Text | Joey
To be honest, for the Zhiji L7 car, my feelings are different from other cars.
The reason is that when the Zhiji Automobile brand was not yet established, I joined it as a member of the brand promotion agency service provider. If people now like to describe some of the start-up car brands as PPT cars. Well, when I first entered the project, the name Zhiji had not yet appeared.
Today, the wise man who was still in the grassroots at that time has completed the construction of his own system in less than two years, and the car that stays on the drawing has also been built. Just two days ago, at a press conference that was extremely simplified due to the epidemic, Liu Tao, co-CEO of Zhiji Automobile, officially announced the price of Zhiji L7 Pro - 408,800 yuan.
In fact, this is not the first time that Zhiji L7 has met with us. Just last year's Chengdu Auto Show, zhiji L7 began the pre-sale of angel wheels, and its price was also 408,800 yuan. Only now, compared to the car at that time, which was still on display, the Zhiji L7 has more new changes. First of all, it can be driven (for example, not long ago at the Tianma Mountain Circuit, Zhiji organized a test drive for the angel wheel users of the L7 model). More importantly, Zhiji found his own positioning for the L7 - "New World Driving Control Flagship".
Opening up shows that Zhiji has truly implemented its own planning in less than two years, and presented the brand's planning and technical strength with products. The accurate positioning for L7 is to find a new breakthrough and direction for the next stage, the role of Zhiji from car building to car sales.
Now, your question must be, what is the "New World Driving Control Flagship".
It's your new world, and it's for everyone
The new world is certainly compared to the old world. Perhaps in Zhiji's view, a world full of electric vehicles and new energy vehicles on the road has undoubtedly formed a clear new and old difference with the world driven by internal combustion engines and oil.
Such a difference not only brings about changes in the form of energy, not only changes in environmental characteristics, but also a straight rise in the performance of automobiles. In fact, there is no new energy vehicle that does not flaunt performance. As long as it is a pure electric vehicle, whether it is a product of 1 million yuan or a product of less than 100,000 yuan, without exception, the acceleration performance of 0-100km/h will be written in its own product publicity column.
However, this is only a general technical improvement brought about by the technical characteristics of the motor. That is to say, as long as this technology is used, the performance can get a qualitative leap, but everyone leaps, which is equivalent to the beginning of a new round of inner volume.
Therefore, car companies that want to engage in new energy vehicles today will focus on intelligent driving assistance and intelligent cockpit human-computer interaction. Although in these technical fields, all new energy manufacturers are also very involved, as long as they are willing to invest and as long as they are willing to spend their minds, it is possible to roll out some new tricks. And performance, it seems, there is not so much place to invest, just the motor, just power, just acceleration.
But perhaps in Zhiji's view, things are not so simple.
First of all, electric vehicles are cheap in power and torque, and the Zhiji L7 does account for it. As they say, the maximum power and torque of up to 475kW and 725N·m are more than 2 times more than the luxury fuel vehicles of the same class (basically 2.0T displacement engine models). And thanks to this power performance, the car can also enter the 3-second club with a 0-100km/h acceleration time of 3.87 seconds.
In the old days, if you want to achieve such acceleration results, the basic 8-cylinder engine has just started, and the 12-cylinder engine is stable. Today, these are just two permanent magnet synchronous motors. Therefore, you can see in zhiji's press release, very proud to declare that the L7 Pro will use surging power to achieve dimensionality reduction on traditional fuel vehicles.
However, if this is all about New World Driving Control, obviously all the spectators, including you and me, may not agree, because too many cars may be able to achieve this result. Therefore, continuing to excavate where there is no way to dig, and further in the place where there is no progress, is what the "New World Driving Control Flagship" should do.
Therefore, Zhiji found Williams' senior engineering team to tune the chassis for the vehicle to achieve better driving performance. Of course, such adjustment is not just as simple as adjusting the suspension of the vehicle, the updated technology will add brilliance to the chassis and add color to the driving control.
These newer technologies include "electrified four-wheel vector drive". If you're confused about this term, a more straightforward description is, four-wheel drive + four-wheel steering. Unlike in the "old world", four-wheel drive is a very high-end unique technology (such as Audi's most famous Quattro technology in addition to lights), four-wheel drive is relatively easier to achieve on electric vehicles. As long as one motor is distributed on each front and rear axles, all four tires of the vehicle can be powered.
But more importantly, four-wheel steering will give the four-wheel drive more flexibility. This is a technology that really only appears in high-end cars, including Porsche's Taycan and Mercedes-Benz's EQS. With this technology, the rear wheels of the vehicle will provide a corresponding angle of rotation when the vehicle is turning to reduce the radius of the turn.
In fact, the principle of such steering is well understood, when the vehicle is turning, the rear wheel changes the center point by turning, and through this variable, the steering of the vehicle is easier. How big are such variables? Taking the rear wheel steering angle of the L7 Pro exceeding ± 12° (6° each for the inside and 6° for the outside steering), for example, it can reduce the turning radius of the L7 model with a length of more than five meters to 5.4 meters.
Now your question is, is this a very small angle? Let me tell you this, Porsche's Taycan model has a rear steering angle of ±2.8°, and Mercedes-Benz's EQS is ±10°. Obviously, neither Porsche, which focuses on sports, nor Mercedes-Benz, which focuses on luxury, does not do a better job than Zhiji on this indicator.
