At the press conference that day, everything was ready, and when the host said that it officially started, suddenly the big screen, lights, and sound of the stage were all extinguished, and the venue was dark.
Blackout? "It looks like there's a power outage" When everyone was overwhelmed, a few lines began to appear on the big screen: What if the whole world went without power one day? At that moment, everyone was visibly relieved to know that it wasn't really a power outage.
At that moment, maybe everyone really realized the importance of the problem of no electricity in the automotive field, and I seemed to frequently mention the problem of range anxiety in the previous article, but I gently put it down. But if you are on the road, in the field, in bad weather, the sudden power loss will definitely be more anxious than when you are sitting in the venue.
With this in mind, I revisited the pickup truck model. Is pickup trucks really suitable for pure electrification?
This model is one of the popular models in the United States, because of the large territory of the United States, the long travel distance, and the amazing versatility of the pickup, the inexpensive pickup truck has naturally become one of the representative models of American farmers.
However, pickup trucks are very rare in China, in fact, the "ancestor" of Chinese pickup trucks has also been brilliant. Pickup trucks are more practical and versatile than the current hot SUV models, but policy restrictions, high energy consumption and environmental pollution seem to gradually only classify pickup trucks as a niche market.
However, with the lifting of the ban on pickup trucks in China in 2023, 97% of cities above the prefecture level in the country have relaxed the restrictions on pickup trucks entering the city, the use conditions of pickup trucks are gradually relaxed, and the follow-up management and scrapping years are being studied in depth, and the pickup truck market is heating up.
According to data from the Passenger Car Market Information Association, from 2018 to 2023, the sales volume of pickup trucks in the Chinese market will be 4510,000, 4390,000, 4780,000, 5460,000, 5130,000 and 5130,000 units. At present, the annual sales volume has been steadily around 500,000 units. This market is small, but it has its own unique potential, and this field is also moving towards the field of new energy.
With the Tesla Cybertruck, a "conspicuous bag" pickup truck, touring China, although this pickup truck is not on sale or on the road for the time being, it has made a lot of money from the attention of pickup trucks. It also allows more young people to pay attention to pickup trucks and the field of new energy pickups.
How to adapt pickup trucks and new energy?
Pickup trucks, once a well-known oil tiger in the market segment, need to carry heavy loads and need to overcome all kinds of road surfaces, so for pickup trucks, high-power engines are the soul. But high power naturally means high fuel consumption, and when the pickup truck is connected to the new energy, the problem solved is the two core points.
First of all, when part or even all of the fuel consumption is converted into electricity consumption, the cost of use will be greatly reduced, and at the same time, the motor intervention will make the maximum power and peak torque of the vehicle will have a qualitative leap, and the peak torque will be increased while reducing energy consumption, which seems to be the dividend of the progress of the times.
Last year, Chinese car companies launched their own pickup truck models, such as the Great Wall Cannon launching a commercial automatic pickup truck King Kong Cannon, Foton Motor launching a diesel hybrid luxury pickup product series "Mars", Jiangling Pickup launching three versions including the passenger version, and SAIC Maxus's new pickup brand "Interstellar", etc., all reflect that brands are beginning to pay attention to the pickup truck market segment.
However, there are very few new energy involved, except for Foton's mild hybrid, which has basically not entered the field of new energy pickups.
But at the beginning of this year, new energy pickup trucks are about to appear one after another. BYD is expected to launch a plug-in hybrid and pure electric two power modes of pickups, Geely's radar RD6 electric four-wheel drive pickup truck launched in the second quarter, SAIC Maxus GST pure electric pickup truck may be equipped with semi-solid-state batteries, JAC's four-wheel drive pure electric pickup truck new Hutu, and a large number of new energy pickup trucks are expected to land in China in the second half of 2024.
But the first new energy pickup truck at the beginning of the year actually came from Changan, and the world's first super extended range pickup truck - Changan Hunter was officially launched. Changan did not shy away from everyone's misunderstanding of range extension, but directly said that range extension is the best solution for pickups.
Go back to the beginning of this article, when it was said what would you do if there was a sudden blackout in this world. This question is also answered directlyWhy did Changan not choose pure electric, but carried the extended range on the pickup truck. Pickups that are destined to carry more and walk more muddy do require an extra layer of protection.
Therefore, the biggest attraction of this pickup truck is this super range extender, which is powered by Blue Whale 20T engine and R100G generator composition, the maximum efficiency of the engine is as high as 97%, and whether at low speed or high speed, the range extender power is indeed "far ahead", the official data "even if the heavy load is 1 ton, on a 30-degree slope can drive continuously for more than 30km" to prove the power of power generation. Compared with diesel pickups, it is not inferior, and the maximum torque of the Changan Hunter is 470N·m, close to 30t engine level; Zero hundred acceleration 79s, than 30t pickup is still fast.
More importantly, with the blessing of energy replenishment algorithm technology, Changan Hunter can achieve a minimum of 8% of power when driving in pure electric driving, and the range extender will start charging, while the power retention of most models in pure electric mode on the market is 15%-18%. This 7%-10% difference in power can allow the vehicle to run about 15 kilometers more on pure electricity.
At the same time, the Changan Hunter has a large power generation power, and the charging time of the Changan Hunter from 8% to 20% of the power is less than 10 minutes, which is 10 minutes or even longer than the common plug-in hybrid PHEV and other extended-range models. 15 kilometers and 10 minutes are the two data that directly help consumers save money and time.
Interestingly, the owner of the pickup truck may never have thought of NVH, Changan has also made optimization, the noise in the car is 63 decibels at 100km h, and the pickup truck over the mountains and mountains can also be quiet like a library, which is really interesting. The discharge function is also put into this pickup, the 2000W induction cooker, can continue to hot pot for nearly 5 days, the increase of this kind of function, so that the work car that was once used to carry goods seems to be able to carry more possibilities, and it has truly become a more versatile car than an SUV.
As we all know, the three locks have always been the top of high-end off-road vehicles, and they can achieve a quick escape in extreme scenarios. Changan Hunter is also equipped with a front axle lock + rear axle lock + ** energy lock, which can efficiently limit the slip of the skidding wheels, and distribute the torque output of each wheel in real time.
What's more worth mentioning is that Changan Hunter has also developed the industry's first "one-click injection" for the real car use scenario of pickup truck owners. According to the data given by Chang'an, "it can still achieve efficient energy replenishment in long-distance climbs with a load of nearly 1 ton and an altitude difference of more than 2,000 meters". Faced with the pain points of "Dora jogging" and "high-speed weakness" of diesel pickup trucks, Changan gave a solution to extend the range.
Driver assistance, dynamic instrument displays, and various intelligent configurations are all surprisingly present on the pickup.
Changan does not seem to use the idea of "this is a pickup" to build a new energy pickup truck, it will put a lot of functions that once did not belong to the pickup truck on the car, because Changan knows that the owners of the pickup truck do not seem to be the same batch as before, such as thinking about why pickup trucks are not popular in China, it is better to make a popular pickup truck in China.
China's market is opening up, and the technology of car companies is improving. When the policy card point, that is, 15 years of mandatory scrapping' and 'one inspection a year' two policies are liberalized, at least for new energy pickups, coupled with the encouragement of the car to the countryside policy for pickup products, pickup trucks seem to usher in a piece of vitality.
China's pickup trucks not only want to open the domestic market, in fact, more brands want to open the international market. Therefore, it can be seen that this year, the pickup trucks launched by the major brands with Chang'an as a means want to start first and conquer the vast foreign pickup market with their own strengths - new energy and intelligence.