After two years, Xiaopeng Automobile launched its second pure electric product, Xiaopeng p7. With a range of 706 kilometers, intelligent cockpit, and high value, p7 has become the focus of discussion in the industry, and has been listed for less than a month, and users have been praising it continuously.
But for a car, the focus of consumers is still on performance and technology, safety and so on. So p7 is a face value school? Or a powerful faction?
Liu Minghui, vice president of Xiaopeng Automobile
A few days ago, the first electric network and Dr. Liu Minghui, vice president of Xiaopeng Automobile, conducted an in-depth dialogue. It is understood that before joining Xiaopeng Motors, Liu Minghui already has 8 years of vehicle performance research and development experience and 17 years of experience in the research and development of new energy vehicles and automotive electronic products, and has presided over the completion of a number of key product development projects and new energy national 863 major special projects, and is a veritable car-making veteran.
For the industry's attention to the p7 extremely low battery pack height, Liu Minghui introduced, p7 research and development process, in order to ensure the coupe shape, there is a greater innovation in the power battery, to keep the original modeling design unchanged, "the height of the car must be very low, the floor below the ground clearance is enough, people sitting in the car and can not use the sports car that kind of lying posture, but also have to sit close to the car, so the height of the car should also be guaranteed." In this way, the position given to the battery pack at the end is gone. ”
"Other things can not be wronged, the shape can not be compromised, the ground clearance must be enough, and the safety is all aspects, so the requirements for the battery pack are relatively high in the end." Liu Minghui explained. Therefore, it is proposed that the height of the battery pack be 110mm, so that the requirements can be met. But it was difficult, "the batteries that were already on the market at that time, including existing cells and battery packs made with such cells, were all above 140mm in height. "But Xiaopeng Automobile joined hands with the Ningde era and finally did this."
When talking about the market competition with Tesla Model 3, Liu Minghui admitted that the driving experience brought by the two to consumers in terms of performance is almost the same. "Everyone's driving experience is basically driven out, p7's 100 km acceleration time can reach less than 5 seconds, the test of 100 km acceleration time is to step on the throttle to the end, and then run to 100 km of time, ordinary users usually do not care too much about the difference between 0.00 and a few seconds, and the user feels more is the 0-50 km slamming on the throttle to give him a push back feeling." Liu Minghui said.
The following is the original text of the interview, which has been reviewed and has been deleted.
The best car in the same class, how the battery pack height of 110mm is made
The first electric network: how does Xiaopeng Automobile define p7?
Liu Minghui: At present, p7 has three outstanding advantages that everyone is more concerned about. First, the ultra-long endurance of 706 kilometers. Second, the shape is better. Third, intelligence. I think these three characteristics may attract everyone's attention. For some consumers, the appearance and shape may be put first; followed by battery life, and then intelligence. p7 has done a very good job in automatic driving, intelligent cockpit, human-computer interaction, etc., voice interaction is very scientific and technological, and users can really feel intelligent. In addition, in terms of automatic driving, we also have technologies such as automatic parking and automatic assisted driving, which are also very prominent.
The first electric mesh: Technically, the height of the battery pack is significantly lower than the level of 140~160mm in the industry, please talk about why you want to customize the height of 110mm?
Liu Minghui: First of all, this is related to the positioning of the car.
We originally designed this car around the end of 2017, when we said we were going to make a bigger car, a B-Class car. Because our first car, the G3, was an A-Class car, and the second car was definitely making a fuss about the B-Class, so was it an SUV or a sedan? Most colleagues who make products say do SUVs. At that time, everyone felt that because it was an electric car, there should be enough battery capacity, a larger battery, and the SUV was relatively easy to do. And at that time, the industry presented it to everyone, and most of them were SUVs at this level.
At this time, Chairman He Xiaopeng said, everyone does SUVs, this is already a red sea, are we going to find another way to make a car?
At that time, the cars on the market were all equipped with models, and the styling style of the cars still gave people the feeling of traditional cars in all aspects. So at that time, I proposed to make a car, can we make the shape of this car a little more sporty, so that the shape is more cool. In addition, everyone's understanding is that pure electric drive, power should be good, so partial motion is a feature.
So I started doing it, first with styling. Because the height of this car must be very low, the floor under the ground clearance is enough, people sitting in the car and can not use the sports car to lie down, but also with the car close to the sitting posture, so the height of the car should be guaranteed. In this way, the position of the battery pack is gone, and the battery pack is arranged under the chassis.
