On August 28, the Jiyue 07 officially opened pre-sales, claiming to be the strongest intelligent car on the planet. Pre-sales prices start at 215,900 yuan (30,450 USD), and it is believed the car will officially launch on September 10. Jiyue is a brand created by Baidu with Geely and was at one point known as Jidu Auto. Currently, the brand, which is 65% owned by Geely, only has the 01 SUV on sale. The fact that the 07 is only now opening pre-sales is a surprise, seeing that 07 sedans began arriving at dealers back in early July.
Jiyue seems to be at pains to emphasize that the car has a Chinese original design. It should be noted that the design has won awards from both Red Dot and iF. With a 3013 mm wheelbase, the car has short front and rear overhangs, which help optimize space for the occupants. At the front, a sculpted LED running light strip connects the two headlight clusters. The 07 has a largely enclosed front other than a trapezoidal air intake at the bottom of the fender.
Most Chinese EVs these days have hidden door handles, but in the case of the Jiyue 07 (see specs), it takes a different approach and locates door opening and closing buttons on the B and C pillars. It adopts a fastback design, and the drag coefficient is just Cd 0.198. At the back the car has intelligent ISD interactive piano key style tail lights. There is a rear wing that automatically rises when the speed exceeds 95 km/h. The car is relatively large with dimensions of 4953, 1989, and 1475 mm (l/w/h).
Inside, the Jiyue 07 gives a quite high-tech image with its yoke-style steering wheel and the 35.6-inch 6K screen. This can realize full-screen, dual-screen, or triple-screen display setup with all divisions being virtual rather than physical. The screen itself extends from around the midpoint of the driver’s side to the midpoint of the passenger side. There’s also a small screen on the back of the center console for use by the rear occupant. It’s claimed that the development of the yoke-style steering wheel cost 20 million yuan (2.8 million USD) and that in addition to providing a good grip, it does not block the driver’s line of sight – Jiyue will apparently offer a normal steering wheel as an option.
Single motor versions have 400V architecture and a maximum power of 200 kW. On the other hand, the dual motor versions use an additional 200 kW motor on the front axle and will also have 800V architecture. Lower spec versions use a 71.4 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery, which is enough for a 660 km CLTC range. Higher spec versions gain a 100 kWh ternary lithium (NMC) battery, which for the single motor version gives an 880 km range, whereas for the dual motor version, the range is 770 km. Currently, no information regarding charging times is available. Being a Geely product, the car uses the SEA platform.
The Jiyue 07 will come with the 2.0 version of ASD (Apollo Self Driving), the high-end intelligent driving system from Baidu’s Apollo unit. Like Tesla’s FSD and the forthcoming Xpeng Eagle Vision systems, this is a vision-only-based system and does not use lidar. Use of it requires a subscription of 599 yuan (84 USD) per month, but it will be free of charge for the first three months, and for a limited time, there is a special lifetime purchase price of 4999 yuan (700 USD) reduced from the normal 29,900 yuan (4,200 USD).
The 2.0 system uses a new end-to-end perception model which improves detection, tracking, mapping, and scene understanding capabilities. It is unclear why Jiyue are calling the 07 the strongest intelligent car on the planet, however, it appears that ASD 2 .0 will be able to manage unrestricted assisted driving on all types of roads. We will however have to wait to see how capable the system really is and what exactly it covers.
Sources: Autohome, Fast Technology
