VW's new ID, Involve Xpeng
Hello dear readers,
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Just like its sister, or is it daughter, brand Audi, VW is cozying up to a Chinese manufacturer. In a desperate bid to stop the slide in its most important market, VW is developing vehicles in collaboration with Xpeng. The first fruit of that tie-up is now entering the market with the ID. Unyx 08.
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Let's focus on the vehicle first. As can be expected this car is developed and built for China in China. The specs read like those of plenty of other competitors in the market. A mid- to big SUV-isch car with a very long wheelbase (3+ m). Only available in a five seat layout, the car offers plenty of space to the passengers and a very sizable booth (766 l with the seats upright). Riding on the same 800v platform as the Xpeng G9, the available batteries both have LFP chemistries and can be charged at a little over 300 kw DC. They can deliver their power to a combination of electric motor setups. The most potent of which has four wheel drive and almost 500 horsepower. Enough to sprint to 100 km/h in less than 5 seconds. The car is fully ready for what they call City NOA, navigation on autopilot, in China. With 11 cameras, 15 radars and some serious AI Turing chips to perform all of the calculations at lighting speed. The only thing missing is lidar. The price to pay for all these goodies? Just over € 36.000 for the top spec version!
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It's amazing to realize just how plain vanilla the description of the car above is. Sure it's a very nice package, but it doesn't stand out compared to the Xiaomi YU7s in the Chinese market. Plug it into the line-up of VW in Europe on the other hand and it rises far above anything the Germans are offering. In a head to head competition with the ID 4 we are snatching up with the thousands, it outperforms on every front imaginable. It just goes to show how on the electric car front the script has been completely flipped. We are getting tired old tech on our continent, while the future is already available in China.
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Carnewschina link.
Grtz
Pieter
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