After getting the Alpha T of the Extreme Fox, my first task was to pick up my daughter-in-law from work, but she was a little resistant, because the weilai ES6 that picked her up last time made her dizzy, and she threw up directly after getting out of the car. "I'd rather take a bus than ride an electric car like this." She said.
"You can't overwhelm a boatload of people with a pole. This one is really a little different, and I am very comfortable driving it. "I'm trying to give this Alpha T a chance.
"Of course, people who drive cars are comfortable, but people who sit are not necessarily, and I don't want to get motion sickness anymore anyway." Even though I said everything good about the car, she was still reluctant, but she worked late that day, and there was no bus or subway to take, so she could only take a plastic bag and sit in my car.
Late at night, the road back to FangCun from Zhujiang New Town was very smooth, and I did not have the slightest intention of pitying Xiang Xiang and cherishing jade, how fast I drove, and finally it took more than half an hour to complete the journey of more than ten kilometers. Fortunately, when she got out of the car, she did not carry a bag of indescribable things, but came to say: "It is more comfortable than the previous electric car." ”
Although it is not fast, it is still very fun
Comfortable is my biggest feeling of test driving Alpha T these days.
The Alpha T I test-drove — the version was 653S+— wasn't a particularly fast car. It adopts a single motor, with a rated power of 160kW, a maximum torque of 360Nm, and "zero hundred acceleration" of only 8.6 seconds. This dynamic performance, compared with the same level, can only be regarded as decent, and naturally there is no acceleration pleasure. But every time I step on the accelerator, it gives me a pleasant feeling.
Its output is a bit like a fuel car, the power from shallow to deep, very linear, smooth, unlike some electric vehicles, touching the "electric door" is like touching its nerve center, which in turn gives you a slap. So, within a few moments of getting started, you can easily understand the output characteristics of the Alpha T, so that you can move two meters in front of you, and you know how much throttle you should step on to stop naturally.
This may be what we often call the feeling of "people and vehicles in one".
Alpha T's reversing radar is extremely sensitive, and even if there is still a long distance, it will make an extremely loud scream early, which can't help but make you hit a few more directions.
Probably Tesla made a bad start, making most people think that the acceleration of electric vehicles should be fast. As you can see, many OEMs blindly pursue too fast acceleration capabilities when building electric vehicles - a medium-sized seven-seat SUV can also achieve 4.9 seconds of "zero hundred acceleration", which is too much.
Here some people may retort: "Motivation is like a deposit, I can not use it, but I can't have it, so you can give me as much as you want." This sentence, if placed in the fuel vehicle market, I think it is true, because it can do "zero hundred acceleration" for 4 or 5 seconds, it must not be a cheap car, so its supporting chassis and brakes will be in place.
However, trams are different! It is too simple for the tram to be fast, but with an extra motor, or a motor with greater power, the cost will not increase much.
Just like Tang EV, the four-wheel drive high-performance version of "Zero Hundred Acceleration" of 4.6 seconds is only 4,000 yuan more expensive than the long-endurance version of "Zero Hundred Acceleration" of 8.9 seconds. You say that this 4,000 yuan, in addition to buying an additional motor, can it upgrade the chassis brakes? The corresponding hardware has not been upgraded, and the excessive acceleration is a burden for consumers, which will cause discomfort.
In fact, the characteristics of the instantaneous explosion of the motor to the consumer without reservation, is not a great skill, on the contrary, can control this characteristic, so that the retraction, the integration of people and vehicles is considered a superior kung fu, after all, it must slowly adjust the output curve of the motor, so that it can give people both strong power and fast response, but also give people a comfortable and smooth feeling.
Alpha T has a total of three versions, 480km endurance, "zero hundred acceleration" 7.8 seconds, 653km endurance, zero hundred acceleration 8.4 seconds, and four-wheel drive version only 4.6 seconds.
In addition to smooth and comfortable acceleration, the chassis of the Polar Fox Alpha T is also full of toughness.
In the past, many pure electric vehicles that I have test-driven have given me a feeling as a whole: the chassis is hard and not very comfortable - not that all electric vehicles are like this, but most of them are. The reason for this, I think, is because their curb weight is relatively heavy, and they need a harder suspension as a support to reduce the speed of the vehicle's center of gravity transfer and improve the vehicle's extreme handling.
