Xiaopeng P7 northern winter test: endurance exceeds expectations, intelligent and user-friendly features are the biggest highlights

The past year has been a year of great changes in the world and a year of the rise of domestic new energy vehicles. Driven by the wave of electrification, new Chinese new energy vehicle brands have gradually moved away from Silicon Valley worship and actively transformed themselves into leaders in the era of automotive intelligence.

Among them, the concepts of several new car-making forces are the most radical, such as Xiaopeng and its second new car P7.

As the flagship model of Xiaopeng Motors, the P7 stood out among a number of new car-making forces as soon as it was announced with its intelligent "smart" elements such as its 670km NEDC range, futuristic design language, XPilot 3.0 automatic driving assistance system, and extremely user-friendly human-computer interaction experience.

The unexpected configuration, coupled with the lower price, has given strong positive feedback from the market. According to official data from Xiaopeng, as of November 2020, the cumulative delivery volume of Xiaopeng P7 has reached 11,371 units, setting a new record for the fastest delivery of more than 10,000 units for a single model of a new power brand.

So, what achievements does this legendary "very smart" new energy vehicle have in terms of intelligence, and how much battery life can it retain in the northern winter? Recently, 91che conducted a week-long test on this Xiaopeng P7 rear-wheel drive ultra-long battery life Zhizun version to test the IQ of Xiaopeng.

First Look: Cars from the Future

In terms of appearance, Xiaopeng P7 can be said to be a new force in car manufacturing. No, it should be said that it is the most self-styled model in the field of electric vehicles. The futuristic "interstellar" design language is unique and very recognizable.

There are almost no hard lines on the entire vehicle's appearance, all of which are soft curves. Even the waistline is an arc that divides the body into two parts, maintaining a rich three-dimensional sense under light and shadow. The front and rear through-type headlights make it look like it came out of a science fiction movie.

As a coupe, the Xiaopeng P7 adopts a low-lying posture, which further reduces wind resistance. Combined with the 19-inch Michelin PS4 tires, the body looks more sporty, like a prairie cheetah with its front legs lowered and its hind legs accumulated strength, preparing to hunt.

What is even more rare is that the Xiaopeng P7 also continues the "interstellar" design style of the exterior in the car interior. The wraparound cockpit is outlined with several lines, which is extremely simple and beautiful. The interactive buttons are concentrated on the multi-function steering wheel, and the function prompts are separated by simple lines. The central control area does not even have a single button. The armrest box and cup holder are integrated, which also increases the volume of the armrest box.

The front of the cup holder is a wireless charging base, which uses a rubber backing to prevent slipping and scratching, and is easy to put in and take out. However, it is more troublesome for mobile phones that do not support wireless charging, because the two USB-A ports are designed in the armrest box, and there is no reserved cable outlet. In addition, the faster charging USB-C port has begun to be widely used, and the smart Xiaopeng should catch up earlier.

The seats are made of stitched leather and have excellent wrapping. However, perhaps to give a racing feel, the seats feel a bit hard overall. In addition, the headrests are fixed and cannot be adjusted. We will talk about the reasons later.

The Xiaopeng P7 Zhizun Edition is equipped with Dynaudio audio from Denmark, with 18 speakers in the whole car, and the sound performance is outstanding. In Xiaopeng's audition collection, it confidently provided classic audition songs such as "Forgotten Time". When "Who is knocking on my window" floated into the ears, the Dynaudio personality of "sweet treble, accurate mid-range and powerful bass" was established.

The top of the vehicle adopts a two-stage panoramic sunroof design, which has good performance in heat insulation and UV protection. However, due to the fastback sports shape, the horizontal and vertical space in the back row is not abundant. The rear seats are short and lack support for the thighs. There is only about a fist of space left to the front seat. The actual experience does not match its 2998mm wheelbase. However, the P7's trunk has become deep enough to accommodate more items.

