Dynamic test drive of Xiangjie S9: The chassis quality is comparable to German l

tech | 2024-04-08

400,000 yuan, to buy a Mercedes-Benz, BMW, or Audi 56E, or to purchase the Xiangjie S9? The market will soon provide an answer to this question.

However, before that, we must address a common doubt:

Why does Huawei, which is making its first foray into the executive luxury sedan market, dare to claim that the Xiangjie S9 is benchmarked against the 78S?

It is not surprising that Huawei excels in intelligent cockpit and intelligent driving, but consumers who spend 400,000 yuan on executive luxury sedans are actually a relatively conservative group. They place more emphasis on how the car drives and how sophisticated it feels to sit in, and they have an inherent preference for the "prestige" that Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi bring.

Advertisement

Up until now, all Chinese brands that have launched luxury sedans priced above 400,000 yuan have not been successful, precisely because there is a significant gap in both comfort and driving experience compared to the 56E models.So, can Xiangjie S9 break through the ceiling of Chinese brand luxury sedans with its technological strength? This is the answer we most want to know when we test drive the Xiangjie S9.

01

Addressing range anxiety with low wind resistance and large battery

During the previous static shooting, Huawei kept the drag coefficient and power configuration of the Xiangjie S9 confidential, and this time the dynamic test drive revealed all.

The Xiangjie S9 will offer two configurations: Max and Ultra. The Max is a rear-wheel drive single-motor version, while the Ultra is a dual-motor version. Both models have a rear-wheel drive motor of 227kW permanent magnet synchronous motor, and the dual-motor version will have an additional 158kW alternating current asynchronous front motor, thus in terms of zero to hundred acceleration performance,Dual-motor models can achieve a speed of 3.93 seconds.

 

Huawei has equipped the Enjoy S9 with a 100 kWh ternary lithium battery as standard, and thanks to the new car's drag coefficient that can be as low as Cd 0.193, coupled with the two-wheel-drive version's curb weight of less than 2.25 tons, the electric consumption per 100 kilometers is as low as 13.2 kWh.

 

Therefore, the Enjoy S9 two-wheel-drive version can achieve a range of 816 km, which is 3 kilometers longer than the Mercedes-Benz EQS. Even the heavier dual-motor model can achieve a range of 721 kilometers, and with the "5 minutes 200 km" charging efficiency, Huawei believes that the Enjoy S9 can essentially alleviate range anxiety.

 

The chassis configuration of the Enjoy S9 is also essentially fully loaded: the suspension is a front double wishbone and rear multi-link design, and the entire series comes standard with air suspension and CDC variable damping shock absorbers, with the air suspension offering 5 settings and an adjustment range of 50mm.

 

Another unique feature is that the Enjoy S9 is the first new energy sedan to use integrated spring and damper systems for both the front and rear seats. Huawei states that this design reduces the stiffness of the chassis springs and the force on the subframe bushings, which can enhance comfort.Despite having maximized the mechanical foundation, Yu Chengdong also stated that their advantage over 78S lies in the intelligence enhancement. The Enjoy S9 is equipped with the latest Huawei Tuling platform, based on the HUAWEI IDVP intelligent automotive digital platform. It utilizes a multimodal fusion perception system, HUAWEI DATS dynamic adaptive torque system, and HUAWEI XMOTION intelligent body coordination control system, which can make the car smarter and more comfortable to drive.

02

Top-level comfort at low speeds, more complete sport mode

The Enjoy S9 offers four driving modes: energy-saving, comfort, sport, and personalized, along with auxiliary driving modes for scenarios such as deceleration coasting (single pedal) and motion sickness relief. In the personalized mode, one can customize the power output, steering, and suspension height, which means that comfort, sport, and other modes also adjust these options in conjunction, but one cannot adjust the steering feel separately.

In actual experience, the dual-motor version of the Enjoy S9 is obviously overpowered. In comfort mode, it can well restrain the power delivery, but in sport mode, the acceleration feeling will be quite strong. One thing I think the Enjoy S9 does well is that even though the sport mode can achieve an acceleration performance of 4 seconds, it does not have an overly abrupt acceleration feeling like the high-performance version of the Tesla Model 3. The output of the Enjoy S9 is more linear.

