If you didn’t tell me, you probably wouldn’t know that in the past March, Chery Group’s sales volume had reached the third place among independent brands, second only to BYD and Changan. Although there is a reason for this, Chery's export volume is larger, but Chery's momentum in the domestic market has begun to catch up with Great Wall.

So, after comprehensively deploying Xingtu's high-end pure electric products, Chery has made a new move in the new energy vehicle market - launching a new new energy brand iCAR.

According to Chery Chairman Yin Tongyue, this is Chery’s fourth brand and a trademark that Chery prepared as early as 2003. You know, the iPhone as we all know it now was only launched in 2007, but iCAR was registered earlier, which proves how trendy Chery people were twenty years ago.

Of course, the emergence of the iCAR brand will inevitably raise questions: Does Chery need a new new energy brand? What is Chery planning to do about this new energy brand?

The debate on whether a new brand is needed has actually been concluded since Chery launched iCAR. Whether it is the leader BYD, the former "big brother" Geely, or the followers Changan and Great Wall, they have already laid out their own new energy brands one after another. For example, in addition to its parent brand, BYD also has Zhanwang and F brands that have not yet been launched; Geely has Jikrypton and Galaxy; Great Wall has Euler and Weipai; Changan has Avita and Deep Blue, and there are others to be announced soon. The origin of.

In contrast, Chery is relatively slow in developing independent new energy brands - Chery New Energy is still using the Chery logo. Therefore, the release of iCAR this time can be regarded as Chery’s accumulation in the new energy market.

As for the positioning of iCAR, Chery basically focuses on the young market and defines it as "striving to become a popularizer of smart electric passenger vehicles", so iCAR is a new energy brand for the mainstream market, and High-end new energy is still the interstellar element of Xingtu.

As a new brand, iCAR also has its own independent logo, which is an "i" symbol made up of jigsaw puzzles, which is very clever. Even this symbol is not only used as the logo of iCAR, but also used in the design of headlights, taillights, etc., and the integration is also very good.

In terms of products, iCAR has announced that it will launch 6 models. The debuts this time include an iCAR GT concept car, a hardcore electric SUV model called iCAR 03, and later... Cars, SUVs, MPVs and other models.

In terms of technology, Chery has also reserved enough technology for iCAR. On the one hand, it can enjoy the group’s high-end electrification technology, and on the other hand, it must also become its own “smart electric vehicle popularizer”. "Features.

iCAR CTO Shan Hongyan released the i-MS multi-cube new energy architecture and i-VA ecology, which is an exclusive architecture derived from the E0X high-performance electromagnetic platform.

The new i-MS architecture can support A0-B class models, with a platform bandwidth of 4300mm to 5200mm; power modes include rear-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, pure electric, and extended range; voltage platforms also include 400V and 800V. In addition, there is a docking station function, which embeds the bus and hardware in advance, supporting camera expansion, central cup holder expansion, secondary instrument expansion, trunk expansion, etc.

In terms of energy consumption, there will be intelligent heat pump systems, all-in-one electric drive assembly, all-aluminum body and integrated die-casting technology, etc. She specifically mentioned that integrated die-casting can achieve a cast-extrusion integrated frame structure, which will be applied to the first mass-produced car iCAR 03. The bending stiffness is greater than 16,000N/mm, the torsional stiffness exceeds 28,000N·m/deg, and the weight reduction ratio is 15.

In terms of electronic and electrical architecture, an architecture that separates the vehicle control domain and the cabin driving domain will still be used to ensure driving safety. But it will include Ethernet architecture, software and hardware decoupling, and AutoSAR software architecture.

The full-stack self-developed cockpit OS can support large computing power chips and more than 500 buried points, and the iterative experience is released on a monthly basis.

In addition, Chery also announced the creation of a new battery brand ENER-Q with CATL. The brand will cover all power types and all application scenarios of all material systems, with high adaptability, high safety and price-performance ratio. At the same time, CATL sodium-ion batteries will be launched on Chery models for the first time, which means that the new car will be extremely cost-effective. Advantages.

In terms of product channels, iCAR did not blindly choose the direct sales model of new forces. Instead, it still cooperates with large dealer groups and will establish a new retail channel called i-Space. There are 200 outlets and a service team of more than 10,000 people, and there will be about 600 outlets in the future.

The most important thing is, can iCAR’s first new product impress young consumers?

In addition to the iCAR GT concept car, the first mass-produced iCAR 03 is a hardcore electric SUV, defined by iCAR as an "AllRoad product in the new energy era", and you can also understand it as a high-end electric vehicle. The cost-effective Mercedes-Benz EQG.

First of all, the appearance design of the new car is square enough and hard-core off-road. Although it is still in the form of a concept car, it is not far away from mass production. More importantly, in terms of product strength, it will provide intelligent adaptive electric four-wheel drive with the same power as a 2.5T engine and 10 driving modes. At the same time, the new car actually uses built-in all-aluminum beams, which can be regarded as a truly hard-core off-road vehicle. From the 1630mm wide wheelbase, it can be seen that the whole vehicle will be a "medium-sized SUV" size, so the price will not be too exaggerated. The new car also has front hydraulic shock absorbers, rear all-aluminum H-arm suspension, intelligent distribution of front and rear axle torque, etc., which are all made by Chery Ligong men.

Overall, the amount of information on this iCAR night was large enough. Chery has also been planning for its fourth brand for a long time. However, whether iCAR can conquer today's picky young people still has to wait until iCAR 03The results can only be seen after the actual listing.

However, the iCAR brand’s first vehicle actually chose to start with an electric off-road vehicle with an all-aluminum frame. If the price is 200,000 yuan, it is hard to say that this new brand cannot break through!

Text｜JackieLXX

Pictures｜Network

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