Electric vehicle brand ENOVATE, named “Skyline”. Which luxury new car brand is the strongest?

On the evening of November 13th, Dearcc held a conference in Guangzhou. During the conference, the Chairman and CEO of Dearcc, Zhang Hailiang, gave a speech, which lasted for more than two hours and contained a lot of information.

ENOVATE named its first production-level SUV “Skyline”, and the logo is really okay?

On September 20th, ENOVATE’s first production-level SUV made its debut at the Global Future Mobility Conference. During the recent conference, Zhang Hailiang announced that the Chinese brand name for ENOVATE will be “Skyline”. As for this brand name, I won’t comment too much on it. In my opinion, it’s ordinary and nothing too controversial, and it can hold the position of a high-end brand quite well. Compared with other brands such as NIO, XPeng, WM Motor, Li Xiang, Ai Chi and Skyline, it doesn’t stand out too much.

ME7 showcased at the Global Future Mobility Conference

However, I have some concerns about the Skyline brand logo. Do you remember the controversy surrounding the logo of Tesla Model 3 that year?

Here’s a little detail. As we all know, Model 3 was originally named Model E in Tesla’s earliest product planning, which along with S, X, and the soon-to-be-released Model Y, formed the word “SEXY”. However, Ford has registered the trademark for Model E, so Tesla had to take an alternative approach and modified the logo from Model E to Model Ξ on its official website. And yes, the similarity between the Ξ and the Skyline logo is quite high.

In February 2017, the well-known sportswear brand Adidas filed a complaint with the US Patent and Trademark Office, requesting that Tesla be prohibited from using the Ξ in the promotion of Model 3. The reason was that the logo was too similar to the three-stripe logo registered by Adidas in 1990.

One week later, Tesla’s official website replaced Ξ with the Arabic numeral 3, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter that the Model 3 logo was changed to a numeral.

Skyworth specifically mentioned that the three bars of the logo have the same length and thickness, and are mutually parallel… My question is: did Tesla change the logo under pressure from Armani, and does Skyworth think it’s okay? As a new car manufacturer with a good brand name and product strength (which will be discussed later), don’t be too distracted by trademark issues.

ME7·Basic Performance

Without further ado, let’s talk about the product.

The ME7 is Skyworth’s first mass-produced vehicle, a mid-to-large-sized intelligent electric SUV. ME stands for Magic Electric, with 7 defined as the mid-to-large size within the Skyworth brand.

The following are basic product information:

Length/Width/Height/Wheelbase: 4655/1963/1640/2825
NEDC range: 500 km
Drag coefficient: 0.28 Cd
0-100 km/h acceleration: 4.9 seconds
Battery density: 160 Wh/kg
Power: 170kW/320kW motor

To begin with, the vehicle size is not large, but the wheelbase is not short. This is the inherent advantage of electric vehicles. Without the constraints of fuel-powered drivetrain layout, longer wheelbases can be achieved, resulting in more interior space. The ME7 and the previous Jaguar I-PACE follow a similar logic.

Another highlight is ME7’s three-electric (三电) system, with a high-performance 320kW motor and 4.9-second 0-100 km/h acceleration, which crushes the same-level gasoline-powered cars. This is the natural advantage of pure electric drive, and there is nothing to say. Let’s talk about the NEDC range of 500 kilometers, which means that running over 400 kilometers in real commuting scenarios is not a problem. Of course, part of the reason is that ME7 will not be launched until the fourth quarter of next year. By then, the same-level released Byton M-Byte will also achieve NEDC range of 500+km.

The battery pack of 160 Wh/kg has the same level of energy density as the BYD Tang, demonstrating a leading edge for the current time, and also no worse when launched next year.

For electric cars, the drag coefficient and energy consumption are directly related. ME7 achieves a decent performance with a 0.28 Cd. As a brand with most attention on the drag coefficient in the whole industry, Tesla has sacrificed some space and design for the pursuit of ultra-low drag resistance in Model X, but Tesla has done a good job and rare car owners complain. This requires very solid design skills and strong engineering capabilities, and we hope that all new carmakers can balance drag resistance and energy consumption.