Driving experience - Xpeng's strength

In terms of dynamics, the subsequent ultra-long-range Zhizun version of the Xiaopeng P7 is equipped with a rear-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motor with a comprehensive maximum power of 196kW, which can output 390Nm of torque and accelerate from 0 to 100 kilometers in 6.7 seconds, which is indeed worse than the 4.3 seconds of the top-of-the-line four-wheel drive high-performance version, but in fact it is fast enough. When overtaking on the highway, the acceleration is more than enough. For most users, acceleration is not important. What is important is the battery life.

Compared with the top-end model, the model tested by 91che has an extra 120 kilometers of range, which is quite practical, not to mention the price difference of 70,000 yuan between the two. From the perspective of purchasing decision, we recommend users to buy this long-range version instead of the top-end model with faster acceleration. The reason is that it is cheap and has sufficient volume.

For electric vehicles, without the existence of a gearbox, the power output is more linear, which is also a fundamental advantage over fuel vehicles. The maximum torque can be output initially, and there will be no sense of frustration during gear transmission during acceleration. The threshold for driving is also lower, and the overall feeling is more comfortable.

Xiaopeng P7 is no exception in this regard. The power is tuned smoothly, and there is no nodding feeling even in high kinetic energy recovery state, and the rear passengers in the car will not feel dizzy due to acceleration. Users who have requirements for battery life can choose high kinetic energy recovery to get more driving mileage, while users who like the feeling of slipping in a gasoline car can use low kinetic energy recovery and trade battery life for the driving experience of a traditional gasoline car.

In terms of suspension, because of its low-profile sports styling, the Xiaopeng P7 uses a front double wishbone + rear five-link suspension combination. After careful tuning by the Porsche team, the overall solidity is biased towards sports, which can provide greater lateral rigidity when turning and increase the tire contact area to provide greater grip. The disadvantage is that the shock absorption performance in the vertical direction is slightly compromised, and the experience is reduced when passing through bumpy roads.

As an electric car, the NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) index of the Xiaopeng P7 is very good, the noise inside the car is well controlled, the motor runs quietly, and the chassis noise is effectively isolated. The only drawback is that the Xiaopeng P7's much-talked-about digital air conditioner will produce obvious low-frequency noise when heating, which may make some users with sensitive hearing feel a little uncomfortable.

In terms of overall driving experience, the Xiaopeng P7 is well-tuned, with quick acceleration response and powerful power. In the 200,000 yuan price range, it is enough to challenge traditional fuel vehicles. However, overall, its riding experience is slightly inferior, and the Xiaopeng P7 still has a lot of room for improvement in ergonomics.

Humanization and intelligence - P7's new track

Nearly 20 years ago, during the Symbian mobile phone era, He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xpeng Motors, used UC Browser to achieve a complete web browsing experience on a mobile phone with a main frequency of only 100mHz and a resolution of only 200*100. His insight into user experience and deep understanding of human-computer interaction are evident.

He Xiaopeng's ultimate product concept and interactive design are fully reflected in the Xiaopeng P7, using the Internet's extremely fine-grained product insights to build a huge car.

For example, Xiaopeng P7's artificial intelligence assistant Xiao P has realized a wake-up-free design, which does not require frequent use of the wake-up word "Hello Xiao P" to wake it up. Xiao P can also recognize the voice of the driver through the sound field, without being disturbed by the voice of the co-pilot and rear passengers, and does not respond to non-command voices. Even if everyone in the car is talking, Xiao P, which does not require a wake-up word, rarely gives false alarms.

In addition, we mentioned earlier that the headrest of the Xiaopeng P7 cannot be adjusted because the driver's seat headrest has a built-in speaker. The voice assistant and navigation voice will be broadcast in "surround sound" through the headrest, which will not affect other passengers, provide a little privacy, and will not interrupt media playback, greatly improving the user's control experience.

Another aspect that reflects Xiaopeng's Internet thinking is that Xiaopeng Motors has set a customizable button on the steering wheel, the passenger seat, and the rear door to support custom functions. For example, the button on the right rear door can be set as the boss button, which can adjust the passenger seat with one click to make room for the back row. This style of "not making decisions for users, but giving you enough choices" is very "Internet-oriented".

