Baidu Apollo powered Jiyue 07 electric sedan launches, claims L4 autonomous driving

The second model, the 07 sedan, from the Baidu Geely joint venture Jiyue, officially launched on September 10. This has come in just a relatively short time since pre-sales for the Jiyue 07 started at the end of last month. We now know that there are three versions of the car and that the cheapest price is lower than pre-sales with the prices ranging from 209,900-299,900 yuan (29,500 – 42,150 USD). The versions are as follows:

The major highlight of the new medium to large-sized electric sedan is the Apollo 2.0 high-end intelligent driving system, which claims that it is able to achieve L4 autonomous driving, a first for a mass-produced car. It should be noted that Apollo 2.0 is a perception-based system. At the launch event, the keys were delivered to the very first owner of the Jiyue 07, who happens to be Robin Zeng, chairman and CEO of battery giant CATL.

Positioned as a C-class pure electric sedan, the brand refers to the Jiyue 07 as an “AI-era smart car.” Furthermore, the company has been at pains to promote that the car is an original Chinese design and has an AI aesthetic.

Available in a choice of six colors, the Jiyue 07 at the front has an enclosed front grille. The continuous light bar around the bottom of the hood makes the car quite distinctive, when it is illuminated, and there are two headlight clusters at the extremities. At the bottom of the fender is a trapezoidal air intake. Overall, the design of the Jiyue 07 takes a futuristic approach, and this can be seen clearly when it comes to the openings of the doors, which are done via buttons mounted on the B and C pillars. This has the added bonus of making the car look incredibly sleek. That sleekness is backed up by a real-world drive coefficient figure of Cd 0.198. The roof line falls back steadily at the rear with a fastback-type design. An electric rear wing automatically raises when the car goes above 95 km/h. At the rear, there are through tail lights. The dimensions of the Jiyue 07 (see specs) are 4953, 1989, and 1475 mm (l/w/h), with the wheelbase being a generous 3013 mm.

Inside the Jiyue 07, a 35.6-inch touchscreen dominates the dashboard. This screen can operate as one single unit or be virtually divided into three segments. Another distinctive feature is the yoke-style steering wheel. The navigation system is set to have lane-level mapping, and the car also features ambient lighting.

- Advertisement -

Coming soon is an end-to-end perception model with enhanced capabilities for detection, tracking, mapping, and scene understanding. When this model is upgraded, other functions of the intelligent cockpit will also be upgraded, including the SIMO voice assistant, which will go to version 2.0. This will apparently take the voice assistant’s functioning far beyond the traditional question-answer type scenario to produce a more natural interaction. Powering the system is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295P Chipset with 60 TOPS computing power.

As standard, there are independent climate zones for the driver, passenger, and rear seats. On the back of the center console, rear passengers can use a 7-inch screen to control air conditioning, navigation, and media. Trunk space is 581 liters, and this increases to 1,573 liters with the rear seats folded down.

Both the single-motor versions of the Jiyue 07 use 400V architecture, whereas the dual motor switches to 800 Volt. Single motor versions use a 200 kW electric motor mounted on the rear axle which has a peak torque of 343 Nm. It’s all change with the dual-motor version, which also has a more powerful rear motor of 300 kW and 373 Nm along with a 230 kW electric motor on the front axle which can deliver up to 280 Nm of torque. The base model uses a 71.44 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery pack, while the long-range versions swap this out for a 100 kWh NCM battery pack. Surprisingly, the performance version has a slightly lower capacity NCM battery of 93.4 kWh. These give the car ranges of 660, 880, and 770 km, respectively, using the CLTC measurement cycle. The performance version has a 0-100 km/h acceleration time of 3.5 seconds.

Probably the most interesting aspect of the Jiyue 07 is the Apollo high-end intelligent driving system, which will open nationwide by the end of 2024. It is a perception-only-based system and needs to be purchased as an optional subscription on either a monthly basis or a one-off lifetime payment. Using end-to-end technology, it claims to make detours safer, improve its ability to negotiate intersections, and have better lane-changing capability. Furthermore, the car sees various enhancements in terms of AEB.

Sources: Autohome, Fast Technology