What kind of third-party evaluation does China automobile need？ Understand the car emperor’s summer test and lead the industry.

At the launch conference of many new cars, we will see the short video of "The new car has passed the extreme test of xx thousand kilometers of high temperature and cold". For any new car, it must pass the comprehensive test of the manufacturer before listing, including reliable durability test, emission durability test and extreme environmental durability test.

Vehicle performance evaluation is a necessary procedure for car companies, but for consumers, a 60-second video can’t show the whole process of car evaluation. In addition to the self-evaluation from a single source of car companies, we also hope to see professional evaluation with more models, more comprehensive projects and closer to the real car scene, and this is the significance of the existence of third-party car evaluation.

Overseas, third-party evaluation is a mature industry, and testing institutions have high credibility and discourse power in the industry based on their independence and the standpoint of consumers, with the characteristics of objectivity, independence and third party. For example, American Consumer Reports〉, which is well-known in the automobile industry, regularly publishes various reports and rankings, which not only become a shopping guide for many consumers, but also provide an important reference for car companies.

At present, the development speed of China’s new energy automobile industry is ahead of the world, especially the development of smart electric vehicles is far ahead of other countries. However, this also brings a problem, that is, we can’t find a mature international standard for reference in the testing standards of smart electric vehicles, so we still need to find out the way to evaluate smart electric vehicles ourselves.

Cui Dongshu, an industry expert, pointed out that the evaluation standard of new energy vehicles in China has always been relatively backward. In intelligent testing, corporate publicity is often greater than the actual test results, and ordinary consumers can’t fully understand the real situation of products only through corporate publicity. Various forms of socialization tests conducted by industry organizations such as China Automobile Center and Chedi can give a more comprehensive evaluation.

On June 28th, 2024, the summer test of Zhiche Di was officially opened in Wuhan Intelligent Networked Automobile Test Site. In the past two weeks, 35 popular new energy vehicles including Zhijie S7, Wenjie M7 and Xiaomi SU7 participated in this summer sports meeting of new energy vehicles, and competed in more than ten test items closely related to consumers’ summer car use, such as battery life charging, wetland braking and AEB active safety on rainy nights. It not only fully shows the latest strength of new energy vehicles in China, but also provides a reference for users to choose and buy. It also shows that the third-party evaluation of new energy vehicles in China is gradually maturing.

Openness, fairness and justice are fundamental.

Since 2019, I understand that Chedi has taken the lead in releasing the automobile evaluation system in the industry, so that the third-party evaluation of automobiles has begun to enter the public eye. Since 2021, Knowing Car Emperor has specially launched the winter test and summer test for new energy vehicles in extreme environments. From yakeshi, where the lowest temperature is minus 4 or 50 degrees, to Turpan, where the highest temperature is 50 degrees, the endurance, performance and intelligent performance of new energy vehicles have been most rigorously tested, and many valuable reference data have been obtained.

By the end of 2023, Knowing Car Emperor has accumulated more than 2,000 test models, and the output data is nearly one million. These objective and detailed data can be queried on the car-knowing APP. Many users who are willing to buy new energy vehicles are used to opening the car-knowing APP to check the endurance, charging, acceleration, car system and other aspects of the intended model before choosing a car, as a reference for buying a car.

Of course, the test results must be good or bad, so after the release of the winter test and summer test results of Che Di every year, there will always be heated discussions in the industry, with disputes over the test results and doubts about the test process. In the face of disputes and doubts, the best response is the openness and transparency of standards and processes, which is also the bottom line that all third-party evaluation of automobiles should hold.

Before the start of this year’s summer test, Zhiche Di and more than 40 R&D, engineering, testing and other team leaders from 20 car brands fully discussed the details of the summer test subjects, standards, equipment and processes, and strived to ensure the scientific and fair test by building standards together.

For example, how to ensure that the thickness of water film on the road surface is the same when braking test is carried out under rainstorm conditions? This is definitely not possible to master the rainfall in the general test site, but this professional test site, Wuhan Intelligent Networked Automobile Test Site, can fully simulate various extreme meteorological conditions such as "rain, fog, electricity", and rainfall and displacement can also ensure that 35 cars compete fairly.

For example, before the endurance test, all vehicles are allowed to stand for one hour with the doors open and windows open, so that the temperature in the cabin is consistent with the external environment, and during this period, the vehicles are slowly charged to full charge. At the same time, the tire pressure is uniformly adjusted to the highest recommended value of the manufacturer, and the vehicle load is uniformly about 380 kg at the time of departure. Considering the individual differences of testers, an error of 5 kg is allowed. This process has also reached an agreement with more than 20 car companies.

The test vehicles are also purchased by the car owners themselves, and all have purchase invoice records to ensure that all test vehicles are consistent with the production vehicles bought by ordinary consumers, and there is no special supply of vehicles by manufacturers. The 35 cars that finally participated in the summer test basically covered the popular new energy vehicles on the market at present, which were not only high in popularity, but also important in terms of sales volume and ownership.

