At last year's Shanghai Auto Show, ZEEKR exhibited a concept car called M-Vision. I was very interested in this car at the time because it was so innovative, with a capsule body, no B-pillar design, front and rear sliding doors, and seats with great range of movement......
It's too one-sided to define it as an MPV, and in my eyes, it's simply the most family-friendly model, a veritable new species.
ZEEKR M-Vision Concept
Unexpectedly, ZEEKR really mass-produced this car.
Some time ago, the application information of the new model of ZEEKR MIX appeared on the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which caused a lot of discussion among netizens, and in fact, the photos of the car were officially announced today.
Since it is a production car, we have to put aside all kinds of wild imagination and evaluate this car from a more realistic perspective. What is its target group, what are its unique product concepts, and what are its differentiating advantages in the involuted MPV market?
Design for functionality
After the photos of the real car of ZEEKR MIX were exposed, netizens helped it take the nickname "Baby Bus". Don't say it, it's quite vivid. But this means that the design of this car has nothing to do with "handsome", "atmospheric" and "mighty".
In sedans and/or SUVs, once a car does not grow in the mainstream aesthetic point of the public, no matter how good the performance is, there is a high probability that it will be put into the cold. But MPV is an exception, after all, this is a class of models with strong functional attributes, as long as the space, practicality, convenience, etc. are good enough, its design is largely to give way to functionality.
And ZEEKR MIX is a typical example of design giving way to function. Don't look at it as naïve, but there are many eye-catching things in the design.
Its length is only 4688mm, but the wheelbase has reached 3008mm, and the compact body is matched with the wheelbase of medium and large cars, with an axle ratio of more than 64%, which is currently the MPV model with the highest axle ratio.
Models such as the BYD Seagull and Wuling Binguo have an axle ratio of more than 64%, which can easily accommodate four seats in a length of less than 4 meters and provide a relatively good riding experience.
In addition, the wheel base of ZEEKR MIX is also very amazing, with the front and rear track reaching 1702mm and 1709mm respectively, which has reached the level of large MPVs - the front and rear track of the ideal MEGA is only 1703mm and 1708mm.
With a larger axle ratio and a wider wheel base, ZEEKR MIX has an almost perverted space utilization. As shown in the M-Vision concept car, the front seats not only have a long distance between the front and rear seats, but also can be rotated 180 degrees to form a sitting design with the rear rows, and on this basis, the combination of "lathe" and "queen seat" is not a problem.
The size of the family car should not be too large
Although ZEEKR MIX has spent a lot of ingenuity in the use of space, after all, the absolute size is still a little smaller, especially the length of less than 4.7 meters, which is shorter than the god car Baojun 730 of the year, which means that it is difficult to accommodate three rows of seats, and it also means that it will become an outlier in today's MPV market where the size is the hero.
But have you ever thought that for family cars, too large a size is a disadvantage?
The most common home scene is not to take the whole family on a road trip, not to camp and picnic in the suburbs with a cart of equipment, not to watch movies and sleep in the car, but to send children to school in the morning, go grocery shopping after work, and go back to the old city to visit the elderly on weekends...... This is what I often encounter as a father of a second child, and more than 80% of the roads I walk are congested roads and narrow lanes, in which case the excessive body size is a burden.
The Ideal MEGA is more than 5.3 meters long, and the standard parking space can no longer accommodate it (the front wheels have exceeded the white line on the road).
So it's always hard for me to understand why some MPVs are more than 5 meters long and keep emphasizing their home attributes. In my opinion, a model like ZEEKR MIX, which is not large in size but has a high utilization rate of space, is quite friendly to home users.
Of course, the lack of a third row of seats is a big flaw for a family car, but ZEEKR MIX has come up with a 3+3 front and rear seat layout as a remedy. In my opinion, such a seating layout is much more practical than a three-row seat.
In my family's case, we are a family of six and own two cars (Accord and Highlander). The whole family drives the Highlander when we go out, but none of us use the third row of seats, not because the space is narrow (the third row of the Highlander is spacious enough for two small children), but because it is more convenient to sit in the first two rows. As a driver, my dad sat in the passenger seat, and my mother and my wife sat in the second row with two children, the location was just right, and it was convenient enough to get in and out of the car, the only problem was that the second row lacked a seat belt.
The third row of my Highlander has been in a state of collapse for a long time, and even if the whole family travels, only the first and second rows will be used.
Some people may think that Highlander is inconvenient to enter and exit the third row because the seats are 2+3+2 layout, but the problem is that many 2+2+3 MPVs are not necessarily more convenient, and you have to bend down first to enter the third row, pass through the narrow passage in the middle of the second row, and finally turn around to sit in the third row, which is much more troublesome than sitting directly in the second row.
In contrast, ZEEKR MIX can reasonably solve the problem of 6 people through two rows of seats, which is a very meaningful design for families like us, but this is a non-mainstream design in the field of mainstream passenger cars after all, and the next thing to see is how ZEEKR engineers make a fuss about safety and comfort.
ZEEKR M-Vision Concept. Note that under the center console, there is a through-type design that leaves plenty of space for the three seats in the front row.
Extreme Krypton that doesn't take the usual path
Among the many new energy brands in China, ZEEKR is the one with its own ideas, and they can always create some products that break the homogenization status quo of the market.
When everyone was pushing the pure electric SUV, they created a very rare hunting coupe in the market at that time; when their peers were still looking at the high-end pure electric field, they took the lead in coming up with a pure electric MPV with a price of more than 500,000 yuan; and when the whole industry built larger and higher-level models, they came up with the small but refined Zeekr X.
007 can be said to be the most "mainstream" product of ZEEKR, but it still stands out from models of the same level with its high cost performance.
Of course, it is difficult to ensure that every model of ZEEKR will become a hit, but when their products coincide with the mainstream market demand, the charm of their products can be fully activated.
The 001 and 007 are good examples, and they have become the champions and runners-up of more than 200,000 local pure electric sales this year.
Looking at ZEEKR MIX, this new car has made a bolder innovation in the original product strategy of ZEEKR, and its product positioning is contrary to the current trend of new energy MPV building bigger and bigger, and the design of the car with a small space can indeed come in handy in specific scenarios, but whether it can meet the needs of mainstream MPV users is still unknown, at least it is easy to judge when the price comes out.
However, having said that, there are few large new energy MPVs that sell well now, and maybe, ZEEKR MIX can become a real hit. (Text: Superman)