Huawei explained that the motors they used this time have better torque decay control at high speeds, with a decay rate controlled at around 22%, while most models would be in the range of forty to fifty percent. Therefore, the Enjoy S9 has stronger acceleration performance in the latter stages.In other words, the initial acceleration of the Xiangjie S9 is not overly aggressive, ensuring a more linear sense of acceleration—of course, you can't dismiss its 3.9-second acceleration capability as a "paper tiger"; in fact, it is quite powerful the moment you floor the throttle.

If you switch to comfort mode, the entire acceleration performance becomes smoother and gentler, coupled with a pedal damping that is also somewhat greater, not the loose feeling of mid-to-low-end cars, making the car's acceleration state quite stable.

Perhaps of more interest to everyone is the quality of the Xiangjie S9's chassis? This time, the focus was mainly on urban roads with good conditions, without too many bumpy road conditions, and without high-speed scenarios, so it can only be considered a superficial experience.

After driving, a general conclusion can be drawn: the Xiangjie S9 may have three different driving feelings at different speed ranges—soft and comfortable at low speeds; a more noticeable choppy sensation at medium speeds; and steady and powerful at high speeds.

Speaking of which, I feel that the driving experience of the Xiangjie S9 at medium to high speeds is very similar to the all-new Mercedes-Benz E-Class I drove recently, which is equivalent to the Xiangjie S9 achieving a feeling close to the mechanical suspension of the Mercedes E-Class with its air suspension + CDC system.Specifically, driving at low speeds—probably not exceeding 30 kilometers per hour—on surfaces similar to those in Belgium or when going over speed bumps, the overall comfort is quite good, soft and rich in texture.

A significant reason for this is that the Enjoy S9 also offers a "magic carpet suspension" feature, which, through Huawei's "Eagle Eye" road preview system, can perceive road conditions up to 250 meters ahead, scan the road surface 30 times per second, and adjust the damping instantaneously in 10 milliseconds, in conjunction with the adaptive active suspension that can adjust 100 times per second.

Therefore, at low speeds, the suspension comfort and support of the entire vehicle can be adjusted in real-time, providing a more comfortable low-speed driving experience than traditional luxury cars. However, if the speed is too high, this feature is not as noticeable because the adjustment speed cannot keep up with the road preview information.

In the commonly used speed range of 60-80 kilometers per hour, when the Enjoy S9 goes over road seams or small potholes like speed bumps, the chassis feedback might be a bit more bouncy, especially the rear axle. My direct feeling is that the overall chassis feedback is somewhat stiffer.

But these bounces are not very noticeable, and the impact is not strong; it just feels like the car experiences more minor impacts. According to the test engineer, this might be referred to as a "choppy" sensation—the issue lies in the fact that these small disturbances create a cognitive contradiction with "comfortable driving," and the driver might feel that these small movements should be eliminated completely.However, this could also be due to some objective factors, such as the test drive vehicle being equipped with 21-inch tires with a 40% aspect ratio, and the tire pressure reaching 3.0Bar under high temperatures, which could somewhat compromise comfort.

Of course, if these external factors are disregarded, as a vehicle equipped with a 100-degree battery, the load on the entire rear axle is quite substantial, and it is common to make the rear axle stiffer to prevent it from bouncing uncontrollably when encountering road surface changes. To mitigate this overly stiff discomfort, high-end luxury vehicles often opt for air suspension to soften the ride, such as the BMW i5 adopting this strategy. However, this alleviation can only address a portion of the driving conditions, after all, if the air suspension is too soft, the support is also insufficient.

Therefore, the final tuning of the Xiangjie S9, in my opinion, feels more like a Mercedes-Benz E-Class, rather than a BMW 5 Series Long Wheelbase that has compromised comfort for the Chinese market. It retains some road feel, aligning more closely with consumers' inherent perception of high-end luxury vehicles.

