The story behind BAW polar stone car
On the evening of August 22nd, Polar Stone Automobile officially released the medium and large smart luxury SUV— — Polar stone 01, and launched two versions: the all-around 7-seat version and the exclusive 6-seat version. Among them, the 7-seat version is 2-2-3 layout with a central aisle, and the national unified retail price is 349,900 yuan; The 6-seat version is 2-2-2 layout, and the second row is equipped with aviation seats. The national unified retail price is 359,900 yuan, and it is planned to start delivery in November this year.
Polar Stone 01 adopts the four-wheel drive extended range electric system with front and rear dual motors, which provides the maximum power of 350 kW and the comprehensive torque of 740 Nm, and the acceleration time of 0-100 km/h is 5.5 seconds. In terms of battery life, Polar Stone 01 uses a 56.01 kWh battery pack and a 70-liter fuel tank. Under CLTC standard, the pure electric cruising range reaches 282 kilometers, and under WLTC standard, the pure electric cruising range reaches 235 kilometers. The total cruising range of CLTC is 1338 kilometers, and that of WLTC is 1115 kilometers. In addition to the conventional pure electric and fuel energy modes, Polar Stone 01 adopts the self-developed "intelligent hybrid electric mode". Through the driving habits of users, the vehicle will automatically intelligently allocate the best power system strategy and parameters for users according to the vehicle conditions and road conditions.
In terms of chassis, Polar Stone 01 adopts all-aluminum chassis design, with front double wishbone and rear H-arm multi-links, and with millisecond response DCC continuous active variable damping shock absorber, which greatly improves the driving comfort and driving stability of long-distance bumpy roads.
In terms of intelligence, Polar Stone 01 is equipped with two NVIDIA Orin-X chips, which finally reaches 508 TOPS. It is also equipped with three laser radars, including 12 cameras inside and outside the vehicle, 5 millimeter-wave radars and 12 ultrasonic sensors. Polar Stone 01 standard intelligent driving version enjoys L2+ intelligent driving assistance system, while the advanced intelligent driving version has the continuous evolution of urban NOA, speed NOA and other functions. As the world’s first mass-produced vehicle equipped with pure solid-state laser radar technology, the horizontal detection angle of Polar Stone 01 can reach 280 degrees, and the vertical field of view angle of lateral radar reaches 75 degrees.
In terms of cockpit, Polar Stone 01 is equipped with Qualcomm 8155 chip, 12.3-inch high-definition instrument screen, 15.7-inch 3K ultra-clear entertainment screen in the front row and two rows of 15.6-inch high-definition entertainment screens as standard in the whole system. At the same time, it can also be connected to game consoles to support screen projection. Voice assistant can realize multi-tone recognition of the whole vehicle. In addition, in order to meet the off-road and outdoor needs of users, Polar Stone 01 has built a rear kitchen system, which can be connected with a 220V external discharge interface in addition to the water dispenser.
The story behind the polar stone car
As a new entrant, Polar Rock Automobile has a double story of cross-border "building cars" by technology companies and the urgent transformation of traditional manufacturing enterprises. Speaking of Polar Stone Automobile, we have to mention Luoqi Intelligent, which provides intelligent solutions for Polar Stone Automobile, and its founder Chang Jing.
At the end of 2020, it was reported in the industry that Chang Jing, the founder of Roborock, was preparing a car-making project. In January 2021, Shanghai Luoti Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Luoti Intelligent") was formally established, headquartered in Shanghai, with Chang Jing as the chairman of the company; Yan Feng, former CTO of Weimar Automobile, has also joined the company as CEO. As a continuous entrepreneur, Chang Jing graduated from South China University of Technology with a major in computer science and a background as a software engineer. In 2011, he served as a senior product manager of Tencent. Since then, he founded Meitu Tool Beijing Magic Wizard, and in 2014, he founded Roborock. On February 21st, 2020, Roborock went public in science and technology innovation board, becoming the unicorn of smart home industry in science and technology innovation board, with the highest market value exceeding 45 billion yuan.
Although he has no experience in building a car, Chang Jing is a typical car enthusiast and a cross-country enthusiast. At the beginning of the establishment of Luoqi Intelligent, Changjing planned to build an extended-range off-road vehicle with "both urban and outdoor scene performance" and comparable to Mercedes-Benz G-class. Since its establishment, Luoti Intelligent has successively registered several kinds of trademarks of "Polar Stone" and "Polar Stone Automobile". Different from other leaders of the first batch of new car-making forces who were active on the Internet, Chang Jing, who entered the game later, kept a low profile and liked to study products. Just like the WeChat signature of "I am a product manager", Chang Jing has always been a "product-oriented" entrepreneur with current capital preference. Only three months after its establishment, Luoqi Intelligent received the first round of financing, with a post-investment valuation of US$ 240 million; In January 2022, Luoqi Intelligent completed the $100 million Series B financing; In April 2022, Luoqi Intelligent completed another round of financing of about 200 million US dollars, with a valuation of 2 billion US dollars. Among the investors, besides Tencent, there are many well-known institutions such as Gaorong Capital, Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital. In July 2022, Songnan Town, Baoshan District, Shanghai signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Luoti Intelligent, and Luoti Intelligent will set up a research and development center in Songnan Town and lay out a delivery center in Shanghai.
