On December 2, Siles unveiled its high-end automotive brand AITO at the Chongqing Liangjiang Intelligent Factory.

AITO stands for “Adding Intelligence to Auto”. Xulin, the president of Siles (in rotation), said at the press conference, “AITO is committed to creating a new high-end smart car for every user. Bringing intelligence into cars makes them smarter!”

According to the official introduction, AITO integrates the ability of Siles in the field of pure electric drive range-extended technology and smart manufacturing, as well as Huawei’s cutting-edge technologies in ICT (information and communication technology) and smart travel, with four unique advantages of intelligence, technology, quality, and safety.

Siles Pure Electric Drive Range-Extended Platform (DE-i)

Along with the AITO brand, Siles also launched the Pure Electric Drive Range-Extended DE-i Platform. The official claimed that this is a solution that can achieve full-domain integration at the software and hardware levels.

It is reported that this platform has undergone a comprehensive evolution in integrated intelligent power generation units, drive combinations, battery PACK, and intelligent control.

• The platform supports a range of over 1,000 kilometers for product endurance;

• With intelligent range-extending control system for multiple scenarios, which considers many factors such as road conditions, altitude, temperature, load, and vehicle conditions, and can automatically identify more than 860 scenarios and match them using neural algorithms;

• Supports OTA upgrade and establishes a cloud-based big data network.

Other detailed information was not explained in detail at the press conference.

New Car

At the launch event, Huawei’s Executive Director, Consumer Business CEO, and Intelligent Automotive Solutions (BU) CEO, Richard Yu did not appear in person but instead joined via video. He announced that they will be helping develop a mid-size SUV with AITO, which will be the first vehicle to carry the latest HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit.

AITO’s first mid-size SUV model with the latest HarmonyOS intelligent cockpit will be officially released on December 23rd. Some information about the vehicle was revealed on November 5th in the latest list of tax-exempt vehicles released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The new vehicle is most likely to be named “AITO M5” and the size has been announced: 4770/1930/1625 mm (length, width, and height) with a wheelbase of 2880 mm. It has a battery capacity of 40.055 kWh and a pure electric cruising range of 150 km. The range extender has a displacement of 1.5 liters and a maximum power output of 92 kW.

The new car is equipped with two different electric motor systems, 165 kW (420 N·m) and 150 kW (300 N·m).

• Exterior

From the leaked pictures, the AITO M5’s body shape is similar to the SF5 with a horizontally-placed chrome-plated grille and divided headlights.

# tail lights
From the rear, the contour of the taillights appears more three-dimensional. The black plastic part of the rear bumper covers the entire rear bumper, and the position and shape of the reflex reflectors have also changed somewhat.

Cabin

@Car video blogger Arui posted a picture of the heavily camouflaged interior of this car on Weibo.

We can see that the WM Motors W6 has switched to using a horizontal screen and changed the traditional knob shifter used in the SF5 to an electronic shift control.

At the 2021 HDC conference, I saw on the PPT that the new Harmony OS has a rounded rectangular screen design that is very similar to a tablet.

• The Dock bar at the bottom of the screen includes Home, Seat Ventilation, Temperature/Fan Control for the left and right zones, and Volume buttons that are always present;

• The bottom of the car’s desktop includes frequently used functions such as Vehicle Settings, App Drawer, Petal Maps Atomic Service Widget, and Multimedia Module;

• At the top are Account, Reminder, Time, Dashcam, Wireless Charging Status, Bluetooth, Wireless, and Signal display status;

• The center of the screen displays the wallpaper of the main interface.

Overall, the design, main interface wallpaper display, atomic component and other elements of the UI show that Huawei has incorporated many tablet and mobile device operating logic and usage habits into the intelligent cockpit on the car side.

Regarding the latest car system from Harmony OS, I introduced it in my article Huawei showed me what the car of the future will look like after the 2021 Huawei Developer Conference.

Conclusion

At the 2021 HDC Conference, I anticipated that the next car model from C-NCAP might be the long-planned SF7. However, I was proven wrong. During Mr. Yu’s presentation, the backdrop was a picture of AITO’s Wanjie M5. Mr. Yu announced that this car model would debut this year, and now AITO has informed us that it will officially launch on December 23rd.

Now, what I am most looking forward to is the final implementation of the “Huawei’s Latest HarmonyOS Cockpit” system. Its completion, functionality, and fluency are what I am eager to evaluate.

Information source: AITO Official

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.