Air suspension was first born in the mid-19th century, but for various reasons, it was not until the end of the 20th century that it officially entered the passenger car market. In 1992, Range Rover was the first to wear air suspension and began its "open period". Subsequently, luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Porsche and BMW successively installed it on their own high-end models, creating the impression that "air suspension is not cheap".
From the NIO ES8 in 2017 to the Ideal L8 L9, ZEEKR 001 009 and other models, the guide price of entry-level models equipped with air suspension of Chinese brands has been declining. On December 20, the Star Era ES was officially launched, in addition to the standard air suspension, the new car also has a CDC electromagnetic shock absorption system, with a starting price of only 22580,000 yuan.
It can be seen that the threshold of air suspension has been lowered again, so then again, what is the product strength of Star Era ES in other aspects?Compared with competing products of the same level, can it not fall behind?Next, let's take a look.
As a new "flagship" sedan of the Chery brand, the Epoch ES has a length, width and height of 4945 1978 1467mm and a wheelbase of 3000mm. From the perspective of positioning, popular medium and large sedans such as Han EV, Galaxy E8, and Zhijie S7 will be its competitors.
As shown in the chart above, the Epoch ES is ahead of its competitors in terms of body width and axle spacing, but its body length and height are not as good as those of its competitors. Therefore, the actual spatial performance of the Star Era ES cannot be determined by looking at the data alone, and it is necessary to draw conclusions only after actual evaluation. However, considering the positioning of medium and large vehicles, the actual spatial performance of the Star Era ES will not be too bad to think of, and it can meet the daily travel needs of the vast majority of users.
While space can't be concluded directly from data, things like intelligence and performance can. At the level of intelligence, the first ES of the Star Era has built on the iFLYTEK Xinghuo cognitive model, and cooperated with the 8155 software and hardware platform, bringing a richer network application and a more intelligent interactive system.
Zhijie S7 Hongmeng desktop.
However, in addition to Han EV, Galaxy E8 and Zhijie S7 are not "soft persimmons" in the intelligent cockpit. The Galaxy E8 uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 chip, with Geely's latest Galaxy NOS car machine system;Zhijie S7 uses Huawei Hongmeng 40 system, also has the blessing of AI large model, we also experienced the power of this system in the show car at the Guangzhou Auto Show before.
It can be said that in terms of single-share cockpit experience, the performance of Zhijie S7 is the most convincing among several models, followed by Galaxy E8 and Star Era ES. As for the Han EV, although the fluency of the DLink system has been improved after the upgrade, the interaction level is still almost meaningless.
At the level of intelligent driving, the Star Era ES uses dual NVIDIA Orin-X chips on the top model, and is equipped with lidar, high-definition cameras, as well as 12 ultrasonic radars and 5 millimeter-wave radars, supporting high-speed, urban full-scene autonomous driving assistance. However, Galaxy E8 and Zhijie S7 also support full-scene intelligent driving, and Zhijie S7's intelligent driving system is still ADS 2 produced by Huawei0, which is also a highly recognized driver assistance system at present. Therefore, if you look at intelligence alone, the "combat power" of Zhijie S7 is greater than that of Galaxy E8, Star Era ES and Han EV.
In terms of performance, the Epoch ES offers a variety of power combinations. Among them, the maximum power of the single-motor version is 185kW and 230kW respectivelyThe total power of the dual-motor model is 353kW. The Galaxy E8 has a maximum power of 200kW for single-motor models and 475kW for dual-motor modelsZhijie S7, the maximum power of the motor model is 215kW, and the total power of the dual-motor model is 365kW;The maximum output of the Han EV is 180 kW for the single-motor model and 380 kW for the dual-motor model.
It can be seen that the power performance of Star Era ES is not outstanding, so if you judge from the power level, Star Era ES is only at a medium level among competing products. As for the range and charging, the low-end models of the Star Era ES use a 400V voltage platform, and the high-end models use an 800V platform, with a cruising range of 550km-905km.
The Galaxy E8 and Zhijie S7 are both 800V high-voltage platforms, the cruising range of the Galaxy E8 is between 550-665km, and the cruising range of the Zhijie S7 is between 550-855km. The Han EV is a 400V voltage platform with a range of 506 km to 715 km. Based on performance and cruising range performance, the product power of Star Era ES is still at the same level or average.
In general, in addition to the standard air suspension + CDC, the performance of Star Era ES in terms of intelligence, performance, battery life and platform architecture does not have too many advantages compared with competing products, and even inferior. However, considering the starting price of the Star Era ES and the air suspension, we think it still has a certain competitiveness among competing products, and it can do the EV on the outside and the S7 on the inside.