What deepens this driving perception is the driving quality on high-speed sections. The entire vehicle feels a quicker convergence of the rear axle suspension and a more stable body posture at speeds of ninety to one hundred kilometers per hour. When encountering undulating road surfaces, the vehicle does not have those unnecessary rebounds, and it can stabilize almost immediately—when driving, I immediately thought of the feeling when driving a Mercedes-Benz E-Class at high speeds, and it instantly made one feel that the Xiangjie S9's chassis is "on point."

Additionally, there is another way to perceive the changes in the Xiangjie S9's chassis, and that is by switching to sport mode. Although the power delivery becomes more aggressive, the entire chassis correspondingly becomes more taut, effectively filtering out the original somewhat bothersome choppy sensations and directly allowing for clearer transmission of road feel. This allows the driver to unify the perception of "the entire chassis being on the stiffer side," making the driving experience more intuitive and effortless.There's another detail worth discussing, which is the "motion sickness relief" feature. This feature is primarily designed to address the motion sickness that may occur when rear passengers use their smartphones or watch rear projections.

It may sound quite mystical, but after experiencing it, there is indeed some effect. When I sat in the zero-gravity seat in the back and closed my eyes to rest, I distinctly felt that the sense of head stability during the drive was better. There was no gentle sensation of my head lightly touching the headrest during acceleration or deceleration.

In fact, the principle of this feature is not complicated. The system coordinates the instantaneous torque output of the motor, the control of brake hydraulics, the suspension height, and damping adjustment. Acceleration is made gentler, and braking is slower, which significantly reduces the longitudinal sway of the entire vehicle.

It can be said that where the Enjoy S9 has an advantage over traditional luxury sedans from Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi is that Huawei can uniformly adjust all the chassis suspension sensors, and with their self-developed motor and electronic control, they can real-time coordinate the entire driving experience based on actual road conditions, providing a better comfort experience, and it can also be continuously upgraded and optimized.The ultra-powerful ADS 3.0 truly leads the way

 

In fact, during this test drive of the Xiangjie S9, we may have covered over a hundred kilometers back and forth, but at least 70 kilometers of that distance was driven autonomously by the S9 itself. As the first product equipped with Huawei's ADS 3.0, the high-level intelligent driving experience of the Xiangjie S9 is incredibly user-friendly. During the video shooting, there was no need to divert attention to control the vehicle; the car could provide an almost L3-level intelligent driving experience.

 

One of the key upgrades emphasized by ADS 3.0 this time is the ability to achieve point-to-point parking. Relying on 27 perception hardware components, including 1 192-line LiDAR, 3 millimeter-wave radars, 11 high-definition visual perception cameras, and 12 ultrasonic radars, coupled with ADS 3.0's pioneering application of an end-to-end new architecture, it adopts a human-like decision-making and planning approach with a GOD network and a PDP network, achieving stronger intelligent driving capabilities.

 

The point-to-point parking feature of ADS 3.0 means that when you set two parking spaces as destinations, the Xiangjie S9 can start from a parking spot in the underground garage at Point A, exit the parking lot's toll booth, pass through the park roads, and public roads, to reach the underground parking lot at Point B's park. This is a further step beyond the earlier point-to-point intelligent navigation, completing the "last mile of driving."

 

What was quite astonishing about ADS 3.0 during my experience was when the Xiangjie S9 needed to make a right turn from a right-angle bend, immediately followed by the toll booth ramp. If I were driving, I would probably have to steer several times to get out, but ADS 3.0 managed to pass smoothly with almost just two maneuvers. There was even one instance where I thought the front of the car had touched the concrete curb, but due to the system's higher precision, it almost "brushed past the curb" and exited the ramp with astonishing efficiency.On public roads, due to the current implementation of mapless NOA in the Xiangjie S9, it can now be driven on park roads or various small roads and one-way streets. Moreover, with the support of ADS 3.0, the Xiangjie S9 has been able to better achieve roundabout navigation, with several rounds of roundabout efficiency being very strong, not to mention the smooth commuting on regular roads.

