Author: French Fries

How to become an interesting person?

One of my seniors told me to think about things from multiple perspectives. For example, one of the most important things for our company recently was the vision health issue of Teacher Chang, which cost us a day and a half at the Tongren Hospital in Beijing. Frankly speaking, it was time-consuming and laborious, but I also became the person in our company who is the most familiar with the process of seeking medical treatment at Tongren Hospital.

As another example, as one of the most important events in China in the first half of this year, the Beijing Winter Olympics made countless people remember Bing Ddun Ddun and Gu Ai Ling, but more than a thousand hydrogen-powered event support vehicles also triggered my imagination of a green hydrogen society.

Coincidentally, Guangqi is also a car company that is good at multi-perspective thinking.

At the Guangqi Technology Day held this week, Guangqi released a hydrogen engine.

A new attempt of green energy

If you follow news in the auto industry, you will definitely feel that more and more car companies are starting to layout new energy forms. I personally think there are at least two reasons for this. First, the emission regulations of various countries are becoming increasingly stringent. Hydrogen, as a clean energy source with absolute zero emissions on the usage end, will naturally attract the attention of car companies. Second, 2022 seems to be the eve of a technological revolution outbreak. Solid-state batteries, high-voltage platforms, hydrogen fuel cells… no one knows which will be the breakthrough in the next power technology, so it’s better to try everything.

Most of the hydrogen-powered passenger cars that have emerged now have chosen hydrogen fuel cells. If you are interested in hydrogen fuel cell cars, you can click on the video below to review our past programs.

Guangqi, on the other hand, chose another way to use hydrogen, combustion.

## About this hydrogen engine

This hydrogen engine can be simply understood as a gasoline engine with a different fuel. Their basic principles are similar. But, to make the hydrogen-powered engine run smoothly and efficiently, GAC has certainly put in extra effort.

For example, they have introduced the “Hydrogen Cylinder Direct Injection” technology. It sounds like an engine technology that follows fuel engines and has been specifically improved for hydrogen.

GAC R&D Powertrain Technology Director Assistant, Qi Hongzhong stated, “This technology improves the uniformity of hydrogen and air, and expands the boundary of sparse combustion of hydrogen.“

According to data provided by GAC, the operating verification time of this new engine has exceeded 12,000 hours, while hydrogen consumption is less than 0.84kg/100km.

However, what is surprising is that GAC’s first hydrogen-powered vehicle model is actually a concept car, the Green Mirror SPACE.

The biggest controversy about this car is probably its front-end styling. I have collected many related discussions these days.

Chinese style enthusiasts said that the Green Mirror SPACE’s front grille has a tassel feeling; animal lovers said that this front-end is like the mouth of a blue whale; anime enthusiasts said that this is not Whitebeard’s ship in One Piece…

As for other things such as shape-shifting, autonomous driving, B-pillarless, and gullwing doors, they don’t have such a strong presence.

Hybrid Collection

The real landing point of this hydrogen engine should be GAC’s new hybrid technology brand, Geelyang Hybrid.

To be honest, in the independent brand pattern, GAC’s hybrid layout is relatively backward. Even with Toyota’s backing, GAC’s previously prominent hybrid models are probably only the GAC GA8 Hybrid Edition using Toyota Hybrid System (THS).

But being late also has its advantages. This time, Geelyang Hybrid brings a very comprehensive hybrid solution that can adapt to various types of XEV models such as HEV, PHEV, and REEV.

As the technical support for the Geelyang Hybrid brand, the modular architecture of Geelyang Hybrid covers three major parts: hybrid engine, electromechanical coupling system, and power battery.

The hybrid engine section can be divided into two categories: traditional engine and hydrogen energy. The traditional engine includes hybrid dedicated engines and dual-use engines; while hydrogen energy includes hydrogen engines mentioned earlier and hydrogen fuel cells.

The electromechanical coupling system GMC includes three main parts: single motor, multi-gear and single-gear series/parallel, and power split. These numerous choices are also the greatest confidence of GAC in “adapting to all XEV”.

As for the power battery, let’s put aside the Jullang hybrid for now. Actually, GAC has a bigger move, they have released a new generation of super lithium iron phosphate battery technology based on microcrystalline technology.

Li Jin, head of the battery R&D department of GAC Aion said that they have introduced a higher capacity second-phase positive electrode microcrystalline material based on the existing chemical system of lithium iron phosphate.

According to the data provided by GAC, the new battery has the following characteristics:

• Improved mass energy density by 13.5%,
• Improved volume energy density by 20%,
• About 10% increase in low-temperature capacity at 20℃,
• Fast charging can reach more than 2C.

And these were originally the inadequacies of lithium iron phosphate compared to ternary lithium.

It is worth noting that the battery improvement direction mentioned by GAC is different from the hotly discussed CTP, CTC and other battery technologies. CTP, CTC can be regarded as structural innovations of power battery, while the new battery released by GAC has a taste of material system innovation.

Although we cannot see the actual test results of the new battery for now, from the headstrong attitude of GAC “touching the direction that others don’t touch”, it is worthy for us to pay more attention and focus. After all, which media can resist the temptation of “freshness”?

New software products

In addition to the above hardware, another key focus of GAC Tech Day is the software part.

First, the electronic and electrical architecture.

At the Guangzhou Auto Show last year, GAC released its new vehicle cloud-integrated electronic and electrical architecture, the GAC Xingling Architecture.

This time, based on the Xingling Architecture, GAC has developed a standardized operating system for the whole vehicle, GAC PurSOS.

Unfortunately, for non-technical people like us, we do not understand what various engines behind the Prajna OS really mean.

In short, “Prajna OS can effectively improve the compatibility and reusability of software, greatly enhancing the efficiency and speed of software development and iteration.”

In other words, “OTA updates of GAC vehicles should be more frequent in the future, right?”

Compared to the “virtual” system that is difficult to understand, the ADiGO intelligent driving ecosystem is much easier to understand.

GAC has divided ADiGO into two parts, ADiGO SPACE intelligent cockpit system and ADiGO PILOT intelligent driving system. However, I am more interested in ADiGO PILOT.

On the one hand, the latest ADiGO PILOT is equipped with 39 high-performance sensors, including three intelligent variable-focus solid-state lidars and six 8-megapixel HD cameras. From the perspective of sensor hardware, ADiGO PILOT seems to have reached the top.

On the other hand, we were very surprised when we experienced the unmanned memory parking of GAC Aion V Plus before. “The fact that relatively low configuration can support such complex functions and still perform well” impressed us a lot. Now, based on the trust accumulated before, it is difficult for us not to have higher expectations for it when facing stronger hardware.

All of the above technologies will eventually be implemented into products and sales.

Yesterday, various new power companies announced their sales data for June. GAC Aion, as a pure electric brand that is not so new in the eyes of mainstream new power companies, led the new power vehicle sales rankings in the first half of 2022 with an absolute advantage and made a fortune quietly.

“`

We hope that GAC can form a positive feedback loop between sales and technology R&D.

After all, while others are playing with hydrogen fuel cells, it is playing with hydrogen engines; while others are innovating in CTC structures, it is innovating in battery material chemistry systems. These headstrong players still trigger the little spark in my heart.

But whether it is “headstrong colliding with a wall” or “headstrong breaking through a wall”?

The upcoming GAC cars should give us the answer.

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.