I wrote a few thousand words about the Ideal L9 a week ago and planned to release it immediately after the 21st launch event ended. But at that time, every platform would be full of videos and text. Does anyone really lack my low-quality and incomplete explanation?
So I rethought it and decided to answer the three questions about the Ideal L9 before seeing the car.
First: Is the Ideal L9 good-looking?
Before the launch event, I spent eight hours experiencing the Ideal L9 from the front, side, and even climbing stairs to see all four colors of the Ideal L9. In the end, I think the design of the Ideal L9 is very stylish. Although it may look a bit strange at first glance, it will make you like it more and more when you look at it for a while. It is definitely worthy of being the Intelligent flagship of the Ideal automotive on the brand-new X platform.
Let’s look back at the design sketch of the Ideal ONE. The combination of the star ring and the big mouth is the highlight at first sight. Continuing the big-mouth grille of traditional fuel-powered cars and the futuristic star-ring headlights, they jointly construct the temperament of the entire vehicle of the Ideal ONE, inheriting tradition and breaking through innovation. This temperament made it easy for traditional fuel-powered car consumers to accept and laid the foundation for Ideal ONE’s sales explosion.
Moving on to the front face of the Ideal L9, from the earliest official announcement picture, everyone said it didn’t look good. Why? Although everyone felt that the star ring was more integrated, the big mouth grille of the Ideal ONE was gone. This move directly cut off the temperament of “inheriting tradition”. Designer Ben uses the most straightforward language to tell everyone to ‘forget about tradition and let’s see what the future looks like.’
Why are the intake grilles of traditional fuel-powered cars getting larger and more exaggerated? At first, it was function-oriented, and high-horsepower naturally-aspirated engines required a larger intake volume. Therefore, automakers designed a larger intake grille to meet the intake volume demand. Then, invisibly, it made consumers subconsciously believe that the big mouth represents high horsepower and strong performance. To cater to this cognition, even in the era of turbocharging, automakers continue to strengthen the design concept of the big mouth grille.
In fact, the comparison of old and new S&X models of Tesla can show that the intake grille has been continuously marginalized and hidden in the era of electric cars. NIO’s ES7 overall design is sourced from ES6, but the biggest change in the front face is to remove the small mouth grille in the middle and replace it with a closed front face and bottom air intake and cooling.# Ideal L9: A Flagship SUV for the Electric Age
Ideal L9 is not only a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, its design team, Ben and Li Xiang, were fully aware that this is the flagship SUV of Ideal for the electric age. So, they overcame a lot of challenges to solve the intake and cooling problems by removing the large grille and hiding the bottom intake as much as possible. Also, they confirmed the new generation family style that features complete star ring elements in the front and rear designs.
This is the new trend of design development for electric vehicles. Although it may be unfamiliar to you now, it does not affect the creations of designers around the world who are truly facing the electric age.
With this viewpoint, how can I accept the plastic enclosed false grille style of the Mercedes-Benz EQ series, BMW i series, and Audi e-TRON? Are these BBA electric age products really beautiful?
Second: Can the Ideal L9 really compete with X7 and GLS?
I will not shy away from saying: Yes, it can!
The traditional BBA brands have lost their ambition for too long in their product development. They can only emphasize brand feelings and the classical luxury atmosphere, and even their previously emphasized services have been kicked off by NIO.
Now, the Ideal L9 is here, the first Chinese brand to directly challenge the flagship SUV models of BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
In terms of appearance, the order of handsome level in my mind for these three cars is: BMW X7, Ideal L9, and Mercedes-Benz GLS. First of all, I cannot appreciate the round and bulging rear styling of the GLS. Although the X7 has the smallest body size, the sharp and powerful lines do not give the feeling of bloatedness at all, just like a middle-aged man who has just come out of the gym. The Ideal L9 has a unique electric future style, and the star ring also has enough recognition, like the young Skywalker who holds a lightsaber ready to challenge the Empire.
Regarding power and chassis configuration, although there has not been a dynamic test drive, the Ideal L9 has better performance figures on paper, and its chassis specifications are not inferior. However, I still think that the traditional X7 and GLS have enough advantages in this regard, and I am looking forward to being proved wrong.
