"As long as the traditional car companies make a move..."
Once upon a time, as long as the new energy models of traditional car companies were mentioned, someone on Weibo would definitely use this sentence to ridicule traditional car companies.
In this regard, Chang'an seemed to have something to say.
"In the next 3-5 years, 80% of Chinese fuel vehicle brands will shut down and turn around."
At the end of last month, Changan Automobile Chairman Zhu Huarong's prediction at the China Electric Vehicle 100 People's Conference has not yet dissipated; half a month later, Changan Automobile released its new pure electric brand "Deep Blue" at the 2022 Global Partnership Conference; a week later, the Changan Deep Blue Technology Sharing Meeting came as scheduled.
At this sharing meeting, Changan released its all-electric digital drive platform EPA1. Deng Chenghao, general manager of Changan New Energy, affectionately referred to the EPA1 platform as 5 years of grinding 1 sword.
If a sophisticated businessman were to say something like that, I would at most say " good acting " . But from the first words of Deng Chenghao after he took office, I smelled the same kind of breath - he must be like me, a straight and even somewhat wooden science and engineering man. And it is such an alternative affection shown by a straight man of science and engineering that has aroused great resonance among me.
This resonance makes me believe that Changan may really have spent a lot of effort on the new platform of EPA1, and Changan said that EPA1 is an all-electric digital platform with high efficiency, high performance, high intelligence and high security.
Add up to more efficiency
Changan proposed an interesting new concept: the electrical efficiency of the power system. It refers to the ratio between the net output of the electric drive system and the power consumption of the grid, reflecting the comprehensive electrical efficiency of new energy vehicles.
To put it more intuitively, the higher the value of this parameter, the more money the user spends on charging.
For this new concept, Changan claims that the powertrain electrical efficiency of the EPA1 platform is 78%, compared with the industry average of 70-75%.
Polytechnic men are always more sensitive to numerical values. When I saw this PPT for the first time, I wanted to ask, Changan claims that it can be 3-8 percentage points higher than the industry average, why?
In this regard, the explanation given by Changan is that this improvement is achieved by improving the efficiency of many subsystems such as electric drive system efficiency, charging system efficiency, battery system efficiency, energy recovery system efficiency, etc.
What really dispelled my "polytechnic man" question was Deng Chenghao's equally "polytechnic male" style answer.
Deng Chenghao took the new generation of electric drive system equipped with the EPA1 platform as an example and explained this problem with specific figures.
Changan used 5 core technologies to improve the efficiency of the new electric drive system, among which the eight-strand flat wire winding technology can be increased by 0.9%, the rotor double-V topology configuration can be increased by 0.4%, the ultra-low resistance wire is increased by 0.1%, the adaptive control algorithm is increased by 1.2%, and the low resistance topology optimization is increased by 1.3%.
Honestly, I don't understand what the terms above represent, but I can understand that these technologies can bring small efficiency gains to electric drive systems.
It is from these tiny zeros and tenths of a percent that the maximum work efficiency of the new electric drive system is finally accumulated.
Perhaps it is the superposition of these details that ultimately makes the power system electrical efficiency of the EPA1 platform reach 78%.
The drift dream of EPA1
Changan summarized the EPA1 platform as a power platform that is a power platform that is later driven into the gene and supports the expansion of dual motors to take into account the four-wheel drive, and is also the first multi-power configuration all-electric platform compatible with pure electricity, extended range, and hydrogen fuel cells.
In terms of acceleration performance, take the C385, the first model of EPA1, as an example, which is equipped with a single rear axle motor with a maximum power of 190 kW, and the measured acceleration of 100 kilometers per 100 seconds is 5.9 seconds.
In terms of handling, the EPA1 platform is equipped with an H-arm multi-link independent suspension system. Regarding the structural details of this rear suspension, there was not too much interpretation at this communication meeting, and Changan declared that this rear suspension can achieve better rear suspension following, high-speed stability, riding comfort, and provide a more delicate driving experience. But how the real performance of this set of back suspensions is, we still have to wait until we get the real car to experience, we can give a conclusion.
Based on H-arm multi-link suspension, the EPA1 platform features a counterweight structure with a balanced front and rear axles, achieving a 50:50 front-to-rear load ratio. And what this number represents, I think, will be able to control the two words on the heart of the students must be clear in the chest.
The 50:50 front and rear axle load ratio represents the perfect counterweight ratio, which is born with better dynamic balance performance, which may also be the biggest confidence of Changan daring to take the C385 ice and snow drift lens as a promotional video.
Regarding the chassis, I am more concerned about the braking aspect. Deng Chenghao introduced that the EPA1 platform is equipped with the latest international brake double redundancy system, with comfortable and sporty braking styles.
Previously, I was very impressed by the braking system on the Polestar 2. Its braking system releases braking pressure gradually and systematically as the vehicle is about to brake. Reflected in the driving experience, this function basically eliminates the situation of "vehicle brakes and people nodding" under the urban road conditions, bringing me a great sense of riding pleasure.