Two versions of the styling were done at the time. One version is 1480mm tall, and the other version is now 1450mm. By comparing the two versions, we found that it is still 1450 good, and this sporty type is still a little better than the height of the car. But after calculation, after deduction, it was found that the battery must be 110mm. This is the origin of the 110mm battery.
But at that time put forward the 110mm battery requirements, we also felt very difficult, at that time the existing batteries on the market, including the existing battery pack made of batteries, the height is more than 140mm, we want to do 110mm, we must reduce the height of the battery cell. Later, we looked for the Ningde era and said that we could jointly develop a battery cell and make this battery a lower height? At that time, after talking about it, everyone felt that the height of the battery itself was also low. But it is difficult to go further down, because we still have to ensure endurance and safety.
It can be simply understood that the head and tail of a battery cell are fixed at both ends, because it is encapsulated together, and there must be a top cover on it, and there are positive and negative leads, which cannot be moved. The middle section can only be moved, but the middle section is loaded with active materials of the positive and negative electrodes for energy generation. If the height of the entire battery is depressed, only the height of the middle part can be depressed. If the capacity of the active material becomes smaller, the energy density of the battery is difficult to improve, and the energy density does not go up, and the endurance is difficult to do. At the same time, after the high pressure reaches the limit, the safety of the battery is difficult to guarantee.
Overall, in terms of batteries, we have done a lot of work jointly with the NINGDE era. Various designs, such as how to shorten the height, in order to ensure the safety of the battery, the performance should be up to standard, but also to do a variety of tests on the battery cell. The battery pack is made independently by Xiaopeng Motors, from research and development to production. This link, including the water cooling plate in the upper and lower boxes, the safety and energy density of the battery pack should be indexed, decomposed step by step, to ensure that the size of the battery is small, the height is reduced, and the weight is light; but also to ensure a certain strength and stiffness to meet the safety.
There is also thermal management, because the battery is very delicate, cold is not good, hot is not good; thermal conductivity, heat transfer performance is also very good. On the other hand, battery energy management, health management, there is a battery management system bms. The design of bms should be very delicate to ensure that the battery energy can be used efficiently.
Thinning the battery pack is the need of the industry, but the difficulty lies in how to ensure safety and energy density while making it thin. Therefore, in the process of doing it, we also cooperate closely with the battery supplier Ningde Times, and also cooperate with some of our parts suppliers.
First electric network: You just said that in the pack part is Xiaopeng's own work, and has been used in the mass production car, does this mean that Xiaopeng's technology in this area of pack is relatively mature?
Liu Minghui: Yes. First of all, it must be mature, and the second is to pursue the goal of advanced, generally speaking, as a quality-seeking enterprise must do so. We have done a lot of verification on the battery pack, and the number of cars should be at the level of hundreds of cars, including various experiments; in addition, there are dozens of battery packs to do a large number of battery assembly tests. The above is the design and verification verification, in addition to a large number of production and process verification, can ensure mass production.
The first electric mesh: the process also needs to be verified?
Liu Minghui: Yes, the most critical requirement for the production of batteries is production consistency. In order to produce continuously and stably, these production processes must be verified, and even the logistics and transportation process of some parts must be verified. For example, the packaging of a part, if the packaging is unreasonable, the transportation may cause damage to the part, and when the battery pack assembly plant is assembled, the damage will have a certain probability of not being detected, and this potential problem will flow to the production of the whole vehicle. So research and validation also includes the packaging and transportation process of parts. Of course, in this case, just to ensure that the parts are not damaged during transportation, this is not a problem in itself, so what is the problem? Automobile is a system engineering, not only to ensure quality, to ensure that the transportation process is not damaged, but also to ensure that the cost can be controlled, can be low cost, fast and batch delivery.
For example, we get the user's order, need to be fast, on time delivery, it needs the whole vehicle can be produced quickly and on time, the battery pack should also be produced quickly and on time, in turn, the next level of the battery pack parts supplier those pieces to be sent to the battery pack production line on time, so the entire logistics process is also very important. I'm just giving an example, in production, all kinds of processes have to have a very mature verification.
The first electric mesh: from research and development to the real battery pack can achieve mass production, the whole process took us how long?
Liu Minghui: It should be a little more than two years, about 27 or 28 months.
P7 and Model 3 have no difference in performance
The first electric net: the battery is really good, and the endurance can reach 706 kilometers. The performance of the p7 car is also very strong, but the performance is too strong will also damage some endurance?
