Summary: The mechanical quality of this car is excellent, providing a luxurious driving and riding experience. However, there are some shortcomings in the car’s infotainment system, central control, and ADAS, and there are also some design flaws in the details of the car.
Driving model: Dual-motor long-range top model with air suspension, automatic doors, blue exterior and interior.
Interior and Driving Experience
The blue and white interior is very luxurious, but it gets dirty easily. The leather texture of the interior and the nappa leather seats are both excellent. The blue leather steering wheel is especially comfortable and well-sized. The seats are a bit hard but supportive and ergonomic, and the integrated headrest is also comfortable. However, there are some rough workmanship and suboptimal design in the interior, such as the use of rough plastic materials in the door panels and dashboard, and the rough edges of the plastic steering wheel parts. The test car does not have a color-changing headliner or a sunshade for the glass roof, which can cause some heat issues in the summer. Also, the shape of the rearview mirror limits its visibility.
Riding Experience and Interactions
The seat adjustment is easy, but adjusting the rearview mirror requires accessing the car’s infotainment system and using the touch button on the steering wheel, which could be inconvenient. The performance of the infotainment system varies greatly among different cars. The demo car was slow and unresponsive, but the test drive car was much better. There were some lags during the operation, but the voice navigation worked well and the car did not experience any drift while driving in Hangzhou. If the car is used for a long time, upgrading the hardware to an 8155 chip through OTA is recommended. The electric doors are slow and not user-friendly, and the brightness of the central control, infotainment system, and HUD adjusts slowly in response to changes in the outside lighting environment.
ADAS001 uses Mobileye EQ5H*2 chips and is equipped with Super Vision, a full-scene L2 driving assistance system developed based on this chip system. The hardware sensor package includes 11 cameras: six 8-megapixel cameras including dual front cameras, left-front, right-front, left-rear, and right-rear cameras; four 2-megapixel close-range fisheye cameras; one DMS camera for driver state monitoring; five millimeter-wave radars (three front and two rear); and twelve ultrasonic radars, combined with high-precision positioning and high-precision maps.
This system’s short-term goal is to achieve the same single-lane automatic keeping as AP, its medium-term goal is to achieve NOA-like navigation assistance driving on closed and structured roads, and its long-term goal is to achieve urban navigation assistance driving in cities with high-precision map coverage, i.e., similar to the FSD beta currently launched by Tesla in the North American region. It can also achieve other L2 level driving assistance such as low-speed summons, visual fusion parking, and fully automated reversing. However, considering the computing power of the EQ5H chip and the fact that the vehicle has not been equipped with lidar, the safety level of the full-scene driving assistance can only be limited to L2 level.
Up to now, 001 has not opened any driving assistance systems, including ACC, LKA, and other L1 driving assistance systems, and the blind spot prompt based on the rear millimeter wave radar or rear camera has not been enabled, which surprised me greatly. I hope that after the first OTA update at the end of December, I can try out the single-lane driving assistance function again.
Powertrain and chassis
I test drove the top model with dual motors, but due to the heavy traffic in Hangzhou city, where 001 is extremely wide, I always drove in Comfort mode (sales feedback showed that the acceleration in this mode is about 6 seconds). This acceleration level is more than enough for overtaking and lane changing in the city, and what affects the handling of the vehicle is actually its weight and size. The weight (2.3 tons) and size of nearly 5 meters long and 2 meters wide make it difficult to control during the driving process. Therefore, I didn’t even try the Sport mode to experience the 3.8-second acceleration, as acceleration is not the shortcoming of this car. Although the overall performance of this car is good, there are still some weak features, such as poor car tail followability during lane change. In short, this car is like a comfortable large C-class touring car (for example, like a BMW 5 Series pure electric touring version, although there is no such car). If you are looking for a high-performance electric car like Model 3P, then 001 cannot give you that feeling. In addition, thanks to its air suspension, the vehicle’s shock absorption is also excellent. Especially on the road full of potholes in Hangzhou, the car showed good body rigidity and chassis shock absorption. In short, this car’s chassis has a high-end feel similar to that of a C/D-class car.## Kinetic Energy Recovery
Kinetic energy recovery needs to be mentioned separately. At the beginning, the low kinetic energy recovery was used, and the vehicle drove very much like a gasoline car. The gliding distance was also long, and there was no problem with the transition between energy regenerative braking and mechanical braking. When adjusting to the one-pedal mode, I personally felt that the recovery speed of this one-pedal mode was still a bit delayed. In theory, the one-pedal mode should start recovering immediately when you release the accelerator pedal, but in the case of 001, there is a small delay before the recovery starts.
One thing to note here is that as a pure electric vehicle, Autohold should be easy to operate theoretically. However, in comfort mode, if the car stops and starts again with Autohold engaged, there will still be torque output overflow when you step on the accelerator pedal, which feels like the car will jerk forward. This is worthy of criticism.
NVH
The NVH of this car is pretty good, but personally, I don’t think it’s that good. I saw some third-party reviews saying that the NVH of 001 is so good that it results in excessive tranquility. However, during my test drive, I experienced the NVH of 001 during low and medium speeds (below 80km/h). As a car with single-layer side windows in the front and back, the NVH of 001 is already very good (far better than I expected), but it cannot compare to the level of traditional fuel-powered D-class cars with optional acoustic glass. At best, it can be compared with cars like the 530le in the 5 series. However, evaluated from this angle, 001 is disadvantaged because it has frameless doors which make it more difficult to achieve good sealing, and large wheels with wide tires that increase tire noise.
My personal impression during the test drive in the city was that tire noise was not very noticeable (probably because noise-reducing tires were selected). External noise transmitted through the car windows could be perceived, but there was no sense of isolation or tranquility that was expected from great NVH. In addition, even without the external warning sound of the electric car turned on, the motor sound was still very noticeable when not in emergency acceleration mode.
Range
Because I wouldn’t buy this car for long-distance driving and I have many charging stations at home, I glanced at the energy consumption of the test drive car which was 24kWh/100km – this consumption is entirely acceptable for this size of test drive car. Keyboard warriors speculate that with a heat pump, in winter, driving at a loaded speed of 120 km/h in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, with five people onboard, it can still travel at least 350km.
ConclusionThe feeling this test drive car gave me is that the mechanical quality of this 001 model manufactured on the PMA platform is very good. At least with 360,000 yuan, you can buy the chassis of a luxury brand C-class wagon, which has good space and handling. In reality, many C-class cars are less comfortable to ride in because they don’t have air suspension, but that’s not a problem for the 001. The power output in urban areas is excessive. Even the low-end rear-wheel drive single-motor version can improve single-charge endurance and lower the purchasing cost. I did not test drive the version with the spring suspension, but I would definitely choose the air suspension myself. In addition, the interior must be equipped with this blue and white decor, but automatic doors are not necessary. Other options such as sound system and ventilated seats should be fully loaded. Then, wait until the Super Vision driving assistance OTA push is released, and purchase the pay-unlock high-speed and elevated navigation driving assistance and urban navigation driving assistance if needed. If there are no additional needs, the single-lane driving assistance that comes standard on the 001 is also sufficient.
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.