But Alpha T is an exception.
Before I test-drove the Alpha T, I saw that it used a low-flat-rate, large-wheel tire with 245/45 R20, and I thought it was an electric car that emphasized sportiness. However, after pressing the first yellow-black interval speed at a speed of about 30km/h, I found that it was a car that emphasized comfort, and the chassis filter was smooth and comfortable, without a little stiff impact.
Tires with low flat rates tend to have stiffer walls and are difficult to do well in comfort.
After being amazed by its chassis, in the few days of test drive, when I encountered some speed bumps and potholes, I began to be unscrupulous, neither dodging nor slowing down, and pressing straight and straight. Because I know that these little shocks will soften through its shock absorption mechanism and will not make my ass suffer.
Although the Alpha T filter is in place, it doesn't mean it has no support in the corners, and it still gives you the confidence to go against the throttle until the tires scream. Overall, Alpha T weighs the comfort and sportiness of the chassis very well, and the full "disc" is full of high-end feelings.
Integrating the luxurious feeling into the mechanical quality, rather than just stopping at the interior and configuration, this may be the real advantage of Jihu, a mature electric vehicle company.
Aluminum alloy hem arm, no wonder comfortable.
Alpha T this performance, configuration,
If you change a Weilai logo, it will be 100,000 expensive!
"This car and the Weilai ES6 we test drove before, who is expensive?" When I got home, my daughter-in-law asked me a question.
"Weilai ES6 is more expensive." The two cars are about the same size and have roughly the same endurance, with the starting price of The Alpha T being 241,900 and the top matching only 319,900; while the starting price of the Weilai ES6 is 358,000, and the top match is 526,000.
"Oh, Weilai is more expensive!?" Even if it is the same price, I choose this one, let alone the one that is more expensive. Where is it expensive? She had a look of disdain on her face.
Honestly, I really don't know where it's expensive, maybe it's service. It is undeniable that the service of the car that emphasizes the comprehensive value is very important, but even if it is more important, the importance is still ranked below the product force. After all, the longest time with consumers is not your 24-hour customer service specialist, but your product.
Magna's production base, Magna's MAFACT production and operation management system, the quality of Jihu is guaranteed, after all, Magna has more than 100 years of high-end automobile manufacturing experience.
In terms of products, every aspect of the Polar Fox Alpha T – especially performance and cost performance – is clearly better than the NIO ES6. For example, the same are all four-wheel drive, the same 600km endurance (NEDC conditions), Alpha T only needs 319,900, while Weilai ES6 is 416,000, the price difference is as high as 100,000 yuan.
However, even though the NIO ES6 is more expensive, its configuration and performance are still inferior to the Alpha T.
For example, in terms of power, although both are electric four-wheel drive using permanent magnet synchronous motors, in the case of the same total system power, the total torque of the alpha T system reaches 720Nm, which is 110Nm higher than the WEILAI ES6 - the total torque of the system is only 610Nm.
This power gap is also directly reflected in the acceleration performance: alpha T's official 0-100km/h acceleration takes only 4.6 seconds, while NIO's "zero hundred acceleration" goes to 5.6 seconds.
This one-second gap is worth tens of thousands of blocks in Weilai's product price system: the "zero hundred acceleration" of the Weilai ES6 performance version is 0.9 seconds faster than the sports version, but the difference between the two is 40,000 yuan - don't tell me that this 40,000 yuan also includes air suspension, and the Audi A6L option for an air suspension is only 29,000 yuan.
If mechanical performance is not what the "new forces" are good at, then the intelligent technology they have been talking about is their specialty!?
However, Alpha T has lane keeping, road traffic recognition, reversing side warning system, full speed domain adaptive cruise, automatic parking, gesture control, facial recognition, HUD head-up display..... The 416,000 WEILAI ES6 has none, only active braking and cruise control.
And everyone has, Alpha T does better: Alpha T is a 12.3-inch LCD instrument panel, NIO ES6 is only 9.8 inches; Alpha T's seats support heating ventilation, while the ES6 only has a heating function; Alpha T uses an Infinity sound system, ES6's audio has no brand; Alpha T has 64 color mood lights, ES6 only has 10 colors...
