On May 30th, smart officially announced the establishment of its wholly-owned subsidiary, smart Robotics Technology Co., Ltd.
Smart Robotics Technology is based in Shanghai, with the core goal of establishing self-developed advanced level autonomous driving full-stack capabilities. In addition, smart will also build a mobility robot technology R&D platform. The parent company will provide ample and stable funding support to ensure overall R&D efficiency and quality. Smart Robotics Technology is based in Shanghai, and will actively recruit talents leveraging the advantage of local talent aggregation to accelerate the establishment of intelligent driving software R&D team. At present, the core team members with rich R&D experience have been in place, and the R&D work has been launched.
Mr. Yang Jun, Vice President of Global R&D at smart, said: smart will accelerate the development of relevant projects and ensure smart has core intellectual property rights by leveraging shareholder resources and cooperating with industry partners. The research and development achievements of Smart Robotics Technology will gradually be applied to the new generation of smart pure electric vehicle family. Smart’s pure electric vehicle models can achieve continuous evolution through OTA online upgrade function, bringing users a better intelligent auxiliary driving experience.
The new smart brand currently has one model for sale, the smart elf #1, which was released at the end of April. The model has two configuration versions, with the Pro+ version priced at 1.9 million yuan and the Premium version priced at 2.3 million yuan. Both versions are equipped with a 66 kWh ternary lithium battery. Due to the rear permanent magnet synchronous motor with SiC power module and heat pump air-conditioning installed on the Premium version, the cruising range under CLTC conditions can reach 560 km, which is 25 km more than that of the Pro+ version without SiC. However, there is no difference in power configuration between the two, both have a peak power of 200 kW, peak torque of 343 N·m, and can achieve 0-100 km/h in 6.7 seconds.
Smart Elf #1 is equipped with a total of 23 sensors, including 12 ultrasonic radars, 5 millimeter wave radars, 4 surround-view cameras, 1 forward-looking camera and 1 cabin camera, which can realize multiple auxiliary driving functions such as adaptive cruise control (ACC), HWA highway assistance (turn lane) and APA automatic parking assistance.
Interestingly, some attentive netizens have found that the high-end model of Smart Elf #1 adopts the same assisted driving hardware perception architecture as Zeekryi 001, but this feature is not introduced on the official website.
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.