In addition, the L7 Pro also puts more effort into the ground clearance of the vehicle. As we all know, the ground clearance can determine the height of the vehicle's center of gravity, and it can also determine the air flow between the chassis and the ground when the vehicle is driving at high speed. Less air flow means less updraft, which makes the vehicle more stable. But at this point, electric vehicles are actually not easy to do, because of the thickness of the battery.
In the process of electric vehicle manufacturing, how to balance the thickness of the battery module, the overall height of the vehicle, and the space left for the cockpit is an important lesson that needs to be repeatedly tested.
This is also why, in the early days of electric vehicle manufacturing, everyone liked to make SUV models. Because the ground clearance of the SUV can be larger than that of the car, the height of the car can be made higher, so there is an opportunity to balance the space requirements of all parties in the space of the battery. Therefore, this is also the difficulty of the Zhiji L7 to continuously reduce the height of the vehicle chassis.
But Zhiji actually had a mechanism to solve this problem from the beginning. At the beginning of the establishment of the enterprise, Zhiji relied on the SAIC era and the era SAIC that they jointly built with the Ningde era to develop their own battery packs and battery cells. The advantage of this is to first take the core of the electric vehicle into your own hands, and more importantly, to gain the ability to innovate.
Through such innovations, Zhiji Automobile redesigned the battery structure of the whole vehicle and launched the first "mass production horizontal battery cell solution". Simply put, the battery that was originally stacked vertically was "lying flat" horizontally to reduce the volume. At the same time, by increasing the energy density of the battery, to ensure continuous navigation. That is, thinner, longer lasting. Another benefit of this is that space is saved, and the chassis has room to drop, allowing the Zhiji L7 Pro to gain a low center of gravity of 490mm.
The above is the understanding of Zhiji L7 for the new world driving control. It not only contains stronger power data, but also relies on technology and innovation to create a new understanding of pure electric driving control by the brand itself.
Not just the control, but the flagship
What I said above only contains the relevant content of the L7 Pro New World Driving Control, so what about the flagship?
As the first model of the Zhiji brand, its positioning is bound to be higher. Such a logic is also well understood, after all, the first car of any brand reflects not only technology and technology, but more importantly, the task is to become the façade and benchmark of the brand. The significance of this is that once there are more cars with different positioning in the future, the margin of price positioning and pricing has been sufficient.
Based on this appeal, the more luxurious and high-end positioning must be what the L7 Pro wants to present. For example, Zhiji has created the cockpit space of the L7 Pro through natural materials, clean taste technology and intelligent technology. In addition, the A-round users after the angel round also clarified their rights and interests in this price release.
For example, the free upgrade of Nappa punched front-floor leather seats, Brembo integrated four-piston calipers, the main passenger car premium comfort massage seat and other luxurious features, but also 6,800 yuan can be selected for the bavarian semi-aniline leather seats only available in top luxury cars.
Through the combination of these luxurious mating and intelligent interaction systems, it creates a driving experience that "allows users to enjoy fun to Drive every moment of travel".
But in my opinion, none of this can be called the whole of the new experience that a new car brand embracing a "new world" should offer. How to interact with users at a deeper level is the most important.
In fact, from the birth of Zhiji Automobile, they are very keen to create a model that truly co-creates with users, and rely on this thinking concept to create a data rights system containing rough stones and integrals.
Users contribute data to Zhiji in exchange for points and rough stones, which are used to redeem related benefits. Angel wheel users, for example, can enjoy lifetime free IM AD (Intelligent Driver Assistance System) benefits. And A-round users can also enjoy their own exclusive rights.
According to Liu Tao's introduction, A-round users will be able to use the IM AD Evolvable Intelligent Driver Assistance System for 3 years free of charge, and after 3 years, they can choose to buy out at a price of 8,800 yuan, or exchange it for the corresponding value of the data rights "rough" for life.
At the same time, A-round users can also upgrade the lidar fusion intelligent driving system and the super high-end energy battery in the form of "data rights and interests rough + cash". In addition, they can have batteries through monthly payments instead of monthly rents.
Compared with WEILAI's battery rental model, the advantage of this is that as a real core component of electric vehicles, future users can have a complete electric vehicle after completing the monthly supply of batteries, so as to have higher value when carrying out second-hand car replacement transactions. In the process of continuous increase in the foreseeable price of batteries in the future, such a battery installment buyout model is obviously more user-friendly.
For Zhiji, through the release of the L7 Pro, the door to a new era has been opened. In this new era, opportunities and challenges undoubtedly coexist. With a new understanding of technology and luxury, dimensionality reduction strikes at the same level of fuel vehicles, which has allowed Zhiji to win a new opportunity in the competition of differentiation.
But equally, challenges ensued. Whether it is Gaohe, which has gone to a higher end and survived, or BMW, which has launched an i4 model that does not lose the M3 driving experience, or Mercedes-Benz, which has completed the full range of electric vehicles, and Porsche, which has always been keen on driving control, it will compete with Zhiji in this new world.
First of all, this is not a bad thing, after all, the intellectual self has a competitive force at least from the perspective of the product. Of course, the market situation is still complicated, after all, the wave of electrification of traditional cars is menacing. But the good news is that with the possibility of competition, there is a chance to win. This opportunity to have the ability and confidence to face the veteran luxury manufacturers is obviously difficult to win in the old era for SAIC, which has launched a wise self-
However, what will Zhiji do in the future? How to go can ensure that Zhiji is accepted by consumers, and ensure that Zhiji can survive and go on, which is more worth looking forward to.