In terms of intelligence, the most impressive part of the Xiaopeng P7 is that it has not yet been released. Although the L3 level autonomous driving assistance system has not yet been opened, with the support of NVIDIA's Xavier intelligent computing platform, 5 millimeter-wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, 4 surround cameras, and 10 high-perception cameras, XPilot 2.5 already supports ACC adaptive cruise control, LCC lane centering assist, ALC automatic lane change assist, blind spot monitoring and warning (BSD), lane change warning (LCA), automatic parking and other functions.

After a week of test driving, we tested nearly 500 kilometers on the highway. The biggest feature of Xiaopeng P7's automatic driving assistance function is "stability": it performs stably, without any recognition errors, and perfectly centers the lane, driving at a fixed speed or a lower speed of the vehicle in front; the direction is stable, whether it is lane keeping or automatic lane changing, the direction is as stable as that of an experienced driver, very smooth, unlike some assisted driving systems that shake violently, making the driver scared all the way. Driving an automatic driving system is more tiring than driving by yourself.

With the help of a powerful sensor array, the Xiaopeng P7 Zhizun Edition can identify surrounding cars, pedestrians, etc., and respond appropriately according to their lane conditions. It can also cope perfectly with complex road conditions such as rural areas.

With XPilot's automated driving assistance system, driving on highways or in congested urban areas has never been easier. In the future, after XPilot 3.0 is pushed via OTA, the Xiaopeng P7 Zhizun Edition will even be able to recognize traffic lights and automatically drive according to navigation through high-precision maps and sensors, further liberating people from driving, which is very exciting.

No more worries - battery life and charging

When electric vehicles were first introduced, it was determined that their driving experience, acceleration experience, and noise performance would be superior to fuel vehicles of the same price. However, the slow popularization of new energy vehicles is largely due to users' anxiety about battery life and charging.

Today, the electric vehicle industry is constantly climbing and updating with an annual increase of 100-200 kilometers of driving range, and charging piles are also being built at a rapid pace. According to data from the China Society of Automotive Engineers, by the end of 2014, China's electric vehicle charging facilities had built 778 charging and swapping stations and 30,914 charging piles. By 2019, in five years, China's public charging piles had reached 516,396 units, and the number of charging stations had increased to 35,849, which has increased by dozens of times, solving the problem of charging difficulties to a certain extent and indirectly alleviating some users' range anxiety.

However, another major problem with new energy vehicles has been difficult to solve, or even alleviated, and that is the discharge efficiency of lithium batteries in low temperature environments.

The reduction in battery activity, which results in reduced driving range, has deterred many consumers in northern China from buying electric vehicles.

Although we already had some predictions in mind before the test (they are all ternary lithium batteries, so the fluctuations will not be too much), the battery life of the Xiaopeng P7 still left a deep impression on us.

We conducted a week-long test in the northern winter environment, with the ambient temperature ranging from -6℃ to 7℃. We also tested the air conditioning on and off, and the endurance performance under highway and urban conditions. To eliminate variables, the Xiaopeng P7 in our test was in economy mode, with standard kinetic energy recovery, and the air conditioning was uniformly set to 22℃ and the first wind speed when it was turned on.

The specific statistical data are as follows:

This table is sorted in chronological order. For a more intuitive view, it is classified into the following table according to the working conditions:

This table can more intuitively show the impact of air conditioning and road conditions on battery life.

Two points need to be made:

1. The test environment for turning on the air conditioner in the city is the sum of multiple short trips. Because the Xiaopeng P7 uses PTC thermistor heating, the initial power is 10kW, which is much higher than the stable power of 2-5kW. Therefore, turning on the air conditioner for short-distance and high-frequency travel will inevitably greatly affect the battery life. For northern users who need to travel short distances and frequently, they should carefully choose electric vehicles;

2. The temperature during the high-speed trip when the battery life was greatly reduced was -6℃, and the air conditioner was turned on throughout the trip. Because it was an early morning trip, the road conditions were excellent, and the speed was 120km/h without slowing down almost the entire time. Compared with the best speed of 105km/h of Xiaopeng P7, it consumes much more power because wind resistance is proportional to the square of speed. It can be said that this was the worst condition encountered by Xiaopeng P7 in this test.

