On September 26, R Automobile gave us an in-depth interpretation of the design secrets behind the ES33 on the banks of the Huangpu River in the autumn season.
Shao Jingfeng, Vice President of Design at SAIC Group’s Technical Center and Global Head of Design, introduced that SAIC’s pure electric automatic design concept is “integrative design”, and the integration of beauty, essence, and vitality is the exclusive design concept of SAIC Group’s own automatic intelligent electric vehicle in the future. It represents several main symbols:
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Integration is the idea of integration and optimization of the whole;
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Essence is the follow-up of function and serves emotion with form;
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Vitality is the thinking of creation, and understanding of intelligence, requiring growth.
Premium Feeling
Regarding the “premium feeling,” Shao Jingfeng believes that the real core has three levels: instinctive level, behavioral level, and reflective level.
The highest level for Chinese people is completeness and family reunification. Shao Jingfeng transformed the prosperity and completeness into concrete design, which he called “Muscle Tendons and Skin Brightness.” The surface should be very full, while pursuing strength. In terms of design language, Muscle Tendons and Skin Brightness should emerge with strong tension, full shape, and natural light and shadow reflection, with no dominating details, and stop at the point of depiction.
- “Broad Shoulders” Design
Just like the shoulder pad design for men’s suits to make the line look fuller and three-dimensional, this design will increase the production and manufacturing difficulty of stamping depth in the vehicle body.
- Wing-shaped Taillights
The taillight is a three-dimensional form, a multilayered clue of sensory life. The opening is only 65 millimeters with a depth of 50 millimeters.
- 7-star Laser Headlights
The first production pure electric vehicle in the world with 7-star laser headlights. This “world-leading” headlight can improve the far-light illumination by 40%. Among the seven stars, the top three are high and low-beam lights, the bottom four are high-beam lights, and the sixth star is the laser module.
Intelligent
The emergence of batteries made the whole vehicle “thicker,” and to lower the height of the car and create a more dynamic and sleek shape would invade the interior space of the vehicle.The increasing number of perception sensors in intelligent electric vehicles in recent years may also affect the specific design of the vehicle. For example, the ES33 integrates a total of 33 intelligent hardware devices, and if opened up, a pile of radars can be seen on both sides of the car’s front.
The layout of the roof-mounted LiDAR not only ensures maximum rain, water and heat resistance, but also seamlessly integrates details such as rounded corners into the entire roof design.
These new features of pure electric intelligent vehicles will also affect the appearance design of the vehicle.
In addition, the emergence of auxiliary systems has also added new imagination to the design. The newly added camera can breathe indicator lights, and can remind the current status of the vehicle to the outside world through indicators during the driving process of assisted driving. Hao Jinfeng believes that this design may even become a legal standard in the future.
About ES33’s Other Information:
During the group interview session, we learned more about R cars and ES33:
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The logo style and tail light design on the ES33 will appear on future R brand models;
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The ES33’s battery is optional and upgradeable, and users can choose for themselves;
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The ES33 chip also supports upgrades and selection;
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The ES33’s interior will be officially unveiled at this year’s Guangzhou Auto Show.
A Little Aside:
At the beginning of the conversation, R Car’s chief operating officer, Jiang Hui, said that it took R Car 10 months to complete sales of 10,000 cars, which was a bit long, because in the new energy outlet, many brands can now complete sales of nearly 10,000 cars in one month. However, R Car’s second 10,000 vehicles should be completed within 4-5 months, and the acceleration in the future will become more obvious.
Sun Yijiong, Deputy General Manager of SAIC Passenger Car, and Chief User Partner of R Car, said that currently, R Car has more than 2 million active fans on its app. In August of last year, R Car had only two stores nationwide, and currently, it has deployed 141 R STORE experience centers in 69 major cities nationwide, ranging from Dongzhi to Shanghai and from Lanzhou to Sanya and Harbin to the north. About 80 R STORE experience centers have been opened, and it is planned to increase the number of R STOREs to 200 by the end of this year. At the same time, R Car has built more than 100 brand super charging stations and has access to 380,000 public charging piles.
Source: R Car
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.