At the 2022 Shenzhen Auto Show, the center of BYD's booth is undoubtedly the just-released pure electric sedan Seal EV. Unfortunately, the car was staged a day later than the press, but it also allowed me to avoid the "spectator wall" that surrounds the Seal EV.
The main reason why so many viewers came to see the Seal EV is simple: it is the first production car to apply this new body structure since Tesla introduced the concept of "battery-body integration" to the public at the "BATTERY DAY" launch event in 2020. At that time, it was reported that this pure electric platform would also derive an SUV called "Hiace" that also uses batteries as the floor.
The grapevine doesn't tell us that it will be two years before this SUV is available to everyone. However, there is also the advantage of coming late, this SUV named "Hiace 07EV" in mass production, catching up with the large-scale adjustment of BYD's pure electric technology system, has become the first new car to use the e-platform 3.0 Evo. Now the Hiace 07EV has been launched, with prices ranging from 189,800 yuan to 239,800 yuan.
If we go back to the point where the Seal EV was released two years ago, the Hiace 07 EV will be competitive at its price point as a sporty mid-size SUV. However, in 2022-2023, the adjustment of the competitive strategies of major car companies and the rapid maturity of supplier solutions have raised the competition intensity of new energy vehicles to an unprecedented level - users who want high-end intelligent driving with lidar, 800V high-voltage platform, and high performance and electronically controlled suspension can find corresponding choices.
If the e-platform 3.0 is not upgraded accordingly, the competitiveness of the Hiace 07EV will have to be discounted. Therefore, on the basis of the original technology platform, the e-platform 3.0 EVO focuses on strengthening five "technology clusters", including the new version of the vehicle safety architecture, the new generation of electric drive, vehicle thermal management, global fast charging and vehicle motion control system.
For the pure electric vehicle platform using the CTB battery-body integrated structure, the upgraded Evo platform not only takes the battery pack as a part of the body to improve space utilization and torsional rigidity, but also uses the blade battery pack as part of the longitudinal and lateral force conduction path of the body. The rear-wheel drive platform itself moves the main electronic control and electric drive components to the rear, and the vacated front cabin space can also be used as a collision buffer to reduce the acceleration level experienced by passengers after the Hiace 07EV is impacted.
With the basics of vehicle safety done, it's time for the other core parts to improve performance and user experience. One of the most important pieces is the motor that drives the whole vehicle. BYD's engineering team integrated almost all the electronic control components of the vehicle into the vicinity of the electric drive this time to make a 12-in-1 electric drive assembly. In addition to the high degree of integration, the maximum speed of the motor body also reaches 23,000 rpm, which is the highest speed among the motors in mass production.
In addition to increasing the proportion of silicon carbide materials used in the power semiconductor components matched with the motor, BYD has also improved the manufacturing process to improve the performance of the power module, and the result is that the energy consumption level of the e-platform 3.0 EVO has been optimized.
Along with the improved performance of the motor, the speed at which the Hiace 07EV can replenish energy has also been increased, which is achieved through two new features of the e-platform 3.0. The first is the intelligent upflow fast charging capability, which can decouple the charging current at one end of the charging pile from the current provided to the battery by the vehicle charger, and can still increase the current at the vehicle end to a maximum of 400A when the charging enters the constant voltage stage. The second is the terminal fast charging technology, which applies a negative pulse discharge while charging at a high current, so that the lithium ions are not "blocked" near the diaphragm. The purpose of the two technologies is the same - to maximize the power of the national standard charging pile in the full SoC range and reduce the charging time.
The increase in charging power in the whole section naturally requires the help of a stronger thermal management system. The thermal management system of the Hiace 07EV has been replaced with a new 16-in-1 integrated module, the cold plate of the battery cooling system has been upgraded to a dual-loop zonal flow channel design, and the thermal management device for the electric drive system has also covered the cooling to the rotor magnet area. Next-generation thermal management systems connect the main components that need and emit heat, and deliver heat to where it's needed, reducing the additional energy consumption for heating in the winter and providing more direct heat dissipation capacity in the summer, allowing the motor to keep running with more power.
Finally, based on the vehicle motion control architecture that integrates power and chassis systems, BYD's engineers added an upgraded version of the "Super iTAC" to the Hiace 07EV. Super iTAC provides operating modes for multiple scenarios, including the Trap Assistant mode to help the Hiace 07EV get out of trouble, as well as the drift mode and race mode that are common on sporty BEVs.
The vehicle motion control architecture can coordinate the work of electric steering, electronically controlled shock absorbers, motors, braking and other systems, through this vehicle "cerebellum", Hiace 07EV can also OTA one-key automatic drift and other functions in the future, and can also make the subsystem adjustable project of the vehicle motion control architecture into "atomic ability", which is convenient for users to DIY adjustment.
For BYD Ocean Network, the biggest significance of Hiace 07EV is to form a pure electric product line of sports sedan + sports SUV with Seal EV, and those users who are entangled in the space of Seal EV can have new choices. However, I still prefer another important significance of this car - the e-platform 3.0 Evo, which has undergone a significant performance improvement, will soon be rolled out in BYD's pure electric product line and hit the pure electric market within 200,000 yuan. At that time, the competitive landscape of entry-level pure electric passenger cars may appear more interesting.