Let’s talk about the first intelligent electric vehicle launched by the traditional automotive camp, Jaguar I-PACE. This mid-size coupe SUV product positioning is not in conflict with all of Tesla’s products, but instead allows us to evaluate it from a macro perspective, instead of just comparing it to other cars.
The story of I-PACE’s birth has been heard many times. Wolfgang Ziebart, Jaguar’s Director of Product Development, Design and Technology said that Jaguar formed a 30-person project team and left the headquarters to work in a location dozens of miles away, in the form of an internal startup. So, while many car manufacturers claim that a new car built from a “blank slate”, Ziebart emphasizes that I-PACE was the real deal.
It should be noted that this was 2014, before Tesla Model X went into production. Many true automotive giants with greater revenue streams than Jaguar were at least a year behind when it came to electrification. From this standpoint, I-PACE deserves recognition.
The early start of the project is related to internal startup, Ziebart explained. When Jaguar contacted suppliers, they found that many did not have experience developing electric drivetrain components. Without being able to carry out a joint development project with suppliers, Jaguar was forced to independently develop many components, which made the development efficiency and execution ability higher from a startup perspective.
Design
Design is very important. No matter whether it’s the era of fossil-fueled cars or the era of electric vehicles, ugliness is an original sin.
I-PACE has done a good job in terms of design. The styling follows Jaguar’s family design language, and many design elements that reduce wind resistance can be seen. For example, the hidden door handles and streamlined engine hood, which achieve a drag coefficient of 0.29 Cd. This result is excellent compared to competitors in the fossil-fueled car market, but it is just a qualified level in the era of electric cars. For comparison: NIO ES8 and Tesla Model S/X/3 have drag coefficients of 0.29/0.24/0.25/0.23 Cd, respectively.
The interior and central control design are positioned between traditional luxury fossil-fueled cars and Tesla, which is a good balance between complexity and minimalism, and needs no further elaboration.It is worth mentioning the space layout of the I-PACE. Although its length is only 4.6 meters, the I-PACE has a wheelbase of 2990 mm, which is longer than that of the Land Rover Range Rover and the Model X. The extended wheelbase allows the I-PACE to accommodate a battery pack of up to 90 kWh, while also providing a more friendly interior space, which is closely related to the electric vehicle platform developed from scratch.
Powertrain
As mentioned earlier, the 90 kWh battery pack is accompanied by two permanent magnet synchronous motors, bringing the I-PACE a NEDC range of 500 kilometers, an output power of 400 horsepower, and a 0-100 km/h acceleration time of 4.8 seconds. Speaking of charging, the fast charging specification of the I-PACE is only 100 kW, which is not enough for a luxury brand that falls between NIO and Tesla in terms of pricing.
In addition, regarding the issue of the overseas 90 kWh battery pack and the domestic 81 kWh battery pack, this is not a matter of reduced specifications. The I-PACE is equipped with a 90 kWh battery pack both domestically and internationally.
The truth is that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology requires companies to report based on the available capacity, and conventional enterprises usually report 95% of the initial capacity. For example, the initial capacity of NIO ES8 is 70 kWh, and the available capacity is 67 kWh. Jaguar reports 90% of the initial capacity, and the stated available capacity is only 81 kWh. However, the actual available capacity of the I-PACE is even higher than that of the Model X 90D.
Intelligence
The above is all background information. Here comes the part that I really want to talk about.
When the I-PACE was first launched, some media reported that, according to official confirmation, the I-PACE does not support OTA updates. However, in the past few days, some media revealed that the I-PACE does support vehicle-wide OTA updates.
Why am I very concerned about vehicle-wide OTA updates? Because this determines whether the I-PACE is a high-quality electric vehicle or an intelligent vehicle. We have repeatedly emphasized that electric power is the prerequisite for intelligence, and intelligence is the core of competition in the future automotive industry.
Intelligence has many manifestations, and we usually use vehicle-wide OTA support as a criterion for judging whether a vehicle is intelligent. The reason is that supporting vehicle-wide OTA updates means that automakers can still obtain many original data, including sensors, powertrain, and components, after the vehicle is delivered, and make the vehicle better with system updates, thereby improving the user experience.Tesla vehicles are able to obtain all the data at the vehicle level, including the central control system, maps, ECU for controlling headlights, air suspension, and Autopilot assisted driving features. On the other hand, domestic Alibaba Banma series cars have achieved an account system, cloud services, and support for central control system OTA. Although the technical difficulty of the latter has been reduced to some extent, it has still received good reputation among a wave of traditional car models.
According to our understanding, the I-PACE’s breakthrough at the OTA level can be regarded as a “semi-vehicle OTA” between Tesla and Alibaba Banma. According to official technical support cited by overseas media SlashGear, in addition to supporting vehicle OTA, I-PACE also supports OTA for charging input power. This may mean that I-PACE’s software system can linearly control the three electric powertrains, and I-PACE owners may have the opportunity to receive updates from Jaguar in energy optimization and driving mode.
Why mention energy optimization? Autobest and Coches.net, overseas testing organizations, tested a batch of pure electric car energy consumption. The test results showed that I-PACE’s energy consumption per hundred kilometers reached 27.5 kWh, which was significantly higher than the energy consumption of the larger and heavier Model X 100D, and far exceeded the official website score of 21.2 kWh. According to this energy consumption calculation, the range of I-PACE is only about 300 kilometers.
If energy optimization updates can be pushed through OTA, then the performance of I-PACE is still worth looking forward to. In addition, I mentioned earlier that I-PACE’s fast charging is regrettable, and if OTA updates can unlock higher power, the charging experience will also be better.
Of course, I-PACE’s ADAS is mostly integrated with technology from suppliers and cannot be updated through OTA, which is where its self-revolution is not thorough enough. It is worth noting that when Tesla Autopilot 2.0 was just released, the user experience was relatively worse than 1.0, and Elon Musk admitted at that time that the system was “almost unusable”. Today, AP 2.0 has surpassed almost all ADAS systems on the market through OTA and has become the best assisted driving system in terms of user experience.Jaguar, as a traditional and fastest-moving car maker in the industry, started its electric car project by internal entrepreneurship and launched the I-PACE, which rated “above average” in various assessment dimensions, which is encouraging. However, unfortunately, the revolution is not quite thorough enough in the increasingly important field of intelligence, which is regrettable. With its pros and cons presented, should we support the I-PACE?
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.