In other words, the Xiaopeng P7 can have a range of more than 400km in northern winter urban areas with air conditioning on, and more than 300km even in low-temperature conditions at high speeds, enough to travel from the imperial capital Beijing to the rock capital Shijiazhuang. Considering that charging piles are becoming more and more popular in urban areas and highway rest areas, driving the Xiaopeng P7 for long distances between northern cities should not be too stressful.

Let's take a look at the charging performance of Xiaopeng P7:

During this test, 91che still charged at nearby charging stations throughout the entire process, simulating the actual situation where there is no charging station at home.

Among the several charging times, only the third charging was almost full from half power, with low charging efficiency and long time consumption, which took nearly two hours to charge 43.24 kWh of electricity, and the charging power was only 22.8 kW. The other several times of charging power at the national grid were around 40 kW, and an average of more than 300 km of mileage could be charged in one hour.

The charging power of Wanma AiChong reached 100kW at one point, and 240km of mileage was charged in 21 minutes. At this charging speed, the battery can be charged to 80% in the time of a meal, which greatly alleviates the anxiety of charging.

Unfortunately, in this test, due to itinerary planning issues, 91che did not experience the benefits of Xiaopeng's free charging stations. So, let's calculate the cost of "charging" the Xiaopeng P7 without free charging.

Because the charging was done during the day, we did not enjoy the low electricity prices at the trough. The price of charging in the urban area ranged from 0.63 to 0.84 yuan per kilowatt-hour plus service fee. The price of the Wanma AiChong charging station with outstanding charging power reached 1.28 yuan per kilowatt-hour, and the charging price of the charging station in the Doudian Expressway Service Area was 1.43 yuan per kilowatt-hour.

Based on this test, since about 80% of the journey was on the highway, the average power consumption per 100 kilometers reached 19.8 kWh. Based on the charging price of 0.63-1.43 yuan/kWh, the total cost per kilometer is 0.12-0.28 yuan, which is still much cheaper than fuel vehicles. If there is a charging pile at home, based on the electricity price of 0.33 yuan, the electricity price per kilometer is only 0.06 yuan.

91che opinion:

After a week of testing, the Xiaopeng P7 is indeed able to leave a deep impression. Flexible posture and surging power are not uncommon in electric vehicles, but what is rare is that the Xiaopeng P7 has a unified and unique design language, which makes it a sharp contrast with the many "auto parts city" styles on the market.

Xiaopeng P7's efforts in intelligence and humanization have also achieved good results. The full-scene voice and headrest speakers have greatly improved the experience. XPilot 2.5 based on NVIDIA's Xavier supercomputing platform and numerous sensors can greatly enhance the driving experience while improving safety, especially on highways, allowing people to glimpse the future form of cars.

When it comes to the choice of Xiaopeng P7 versions, 91che believes that the rear-wheel drive, ultra-long-range Zhizun version priced at 276,900 yuan is the most worthwhile one to buy. Although it does not have a 0-100 km acceleration of 4.3 seconds, its 670km range is more practical, and the uncompromised sensor array gives it huge room for OTA upgrades.

Compared with the basic version, it is less than 50,000 yuan more expensive, but you can buy an extra 80km of battery life and a full set of intelligent hardware; compared with the imperial version, it only lacks a front-wheel drive motor and the acceleration from 0 to 100 km is two seconds slower, but you can get an extra 120km of battery life and a price difference of more than 70,000 yuan.

In the era of intelligence, cars are no longer just a means of transportation. Their comfort, entertainment, driving experience and other dimensions are increasingly attracting attention from users. In these aspects, Chinese companies that have already stood at the top of the wave of the Internet era undoubtedly have greater voice.

After several years of iteration, China's new energy vehicles have achieved leapfrog development this year. If you pay more attention to online car reviews, you will find that most car reviewers have purchased Tesla cars themselves, and almost all new energy vehicle reviews use Tesla as a comparison benchmark, just like a few years ago when mobile phone reviews had to use the iPhone as a competitive product.

But this year you may notice that Tesla has almost completely lost its advantages. In next year's car reviews, domestic cars may only be able to benchmark against domestic cars. At present, Xiaopeng P7 is such a surprising benchmark new energy vehicle.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.