I'm curious if Changan's claimed "comfortable braking style" can achieve a similar effect.
The age of the domain control structure
The EPA1 platform adopts the latest generation of domain control electronic and electrical architecture, with three domain control structures of vehicle control domain, cockpit domain and self-driving domain, and supports SOA service expansion.
The most immediate benefit of the centralized function of the vehicle controller is that the OTA is faster.
This is also easy to understand, in the past, different functions are scattered in each controller, when the vehicle receives the OTA update package, it needs to transfer the update file from the gateway to each sub-controller, and then the self-controller performs the update operation. After using a domain controller, these intermediate processes are greatly reduced, and the structure is naturally faster OTA updates.
As for how fast this faster speed is, Changan mentioned that the OTA time of the EPA1 platform is less than three minutes.
At the same time, in order not to affect the normal use of cars by users in the OTA process, Changan also introduced dual-partition upgrade technology in the cockpit domain. This concept is similar to the seamless update function of the A/B partition of previous smartphones. For example, if the user is currently using a system that is partition A, at which point the vehicle receives an OTA update, the vehicle performs this update on the B partition, and during the update process, the normal use of the A partition is not affected. After the B partition update is complete, the user's operation can be seamlessly switched to the B partition.
The advantage of this is that it can provide a "senseless OTA" experience, and the other is to avoid vehicle breakdowns caused by upgrade failures.
In terms of vehicle control domain, Changan launched the intelligent vehicle domain controller "Changan Smart Core", which integrates 7 control modules including VCU, gateway, Ethernet gateway, T-BOX, etc.
Changan Smart Core is also the first intelligent vehicle domain controller independently developed by Changan with completely independent intellectual property rights, which contains more than 80 patents, integrates more than 1500 core devices, and realizes 100% coverage of remote diagnosis. Compared to traditional split controllers, it offers a 70% increase in performance and a 70% reduction in volume.
In terms of cockpit domain, the EPA1 platform chose the Qualcomm 8155 chip platform, the most powerful in the industry, and realized one machine and multiple screens.
In terms of self-driving domain, the EPA1 platform adopts a multi-chip redundant control design, which can collect 27 sensing parts of the whole vehicle. Changan car selection, this self-driving system can achieve up to L4 level of "parking integrated" intelligent driving.
"Core Car Cloud", the three security cards of the new platform
No matter how the car evolves, as a tool with the basic attributes of transportation, safety will always be a hot topic for cars to pursue.
Deng Chenghao mentioned that Changan realizes the high security attributes of the EPA1 platform through the three-layer security architecture of "Core Car Cloud".
First of all, let's talk about "core" safety, which is actually battery safety.
Changan has developed the iBC digital battery manager based on the EPA1 platform, which can ensure the safety of batteries in both active and passive aspects.
In terms of active safety, Through the selection of battery cells, as well as the method of full monitoring of the manufacturing process and the dual monitoring of vehicle cloud BMS, Changan ensures that the probability of thermal runaway of the battery and the battery assembly is close to zero; in terms of passive safety, Changan can effectively avoid the occurrence of thermal runaway problems in the entire package of batteries through seven major technologies such as full battery insulation, alcohol-cooled heat dissipation, and transient pressure relief.
In terms of "car" safety, based on the new pure electric drive platform architecture, Changan designed a five-horizontal and nine-longitudinal surround body, with more than 45% of high-strength steel, to achieve C-NCAP five-star safety standards, and provide a full range of peripheral security protection for the battery.
"Cloud" security refers to data security. In this regard, Changan adopts 5+1 information security and privacy protection measures, plus privacy protection policies covering the car, cloud and mobile terminals, to achieve the protection goal of user information security.
Having said so much about the new EPA1 platform, whether the EPA1 platform is good or not, for our ordinary consumers, it still depends on the performance of the specific model.
At this communication meeting, Changan also announced some details of the C385.
The C385 has a length, width and height of 482018901480mm, a wheelbase of 2900mm and a drag coefficient of 0.23Cd.
The most surprising thing is that in addition to the pure electric version, Changan announced that the C385 also has an extended range model and a hydrogen electric model. The difference is the form of energy, the same is the final form of power output, Changan uses specific model examples to tell consumers what kind of platform can be called an all-electric digital platform.
Focusing on the endurance performance of specific models, pure electric models can achieve cruising range of more than 700km under CLTC conditions, and the power consumption is as low as 12.3 kWh/100km; the comprehensive working range of the extended range model can reach more than 1200km, the comprehensive working range of pure electricity is more than 200km, and the fuel consumption will be less than 4.5L/100km; the comprehensive working range of the hydrogen version is also more than 700km, and the hydrogen consumption of the feeder will be less than 0.65kg/100km, and it can achieve 3 Minute super fast replenishment.