Overall, the basic performance of ME7 is up to standard.

ME7 Intelligent

Previously, the four-screen intelligent cockpit of the Ideal ONE caused widespread discussion, while ME7 is equipped with a five-screen connected vehicle system with three on the front and two on the back. Including a 12.3-inch instrument panel, a 15.6-inch central control screen, a 12.3-inch co-pilot entertainment screen, and two 12.8-inch rear entertainment screens.

According to the CTO of Horizon Robotics, Ni Shengfu, the intelligent cockpit of ME7 has a core system of iMA intelligent digital architecture, which runs through hardware, software, applications, and cloud services. Horizon has independently developed the EOS operating system and FOTA software platform.On the hardware side, the ME7 computing platform is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip, which has a high-speed processing capability of 320G FLOPS for video and 55K DMIPS, with bidirectional Ethernet transmission speeds reaching 100M. Similarly to the IDEAL ONE, it is a powerful chip and architecture in the field of vehicle regulation computing platforms.

On the software side, AI assistants and voice-controlled interactions are now standard features in the era of intelligent cars and do not need to be elaborated on. One dual-function is the FACE ID facial recognition technology. The official introduction is as follows:

Through the facial recognition camera installed in the car, the FACE ID intelligent facial recognition technology can associate the facial features of different users with their accounts, set the seat position, rearview mirror function, ambient light color, startup greeting, and even automatically adjust the user’s favorite radio stations and music based on the user’s custom driving habits. Every time you get in the car, it is the most familiar environment. Thanks to this technology, friends can enjoy a unique driving experience when sharing the Sky ME7.

From a user experience perspective, if the actual experience is consistent with the above introduction, this is clearly a good feature; but as mentioned in the NIO ES8 evaluation before, the privacy issue of the in-car camera forced NIO to release a privacy agreement. How to ensure user privacy, how data is desensitized, and how to gain the trust of car owners are unique issues for every new car company that installs cameras inside the car.

ME7 · Smart Driving

Unless you spend over 100,000 yuan, any new car company can’t avoid having key capabilities such as intelligent auxiliary driving systems. The hardware configuration of the ME7’s intelligent auxiliary driving system, Pilot Assist, is as follows:

7 cameras (1 forward-facing single eye + 4 panoramic views + 1 in-car + 1 driving recorder)
3 millimeter-wave radars (1 front medium distance + 2 rear side near distance)
12 ultrasonic radars

How should we evaluate this? The hardware is very advanced, but only the car’s infotainment system was mentioned to support FOTA, i.e. firmware upgrades. It wasn’t specifically mentioned whether the auxiliary driving system supports OTA upgrades. We pay close attention to this point, as it directly determines whether the ME7’s intelligent auxiliary driving system is static or constantly evolving and growing after delivery.###

Talking about products without production, what’s the difference between making cars with PPT?

According to Zhang Hailiang, the ME7 will be produced at the Skywell plant in Shaoxing. It is expected that, as a new car company, the factory has the ability to digitize and intelligently manage the entire supply chain, manufacturing, and sales chain, combining international advanced standards including PDM (product data management system), ERP (enterprise resource planning system), and MES (manufacturing execution system) to support smart manufacturing, flexible production, and C2M personalized customization.

Finally, let’s review the ME7 product. The ME7 performs well in multiple dimensions. However, as you may have noticed, I mentioned the Jaguar I-PACE, Tesla Model X, BYTON M-byte, and Ideal ONE multiple times throughout the article. Compared to these models, ME7 seems to lack some differentiating strengths. In today’s oversaturated new car brand market, these strengths could decide consumers’ preferences.

At the beginning of the press conference, Li Xiang answered a question regarding why consumers need a new car brand. This question also applies to Skywell and every new car brand. If you cannot provide differentiated value to consumers, why would they choose you over established brands like BBA, Volkswagen, Toyota, and GM?

However, to this day, aside from NIO and WM Motor, all new car company products are still only talk. Successfully getting to the point of production and delivery is not an easy feat for any new car enterprise.

Therefore, although oversaturated new car brands have made us fatigued, I still decided to reserve a Skywell ME7. Making cars is not easy; we should treasure the process.