These 35 cars are basically high-end or top-end versions, equipped with the strongest intelligent driving scheme, which has the longest battery life and the fastest charging ability, and OTA has reached the latest public version before the test, so as to synchronize with consumers.

While all the test subjects will be broadcast live simultaneously on Know Car Emperor and Tik Tok APP, and the person in charge of R&D and engineering of car companies will be invited to observe and participate on the spot, which can completely dispel the external doubts about the test process and results. During the whole summer test, nearly 40 technicians from automobile enterprises were stationed in Wuhan to observe the test process on the spot and provide guidance for vehicle debugging. All travel was paid by the automobile enterprises themselves.

Xu Haidong, deputy chief engineer of China Automobile Industry Association, said when talking about the summer test of knowing the car emperor, "This year’s summer test models basically covered domestic mainstream brands, from high-end to low-end, which is also what consumers love to watch. Through the innovative form of live broadcast, the audience can see the whole process and direct results of the test, avoiding post-event adjustment of the results, being fair, open and transparent, and should be adhered to in future tests. "

Test items follow the trend.

From 2021 to the present, the test subjects of knowing Chedi’s summer test are constantly adjusted and advancing with the times. This year’s summer test bid farewell to Turpan, which is extremely hot, and put it in Wuhan, which is known as the "stove". The climate characteristics of rainy and high temperature are closer to the user’s actual summer car scene.

For example, in the endurance test, the pure electric vehicle just encountered heavy rain in Wuhan, and there was a big gap between the results of the pure electric endurance test of the plug-in/extended-range vehicle on sunny days, which proved that the heavy rain and road water did have a great impact on the endurance of new energy vehicles, and also reminded consumers that the impact of rain on the endurance should also be considered when planning the route in rainy season.

As for the question that consumers are generally concerned about "whether there is a big gap between plug-in hybrid and extended-range vehicles" and "whether there is a big gap between two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive", this summer test also proves with the measured results that there is no difference between the fuel consumption performance of plug-in hybrid and extended-range vehicles, and the endurance performance of four-wheel drive vehicles is not necessarily worse than that of two-wheel drive vehicles. The energy consumption control ability of vehicles has little to do with the driving mode, so users do not need to struggle when choosing vehicles.

Intelligent testing is a highlight of this year’s summer test. Nowadays, more and more new cars are equipped with high-level intelligent driving functions, ranging from about 100,000 Baojun clouds to millions of U8, and the price gap is very large. Is the intelligent driving ability of a car really positively related to pricing? Is the intelligent driving performance of the model equipped with lidar really better than the pure vision scheme?

The AEB Six-Child Crossing and LCC Encountering Fault Vehicle Test Project set up in this summer test well demonstrated the different intelligent driving levels of smart electric vehicles with different price points and different hardware levels in the face of the same dangerous scene. It also allows consumers to jump out of the manufacturer’s propaganda and have a clearer understanding of the real intelligent driving ability of the vehicle and under what circumstances they can rely on the intelligent driving function.

Under the working condition of encountering a faulty car on a rainy night, at the speed of 60km/h, 16 cars passed the test, 13 of which were equipped with lidar, and the other three models without lidar included Baojun Yunyun equipped with DJI’s low-cost intelligent driving scheme. This shows that lidar can really bring better perception effect, but everything will be fine without it. There are still many models equipped with lidar that can’t pass the test, which proves that hardware is only the foundation, and software and algorithms are more important. This should also be the direction of continuous optimization for car companies.

In terms of intelligent driving test, Zhiche Di has invested a lot in recent years. In 2023, it launched the active safety test list, and in 2024, it released the AEB cross-evaluation of 33 cars. Not long ago, it also released the Road Traffic Accident Scene Analysis Report for Autopilot Test in conjunction with Central South University, analyzing typical traffic accident scenarios and high-risk accident cases, providing real data and theoretical support for consumers to choose and buy vehicles and car companies to develop autopilot technology. This summer’s test shows that reversing children cross and rain.

tag

From 2021 to now, with the understanding of Chedi’s winter test and summer test, we have seen the continuous progress of China brand new energy vehicles, which have always been ahead in terms of endurance, acceleration performance and intelligent performance. At the same time, we have also seen that the supply chain of China new energy vehicles is constantly strong.

As Xu Haidong said, this year’s summer test of knowing the car emperor reflects the global leading trend of China’s new energy vehicles in terms of battery life and intelligent network connection, and also shows the layout of the whole industrial chain of China’s car enterprises, and China will eventually be born into a world-class automobile manufacturing enterprise.

In this process, we need and hope to see more and more professional and authoritative third-party automobile evaluation, such as Chedi Winter Test/Summer Test, as witnesses and participants in the development of China’s new energy automobile industry.

Disclaimer: This website forwards this article to provide readers with more information, and the content involved does not constitute investment and consumption suggestions. If there is any doubt about the facts of the article, please check with the relevant parties. The views of the article are not those of this website and are for readers’ reference only.