Geely and Baidu have just launched a new premium brand with Ji Yue. Its first vehicle on the market will be an SUV soberly baptized “01”, but we already know this model since it is a car presented already last year under the name of Robo-01 and under the Jidu Auto brand. .
The Chinese group Geely and Baidu are launching a new brand, namely Ji Yue, a high-end manufacturer dedicated solely to electric cars with advanced technologies. The first model of this new brand will be an SUV with the Ji Yue 01 and it will soon go into production. The first deliveries are expected between October and December 2023.
We don’t know yet if it will one day arrive in Europe, but if it fulfills all the announced promises, then it will undoubtedly have its place on the Old Continent.
The most technological Chinese electric car?
Ji Yue’s goal is to offer “an unprecedented smart car experience”, according to the press release. To do this, Ji Yue is developing its commercial and after-sales network, while at the same time launching its own charging network. This will be confined, for the moment, only to China.
According to the Chinese firm, “All cars under this new brand will utilize the automotive experience Geely Holding has gained over the years, which has propelled it into the premium car sector. »
Remember that Geely has several brands under its fold, starting with Volvo, whose electric offensive is unprecedented, while the group is trying to relaunch the British brand Lotus. In February 2018, Geely buys 9.69% of the shares of the Daimler AG group for a total of 7.2 billion and becomes the largest shareholder of the German group.
In August 2021, Geely and Renault announced a partnership agreement to sell hybrid vehicles on Chinese territory under the Renault brand, produced by Geely, but marketed by the French company.
A car that is not unknown to us
To come back to Ji Yue, the manufacturer will be based on an SEA architecture (Sustainable Experience Architecture platform) from Geely, the one that is notably used for the Zeekr 01, the electric car that promises 1000 km of autonomy and that we have already been able to to try. For its part, Baidu will provide this new brand with technologies related to artificial intelligence.
It should be remembered that it has been developing the Apollo system for several years, which has now achieved level 4 autonomy. Equipped with 31 sensors, including 2 LiDAR, the SUV can then reach level 3, the only one authorized in Europe at present.
The website Car News China clarifies that the vehicle also has an Nvidia Orin X chip with a power of 538 TOPS. As a reminder, this is a unit of measurement meaning “tera operations per second”either ” trillions of operations in one second”. We then find a huge 35.6-inch 6K digital panel complemented by a 7-inch screen for the occupants of the rear seat.
According to the Chinese magazineCnEVPostthe Ji Yue 01, the company’s first car, has just been added to the brand’s catalog for the Chinese market.
The first published photos show that it is the electric SUV of the former brand Jidu Auto Group, known as Robo-01. According to the same magazine, the company did not want to give an official explanation for the abandonment of the name Jidu Auto.
Technically it is the same car, therefore the technical characteristics are similar. The Ji Yue 01 has two electric motors for a total of 544 hp allowing it to sprint from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds. The energy is stored in a 100 kWh battery supplied by CATL and the autonomy is for the moment announced simply at “more than 600 km”.
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