Liu Minghui: Yes. For cars, whether it is a traditional power car or a pure electric vehicle, power and economy are often contradictory. Economy is the energy consumption of fuel vehicles or the energy consumption and endurance of electric vehicles. When the power of traditional cars is particularly good, the economy will be worse. For example, high-level fuel vehicles tend to have high fuel consumption. The contradiction between power and economy on electric vehicles is not so prominent, but it is still a pair of contradictions, if its power is very strong, then its 100 km power consumption and the mileage reflected will be lost.
To resolve this contradiction, the system design of the whole vehicle and the powertrain is very important. First of all, we must do a good job in their respective parts, on the one hand, do a good job of power, how to make the torque of the motor of this car large enough. On the other hand, the energy consumption of the motor and the entire drivetrain should also be considered, and the energy consumption should be reduced. After that, we must balance the two, that is, matching, such as the matching of the speed ratio, the matching of the working points, and so on.
It's a bit like a runner, some people are good at 100 meters, some people are good at long distances like marathons. Generally speaking, a model like this volume requires a more balanced performance and endurance, and a more all-round ability.
The first electric network: Xiaopeng p7 performance is indeed very good, but its competitor model 3 performance is also super good, such as acceleration time, the standard version of the model 3 can reach 5.6 seconds, the long endurance version is also between 3.4 seconds and 5.3 seconds, but the performance of p7 and model 3 compared to the slightly weaker, on the acceleration time to compare, p7 is 6.7 seconds and 4.3 seconds, how do you think p7 competes with model 3 in this regard?
Liu Minghui: Let me give you an example, which is not necessarily appropriate, but it can illustrate the problem. If the price of red wine can accurately show the quality of this wine, then we can use the price to evaluate the quality of red wine. In this case, for example, a bottle of 900 yuan of red wine and a bottle of 1000 yuan of red wine, I think the vast majority of consumers have no feeling, it does not mean anything to him, ordinary consumers do not know the difference, and only very top sommeliers can feel it. The difference in acceleration time between the two cars is about 1 second. I think it's been very quick, there's not much difference, and the average consumer may not perceive a noticeable difference. But some enthusiasts will pay close attention to this indicator, and he will compare the differences between the two indicators. That's my opinion.
Normally speaking, the 100-kilometer acceleration time of traditional A-class cars put into mass production is generally more than 10 seconds, but there are individual niche models, its performance will be more prominent, it will be much less than 10 seconds, and high-level sports models may be between 6 and 7 seconds, which is actually enough. And electric vehicles, everyone perceives more is the feeling of pushing back in the 0 to 50 km acceleration section. I don't think there is much difference between the Xiaopeng P7 and the Tesla Model 3 in this regard, because the power in the low-speed segment is often the ability of the tire to grasp the ground, which is what we call tire adhesion.
The acceleration time of p7 to 100 kilometers can reach less than 5 seconds, whether it is 5 seconds or 4 seconds 7, or 4 seconds 2, the perception of ordinary consumers has not changed much.
The driving experience is basically driven out, and the test of the acceleration time of 100 kilometers is to step on the throttle to the end, and then run to the time of 100 kilometers, the user usually does not care too much, the user feels that the 0-50 kilometers slammed on the throttle to give him the feeling of pushing back.
Xiaopeng Motors regards Tesla as a benchmarking object, rather than a copy object
First Electric Network: Many people, especially the media, often compare Xiaopeng and Tesla together, so will Xiaopeng Automobile become a brand like Tesla? Do you follow Tesla, or do you want to be yourself?
Liu Minghui: There is no doubt that xiaopeng himself should be. Although the market, users, and the media often compare these two companies, we do our own. I personally think Tesla is a respectable brand. As a new car-making force and a new car brand, Tesla's product capabilities are still very respectable. We, as latecomers, have many ways to learn from Tesla. We belong to the same new car manufacturers, and our products do fully benchmark with it in some indicators and functions, which can be seen, so the comparison between the media and the outside world is very normal.
This kind of benchmarking and learning in the automobile industry is very normal, and enterprising companies will certainly do the same. I personally feel that among the new forces of car manufacturing, Tesla is more prominent, especially in electrification and automatic driving, and I think Tesla is an important benchmark in these two aspects.
Although we learn from others and learn from each other's strong points, we must be Xiaopeng ourselves, and any successful enterprise is not replicable in most cases. China's auto industry, at the beginning is imitation, then there is a difference between learning, adoption, and finally make their own characteristics, in order to succeed.
Author: Wang Yuqin Liu Xiaopeng