Finally, the first intelligent pure electric product of a new brand is no longer an SUV, but a sedan.
The choice was made by Salon Automobile – a new brand of Great Wall Motors focused on intelligent pure electric products priced at above 400,000 yuan. We all know that Great Wall Motors is the king of SUVs. Why did Salon choose a sedan as its first car?
On November 14, at the Salon Automobile headquarters in Beijing’s Yizhuang, Salon’s CEO Wen Fei and other executives held a communication meeting with a group of media to explain Salon’s brand strategy, as well as the appearance, interior, performance, and more of its first model. They set a big goal: to become China’s number one luxury pure electric brand above 400,000 yuan.
Will the likes of NIO and Voyah agree? What does Salon Automobile have that allows them to make such a claim?
Building the Mecha category
Great Wall wants to grab the market for high-end intelligent electric vehicles, and the way to do it is through product innovation, the company’s trump card. This time, it’s the Mecha Technology category.
The target users are very clear: high-end people in their 80s and 90s who are influenced by Mecha culture. The design style has also broken away from the round and soft style since Tesla and is sharp-edged and full of combativeness.
The so-called Mecha is supposed to give people who have had the “Hero’s Dream” an ultimate “upgrade.” If a tank is the Hulk, then Salon is Iron Man.
This group of people may not be very large, but Great Wall is good at grabbing big fish in small ponds. Wen Fei said it doesn’t matter if this group represents 5% or 10% of the market. “We want to provide personalized users with another choice, to give the world another answer, and Salon is here to make minority reports.”
As for the Mecha Technology category specifically in terms of product features, Wen Fei stated that there are three key factors: hardcore technology + intelligence to the fullest + performance and fun.
As for Salon’s first model, from the preheating ad photos prepared by Salon for the Guangzhou Auto Show, it’s clear that this is a sedan. This is in line with the market research conducted by Salon’s team. The fact is that cars account for almost a blank percentage of pure electric products priced above 350,000 yuan on the current market. Even for leading brands like BBA, sedans account for only one-tenth of SUVs in the pure electric market above 350,000 yuan.
Clearly, there is still a lot of room for high-end pure electric sedans. Salon’s debut model, therefore, chose a sedan.
Four laser radars to the fullest intelligence
From the preheating promotion image of Salon’s first model at the Guangzhou Auto Show, it can be seen that the car will be equipped with four laser radars, which will achieve “the world’s only full laser viewing angle coverage.”
If it goes into mass production, this car model should also become the model with the most laser radars installed.
4 LiDARs demonstrate Salon’s ambition in intelligent driving
If the current highest level of intelligent driving cannot be achieved, Salon automotive will not be worthy of these 4 LiDARs.
From the current LiDAR supply, Salon is expected to use Huawei’s LiDAR. However, Salon automotive’s head of intelligent driving, Yang Jifeng, said that Salon will not adopt the Huawei Inside model. Salon’s goal in intelligent driving is to establish independent research and production full-stack capabilities.
Great Wall Motors and its subsidiaries have long been researching and preparing for intelligent driving. Recently, at the Great Wall Motor Coffee Intelligent 2.0 Smart Chassis Open Day, relevant personnel from Great Wall Motor said that the smart chassis integrates five core chassis systems including line-control steering, linear control braking, linear control shifting, line controlled throttle, and linear control suspension, covering all six degrees of freedom of the vehicle’s movement control, almost encompassing all chassis driving actions, and it can fully support L4 level and above automatic driving. It will be in mass production by 2023. If this chassis is empowered to Salon earlier, it would not be surprising.
In terms of electronic and electrical architecture, Great Wall Motors has developed a new generation of electronic and electrical architecture, GEEP 4.0. This is the next generation of new electronic and electrical architecture based on central computing and regional control. The architecture introduces the SOA design concept, creates a software-layered basic infrastructure platform, provides modular standard service interfaces, and the advantages are that it can provide modular design, decouple software and hardware platforms, improve software reuse, and enable the vehicle to achieve full-life cycle iterative upgrade.
Therefore, since Salon’s first car has already been prepared according to L4 at the hardware level, even if the first Salon car can only have L2+ or L3 functions when released, it is also likely to have L4 autonomous driving capability through OTA.
3.7S zero-to-100 acceleration highlights the electric drive performance
Compared to intelligent driving, Salon has revealed more information about the electric drive.
First of all, Salon’s first car will have an acceleration ability of 3.7s zero-to-100, leading its peers. For this reason, Salon’s first car will use high-performance permanent magnet synchronous motors in the front and rear, combined with an intelligent four-wheel drive system, bursting with a powerful 400kW maximum power and 750N·m peak torque, coupled with Michelin high-performance tires, and its performance is comparable to a 5.0T mechanical turbocharged engine.
Secondly, it will also have strong braking capability. The stop distance at a speed of 100 km/h is 33 meters, and the line-controlled chassis also has intelligent redundant brake design. In terms of hardware, it uses Brembo four-piston fixed calipers and large-size brake discs, shortening the brake reaction time by 0.02s and reducing the braking distance by 0.6m.
Thirdly, to highlight driving pleasure, the car will also be equipped with Harman’s second-generation in-car sound simulation technology (iESS) and multiple-mode external electronic sound effects to create a “must-have artifact for passion explosion”.
Fourthly, the Salon’s first car will have a super-long range of 802km under the globally leading Chinese Light-duty Test Cycle (CLTC) condition, and is expected to have a range of about 760km under the NEDC condition. Therefore, the car is equipped with a 115kWh ultra-large capacity battery.
Fifthly, with the world’s strongest 800V/480kW high-efficiency energy recovery system, the peak current can reach 600A under the CLTC standard. The car can travel 401km after 10 minutes of charging or 545km after 15 minutes of charging.
Sixthly, the Salon will be the first to adopt Great Wall Motors’ Dayu battery technology. This battery technology adopts a 4-level 5-dimensional matrix design, 8 core technologies, and can withstand high temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius. It can still function normally after being immersed in 1 meter of water for 30 minutes without catching fire or exploding.
It can be said that the Salon’s first car is outstanding in terms of performance, especially with its fast charging technology, which is unparalleled in the industry. Of course, the realization of this charging power requires many conditions.
So far, Salon cars are still 100% owned by Great Wall Motors. In terms of organizational structure, Salon is the only independent sub-brand that operates outside of Baoding. Beijing is the operation and management headquarters, while R&D is distributed in Beijing, Shanghai, and Baoding. Initially, Great Wall Motors will manufacture the cars. In terms of technical route, it was originally intended for hydrogen-electric dual-drive, but now focuses on pure electric.
From the brand positioning, product performance, and mechanism system of the Salon, it can be seen that Great Wall Motors wants to develop Salon into a flagship brand and spare no effort to empower it with the most advanced technology. In the more than 20 years since Great Wall Motors was established, it has emerged as a category innovation master from its SUVs and pickups, and has continuously produced popular products. In 2020, it produced and sold 1.12 million vehicles, with a target of 1.49 million this year. Its strategic goal for 2025 is to sell 4 million vehicles globally. Great Wall Motors has also extensively deployed in many areas such as chassis, power, intelligent driving, vehicle networking, hydrogen fuel cells, power batteries, solar energy, and travel throughout the industrial chain, making it one of the strongest domestic car companies.
With Great Wall Motors’ support, attempting to build a high-end brand certainly attracts industry attention. The Salon will be unveiled at the Guangzhou Auto Show, with teasing posters gradually released. Its momentum is already thundering in the sky and can be heard far and wide.
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.