During the activation process of ADS 3.0, there are several memorable points:

1. The decision-making for detouring around scenarios such as parked cars and open doors is very smooth;

2. The accommodation of pedestrians on the road is also very smooth, and even when encountering road maintenance vehicles, three-wheeled trucks, and elderly mobility vehicles, the detour and accommodation are very precise;

3. The predictive and game-playing ability for cutting-in vehicles is very strong, it is quick when it should be, and it will yield when it should, almost never aggressively taking the road, but also not too aggressive.3. The driving efficiency is very high, almost driving at the speed limit. If the speed limit is too low, it will automatically increase its speed to keep up with the car in front. Additionally, its prediction of the road conditions ahead is very accurate. For example, when exiting a ramp, it sometimes changes lanes to the right in advance, and sometimes it will drive closer to the toll gate before looking for an opportunity to merge.

4. The vehicle maintains a stable center position while driving on high curvature bends, without any lateral drifting, which gives the driver more confidence.

Of course, ADS 3.0 still has some driving strategies that are not exactly mistakes but are somewhat risky. For instance, on an overpass, there was an incident where it attempted to merge to the left, but the car behind accelerated, causing the vehicle to "pause" momentarily before giving up on the lane change and returning to its original lane, which made me a bit concerned.

An even riskier situation occurred when entering an underground parking lot, which involved a bend. The vehicle, S9, would ride on the center line, and as a result, it was "bumped" by an oncoming vehicle that was also trying to ascend. This situation was the same when exiting the underground parking lot, which should be a problem with the model training.

Despite experiencing some minor adventures, on one level, it also makes the driver more aware that the primary responsibility for the current intelligent driving assistance still lies with the person holding the steering wheel.Finally, after initiating the NCA of the Xiangjie S9, we completed the intelligent piloting function from parking space to parking space with zero intervention. Moreover, when arriving at the parking space, it parked in one go, and on another occasion, upon discovering that the parking space was occupied, it was also able to automatically move forward to find an empty space and park there—this latter capability is actually another feature enhancement brought by the ADS 3.0 upgrade, which is the further advancement of automatic parking. Regardless of whether the previously set parking space is available or not, it can complete fully autonomous parking, equivalent to not requiring too much human attention.

It can be said that whether on the road or in parking scenarios, ADS 3.0 can greatly reduce the mental effort of humans and elevate the level of intelligent driving to a new level.

04

Jia Shi Summary

After a brief dynamic test drive experience of the Xiangjie S9, it can be said that there is a considerable sense of surprise in the driving part. The basic experience of the Xiangjie S9 is highly complete, striving to approach the driving experience of German luxury cars as much as possible.

This may be due to Huawei's "financial power"; they have a research institute in Germany, where the tuning engineers they employ have experience with high-end vehicles from Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi. Coupled with the support of BAIC and Magna, the entire chassis has a distinctly German flavor.On the other hand, Huawei has brought more room for change to a luxury sedan through intelligent chassis technology, achieving a dimensional upgrade in comfort during low-speed driving, allowing Chinese consumers to directly perceive the driving and riding advantages of the Xiangjie S9.

At the same time, in terms of NVH and the sense of thickness in driving and riding, which are most valued by luxury car users, the Xiangjie S9 is also very sophisticated. For example, when driving at 80 KPH on a smooth road, the noise is only about 60 to 61 decibels. The use of a large amount of acoustic foam, double-layer glass, and silent tires has further optimized the driving quality of the Xiangjie S9, and it is evident that Huawei has indeed put in the effort.

In addition to these conventional driving quality experiences, I believe ADS 3.0 is the trump card of the Xiangjie S9. After all, no executive-level luxury sedan currently has such powerful intelligent driving capabilities, which will be a decisive option for consumers.

As for the zero-gravity seats in the rear, one-touch super privacy mode, and the brand-new audio system, etc., they seem more like the icing on the cake compared to this, but they are also enough to make traditional luxury envious.

So the only suspense is:If this car is launched at a price of 450,000 yuan, will luxury sedan buyers be tempted?