In terms of interior space, from the data I obtained and the actual experience, the interior space of Ideal L9 is better than X7 and GLS despite being of the same size. Li Xiang paid great attention to the actual interior space experience, repeatedly sculpting every centimeter of space, and even verifying every millimeter during the later stage. In order to control the height of the car at 1800mm, the external luggage rack was removed, and replaced with a hidden luggage rack interface, which does not affect the interior height and can considerably increase the SUV’s atmosphere.Perhaps you may say that luxury in this era will increasingly be embodied in technology, rather than in various classical luxury materials piled together. After all, the best phone of our time is iPhone, do you think iPhone is luxurious?
Smart cockpit and functional configuration, speaking of which is the ideal L9’s stronghold, even without me comparing them one by one, everyone can see how it crushes the competition from various media reviews.
Here, let’s talk about why the ideal L9 boldly cancelled the innovative three-screen and four-screen interaction pioneered by the Ideal ONE. As one of the earliest Ideal ONE owners, I too was deeply attracted by this three-screen and four-screen interaction at first. However, after more than two years of use, I also discovered the problem with three screens: the screen height is not enough, the video aspect ratio is not coordinated, and the central control screen is relatively far from the driver and is not convenient for touch. If the three-screen design is continued and the screen height is increased, the main driving screen will be very difficult to arrange, and the driving screen does not require a larger display range.
On the ideal L9, the original classic design is abandoned, and the central control screen and the passenger entertainment screen, which require higher screens, are standardized to 16:9 and the main driving display is removed. Due to regulations requiring HUD not to replace the driving screen, in addition to the currently largest production HD full-color HUD, a steering wheel safety assistant driving interactive screen was once again added in a groundbreaking manner, and the full-featured display of the central control large screen was unsealed. All of this stems from Li Xiang and his team’s courage to subvert tradition and their determination to revolutionize even if it costs them their lives.
Intelligent assisted driving, the ambition of the Ideal L9 is even greater. Although Li Xiang did not say it, from his excited talk about autonomous driving, and the gleam in his eyes, I can see he has confidence in the Ideal AD MAX intelligent driving solution, which is vision-based and with a laser radar as a safety anchor, to exceed the full version of FSD in practical road conditions in China. On the other hand, which BBA vehicle manufacturer dares to have such ambition?
With all of this in mind, do you think the Ideal L9 matches the BMW X7 & Mercedes-Benz GLS in the intelligence era?
Thirdly: Is the Ideal L9 expensive?
The Ideal L9’s price is likely to be in the range of 450,000 to 470,000 RMB, more than 100,000 RMB more expensive than the popular Ideal ONE. Is it expensive?
Expensive or not, let’s first look at how BBA has been playing the game:
From BMW’s system, X3-X5-X7, despite having roughly the same configuration, vary by more than 200,000 RMB for each different sized model. Similarly, Mercedes-Benz’s GLC-GLE-GLS, the basic difference between each level of model is about 300,000 RMB.Back to the Ideal’s current product line, the length of L9, which is one size larger than ONE, is at the level of 5200mm, and it’s not just a simple skin pull, but a brand-new chassis architecture + air suspension. If BBA’s pricing logic is used, how much more expensive would it be?
The overall intelligent cockpit has been upgraded to a new generation, from the 820A Triple Screen to the Dual 8155 with five-screen interaction, not to mention the full-color high-definition HUD and the top-level audio configuration upgraded N generations.
The intelligent driving assistance is also equipped with the self-developed Ideal AD MAX, which has the industry’s flagship Double Orin X + Omni-directional Vision + 128-line Lidar.
Just a simple count, do you still think the Ideal L9 is expensive? In a different dimension, can you find a large SUV that matches the same price?
Times are changing, and the Ideal L9 is once again challenging the global flagship of large SUVs with a brand new dimension. You should try it!
In the end, rewriting the beginning of Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” as the conclusion of the article:
It was the best of times for a Chinese automaker,
It was the worst of times for BBA;
It was the age of intelligence,
It was the age of youth;
It was the season of belief,
It was the season of skepticism;
It was the spring of hope,
It was the winter of despair;
In front of those who dare to innovate, everything is available,
In front of those who cling to tradition, there is nothing;
We are on the road to heaven,
They are heading to the gates of hell.
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.