L4-level intelligent driving in limited scenarios. From the chic appearance and various technology configurations, it is not difficult to see that WM has high hopes for this product.
Time has passed, and in the blink of an eye, 2022 has passed two months, and the arrival of weima M7 is also nearly late.
It is true that for WM Motors, the days of these years are not good, as the earliest batch of new car-making forces in China, once upon a time, WM Motors was also in the first echelon, and "Wei Xiaoli" is the same as the existence. But now I look back, and the fame is "in the middle of the lights".
Today's WM Motors urgently needs a product that can revitalize the brand image and impact the sales mark. Weilai launched a power exchange service, Xiaopeng positioned a pioneer in technology, ideally proved the feasibility of extending the range, and WM Motors chose to make a breakthrough in intelligent assisted driving.
First, the appearance design is very sci-fi
Its SUV models are currently a firm foothold in the domestic new energy vehicle market, so the new car will start from the field of cars, as a "broken boat work", WM Motors has poured a lot of effort into its fourth product - WM M7, the new car positioning pure electric medium and large cars, the appearance of the basic restoration of the Maven concept car design, three lidar has become the most talked about the car.
The exterior design of the new car is highly recognizable, the iconic two-color hood design and the daytime running lights that snake to the A-pillar are the biggest features of the front face, because it is a pure electric model, so it adopts a closed grille design, the styling design has to be said to be very outstanding, and the overall body is very futuristic sci-fi.
The side of the body adopts a two-color design, the upper part and the window adopt a pure black layout, and the lower part of the body adopts a cosmic sense of silver and white, coupled with the wheels with a very sporty shape, the whole car is more like a coupe luxury car with a sense of trend.
Two or three lidar + 1016TOPS hash rate
In addition, the most noteworthy is the "horn" raised on the roof, WM M7 is equipped with a total of 3 lidar, located on both sides of the roof and front fenders, which can cover the front field of vision with a great range and provide a wider range of parameter information.
As we all know, radar has many advantages over cameras, and the lidar equipped with WM7 can be said to be the ceiling of the current radar, which is extremely expensive, but it is valuable, and lidar is the highest in the same level, whether it is perception distance or perception accuracy.
In addition, the vehicle will also be equipped with 32 automatic driving sensors, 7 8-megapixel high-definition cameras, 4 2-megapixel surround view cameras, 5 millimeter wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, as well as an independent high-precision positioning module and 4 NVIDIA Orin-X autopilot chips with a maximum computing power of up to 1016 TOPS.
Third, bet on the intelligent track
It can be said that WM will bet on the future of the product this time on the most talked about intelligence, in addition to the industry-leading full-scene perception capabilities, WM M7 is also the world's first batch of models equipped with 7nm NVIDIA DRIV Orin-X autonomous driving chip, the maximum computing power up to 1016TOPS, and Weilai ET7 to reach the same level.
In addition, the new car also adopts a new central domain control electronic and electrical architecture, which can support high-frequency OTA upgrades, equipped with 3 Ethernet transmission rates up to 1000 megabits. In addition, the new car has also been upgraded with computing power in hardware, cockpit, and domain controllers, which can support L3-level advanced assisted driving and L4-level intelligent driving in limited scenarios.
Fourth, how to weigh the cost of technology?
In the era of science and technology, the continuous breakthrough of technology and the stacking of production costs are often a rare problem of both.
Although the lidar is good, but the cost will also make the cost of the car increase, the current official promotion of the price of the WM7 is about 150,000-300,000 yuan, considering the cost of the cost, the car should be launched with / without lidar two versions, the latter to take a more people-friendly route.
But in the same way, the most popular focus of everyone is still on the lidar, in order to achieve a technological breakthrough naturally need to increase costs, it is difficult to cut profits to achieve late gains; and high intelligence + high price products are not what consumers are happy to see, the pricing of WM M7 has become the key to success or failure.
Write at the end:
Three lidars and consistent people-friendly pricing have undoubtedly made the WM M7 a highly anticipated product, but if you really want to become a technology HP, how to balance the contradiction between cost and performance is the most worthy of consideration for WM Motors at present.