Alpha T's NVH is very good, and with an Infinity sound system, it's also a treat when stuck in traffic.
Such a gap, Weilai ES6 is more expensive than Alpha T is more than 100,000 yuan, what do you say is the reason!?
Branding? They are all new brands in less than ten years, what premium can there be!? Even, I think that as a high-end brand under Beiqi Blue Valley, the brand value of Jihu is even higher. After all, Beiqi Blue Valley has been building electric vehicles for more than ten years, and the supply chain system and research and development system must be more mature.
However, even if Jihu showed such sincerity and created an alpha T with a very good experience, it still failed to impress consumers in the market, and sales were still mediocre.
What's the problem?
High-end pure electricity,
Maybe it's just a false proposition
In fact, not only the Polar Fox Alpha T, but also many so-called high-end pure electric models of more than 300,000 - especially SUVs - have not performed well in the market.
Not only the Alpha T & S of the Polar Fox, BUT ALSO TANG EV, EAN AION LX, and Extreme Kr 001 have been struggling in this market for some years, and there is still no improvement. Even the German troika, which has performed strongly in the fuel luxury car market, has not leveraged this market, and the best-selling BMW iX3 sold only 5785 units in the first quarter of this year.
Even some brands that already have a place in this market have a slightly sluggish growth. For example, Tesla's sales in the first quarter of this year only increased by 56% over last year, Han EV only increased by 6.1%, Weilai's entire series only increased by 27.64%, and only the sales of Xiaopeng P7 doubled.
Yes, although they – to exclude Xiaopeng – have all grown, compared with the 129.8% year-on-year increase in the market, it seems to be a bit of a witch. What about the "dumbbell-shaped" market structure of the pure electricity market? Why is it that the high-end end is gradually losing weight now?
On March 18, Xiaopeng P7 raised its price by 10,100-20,000 yuan, and before that, Xiaopeng P7's main product was only about 250,000 yuan. The same is true of HanEV.
The reason why consumers' desire to buy more than 300,000 pure electric models is getting lower and lower may be that the value law of the original fuel vehicle market has undergone fundamental changes in the pure electric market.
In the fuel vehicle market, products below 300,000 are enough to meet the car needs of the vast majority of consumers in terms of performance, space and configuration. The reason why consumers will spend more money to buy high-premium products in the fuel market of more than 300,000 is its distinctive brand positioning, ultimate performance enjoyment, and more noble symbols.
To put it bluntly, they want to get value enjoyment beyond the need for transportation, but unfortunately, there is no "extra value" in the pure electricity market.
From the curved surface of the Polar Fox Alpha T headlights, you may be able to see the level of craftsmanship - not comparable to Tesla.
At the moment when the pure electricity market has not yet had a clear pattern, the positioning of many brands has not yet been recognized by the market: even if it is BBA, its brand influence in the pure electricity market is no longer strong, and even a little "stigmatized"; in the past, the extreme acceleration, extreme tranquility and extreme comfort that can only be bought in the high-end market have become no longer difficult, as long as a little snack can be done at a very good level.
In addition, the problem in front of electric vehicles, more expensive cars do not seem to have a real solution: there should be mileage anxiety, there is still mileage anxiety; those who should be charged in line still have to queue up to charge; those who should worry about explosions will still worry about explosions. And these are precisely the places where users in the pure electricity market really care.
To put it bluntly, after there is no brand premium in the pure electricity market, more than a dozen or two hundred thousand cars and three or four hundred thousand cars have no difference in experience and service, so why let users spend more money to buy so-called high-end products?
In the eyes of many people, the Model S is just a large Model 3.
Just like Tesla's Model S and Model X in the past, they were very popular, but after the Model 3 and Model Y came out, the so-called Million Luxury cars of these two Teslas did not have much sales. Because consumers are very clear that although the size of 3 and Y is smaller, there is not much difference in user experience, and it is not worth spending several times more.
So, don't look at Tesla is very hot now, in fact, it does not have much brand premium to speak of. Tesla is still like this, and other so-called high-end pure electric brands are even more so!
Text | Male
(This article is the author's personal opinion only and does not represent the position of DearAuto.) )
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Mr. Li Guoyong of Guangdong Green Law Firm