At the beginning of 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Launching the Pilot Work of Entrusted Production of New Energy Vehicles", requiring both the entrusted enterprises and the entrusted enterprises to enter through the new energy vehicle production enterprises, which is equivalent to the fact that not only the OEM automobile enterprises need to have production qualifications, but also the entrusted automobile enterprises need to provide production qualifications. This means that Luoqi Intelligent, which has no production qualification, can neither produce by itself nor find other car companies for OEM. In fact, Luoti Intelligent has actually chosen a cross-border "car-making" road similar to Huawei Intelligent Car Selection, which means that Luoti Intelligent is responsible for providing product definition, marketing and core intelligent technologies, including three electric technologies, intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving, while Beijing Automobile Factory is responsible for manufacturing. In addition, on August 17th, Wei Qiao Venture Group and Luoqi Intelligent jointly announced the signing of a strategic cooperation agreement, and the two sides reached a consensus on in-depth cooperation based on the new energy automobile industry, which will jointly empower the whole vehicle with light weight and intelligence.
In the future, the two sides will improve the operating efficiency and optimize the cost structure of the whole industrial chain on the basis of industrial ecological synergy, and establish the core competitiveness in the smart car industry from the product research and development level. Among them, Luoqi Intelligent continues to focus on high-tech frontier fields such as intelligent chassis, intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving, intelligent drive and new energy power, and launched ROXMatrix system in April 2023 to provide users with more outdoor scene coping schemes, thus significantly reducing the control requirements for crossing a variety of outdoor terrain. "After holding the Beijing Automobile Factory, Shandong Wei Qiao Group cooperated with Luotuo Intelligent to empower the Beijing Automobile Factory, which is equivalent to the parent company and supplier of the Beijing Automobile Factory." Luo Qi Intelligent said, "The brand of Jishi Automobile and Jishi 01 belong to Beijing Automobile Factory, which is a new energy brand under Beijing Automobile Factory. It is with the joint support of Wei Qiao Group and Luo Qi Intelligent that Beijing Automobile Factory can upgrade its product strength as a whole. Even though the product strength of the previous products of Beijing Automobile Factory was not so good, BJ212, an epoch-making product, has been produced in the development process for many years, and it is also a very iconic product in the off-road market. "
Beijing Automobile Factory, founded in 1951, is the second large-scale automobile manufacturer after Changchun No.1 Automobile Factory. In 1983, Beijing Automobile Factory established Beijing Jeep Automobile Co., Ltd., the first Sino-foreign joint venture in the history of China’s automobile industry. After becoming a subsidiary of Beijing Automobile Holding Group for 10 years in 2001, it became a subsidiary of BAIC in 2010 through restructuring. Initially, Beijing Automobile Factory was placed in BAIC as a high-quality asset of BAIC Holdings. However, due to the aging of its products, its operating conditions gradually deteriorated. In 2012, BAIC Group spun off Beijing Automobile Factory from BAIC Holdings and became a first-class holding subsidiary of BAIC Group. In 2015, BAIC Group transferred its 51% equity of Beijing Automobile Factory to Fulu Group, which is well-known in the field of low-speed electric vehicles, for 117 million yuan. Beijing Automobile Factory was officially decoupled from BAIC Group and changed from a state-owned enterprise to a private enterprise. Fulu Group is well-known in low-speed electric vehicles. It has successively built four brands of low-speed electric vehicles, namely Lailichi, Fulu, Qifeng and Lupai, and has become one of the largest low-speed electric vehicle enterprises in Shandong Province. However, with the development of the new energy vehicle market in China and the change of subsidy policy, the sales of low-speed electric vehicles have declined since 2018. Fulu Group hopes to enter the new energy vehicle market through the acquisition of BAIC Manufacturing. In 2019, Beiqi Leopard 200, Leopard 100 and Big Cat were launched.
In July, 2020, Beijing Automobile Factory announced that its headquarters would move to Laixi, which filled the blank of Qingdao automobile manufacturing headquarters base. As a major provincial project in 2021, the Qingdao headquarters base project of Beijing Automobile Factory has a total investment of 15.2 billion yuan, covering an area of 1,700 mu and a total construction area of more than 600,000 square meters. In January 2022, the headquarters of Beijing Automobile Factory was completed and put into operation, with an annual production capacity of 450,000 vehicles. In June, 2022, Beijing Automobile Factory launched a miniature electric car ingot with a price of 33.9-49.9 thousand yuan, which officially entered the small electric car market such as Wuling Hongguang MINI EV and Chery QQ ice cream.
However, at the end of February this year, the shareholding structure of Qingdao Fulu Investment Holding Group Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Qingdao Fulu"), the controlling shareholder of Beijing Automobile Factory, changed significantly, and Wei Qiao Venture Group acquired 71% equity of Qingdao Fulu and became the controlling shareholder. Like Beijing Automobile Factory, Wei Qiao Venture Group was founded in 1951. It has three listed companies, and its main business focuses on textile and aluminum industry. It is the first private enterprise in Shandong Province. In the Fortune Global 500 list in 2023, Wei Qiao Venture Group ranked 172nd. For holding Beijing Automobile Factory, Wei Qiao Venture Group said that it will fully support the development of Beijing Automobile Factory in terms of automobile lightweight, electrification, intelligence, new products and industrial cooperation; Beijing Automobile Factory also said that after Wei Qiao’s holding, the development planning, product planning and talent planning of the enterprise were all rearranged. On the one hand, Wei Qiao Venture Group plans to build a new energy automobile industrial base, and build a manufacturing industrial cluster of core components such as recyclable aluminum body, battery and motor electronic control of new energy vehicles; On the other hand, after realizing the equity investment cooperation, the two sides will pool resources, actively develop and introduce innovative vehicles, and strive to realize the manufacturing and integrated supply capacity of 500,000 vehicles in three to five years, and gradually form a million-vehicle-level innovative automobile industry ecosystem, so as to drive the output value to more than 100 billion yuan. (Photo: provided by Jishi Automobile)