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On June 21, Ideal Car's brand-new large SUV Ideal L9 was officially released. As the second production car of the ideal car, it did not follow the naming idea of the first model ideal ONE, named "ideal TWO" and so on, but jumped directly to "9", but replaced with the English letter "L" as the prefix of the new car. Earlier, according to media reports, in order to make the product series more intuitive, the replacement ideal ONE will be renamed ideal L8, but the news has not been officially confirmed.

According to the actual vehicle and the new vehicle declaration drawing of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the ideal L9 completely abandons the large size grille design of ideal ONE and adopts the closed middle net design of electric vehicle style. However, as an extended range vehicle model, in order to ensure the air intake volume, the opening of the lower air intake of the vehicle becomes very large, and an active air intake grille is introduced. In addition, the ideal L9 also features split headlights, through the light belt can be retained, and a seamless light belt shape. In terms of size, the length, width and height of the new car are 5218/1998/1800mm respectively, and the wheelbase is 3105mm, which is similar to BMW X7 and Mercedes-Benz GLS.

In terms of interior decoration, the ideal L9 will adopt a brand-new design language in terms of interior decoration. For example, the central control screen and the co-driver screen adopt an integrated design. The central control screen and the co-driver screen both reach 15.7 inches, and the two-row entertainment screen on the roof also reaches 15.7 inches. However, the instrument of the main driver is cancelled, and the function is replaced by HUD head-up display and safe driving interactive screen on the steering wheel, which is still very rare in the current market. In addition, the central control screen, co-driver entertainment screen and rear cabin entertainment screen can realize direct connection with Switch through Type-C interface, and the Type-C interface also provides 60W charging power.

In terms of intelligent configuration, the ideal L9 will be equipped with intelligent driving services, including super intelligent parking, urban intelligent driving, multiple careful car remote calls, intelligent driving and OTA upgrades. In addition, the car will have L4 autonomous driving hardware, including AP controller Horizon J3+J5 chip and SP controller customized Orin-X chip, installed with 1 128-line lidar, 1 DMS, 5 millimeter wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars and 12 8M cameras.

In terms of power, the ideal L9 is equipped with 1.5T four-cylinder range extender, the maximum power of front drive motor is 130kW, the maximum power of rear drive motor is 200kW, the total power reaches 330kW, and the maximum torque is 620N·m. In terms of range, the ideal L9 is equipped with 44.5kWh battery capacity, 215km pure battery life under CLTC condition, and 1315km comprehensive range, which is not much different from the ideal ONE NEDC standard of 1080km.

According to the product information, the positioning of ideal L9 is much higher than ideal ONE, including body size, vehicle configuration and so on, which is obviously better than the latter, and ideal car also aims its competitors at luxury imported flagship SUV of millions of levels such as Mercedes-Benz GLS, BMW X7, Land Rover Range Rover, etc. As the ideal car's second production car, founder Li wants to be confident. It said,"(Ideal L9 will be) officially delivered to customers in August, September delivery volume can exceed ten thousand." In addition, Li also boasted that "the ideal L9 is the best flagship SUV for home use within 5 million."

In February 2021, Li thought in an internal letter that new energy vehicles would grow at an ultra-high speed in the next decade. In 2025, ideal cars will occupy 20% of the market share and become China's first intelligent electric vehicle enterprise. However, compared with NIO and Xiaopeng, the ideal product planning is very slow. At present, Xiaopeng has four models (G3/P7/P5/G9), while NIO is as high as six models (ES8/ES6/EC6/ET7/ET5/ES7). Since the ideal car was delivered in December 2019, the ideal car has won the world with one model from beginning to end. At present, there are only two published models (ideal ONE/ideal L9).

From the performance of the ideal car, it is not easy to surpass the competitors with only one ideal ONE model, but in the face of increasingly competitive market, it is really difficult to support the future development with only one model. Once the sales volume falls short of expectations, it will bear great pressure.

On the conference call after the first quarter earnings report, Li wanted to explain the development strategy of the ideal car in the future. Li wants to say that every 100,000 price range will launch a hit product, including both extended programs and pure electric. The product scheme is very similar to Apple iPhone. Different products meet different consumer needs accurately at different prices. Li wants to reveal,"Our starting point is better, the ideal ONE is placed in the range of 30 to 400,000 yuan." We can either go up 400 to 500,000 yuan, or go down 200 to 300,000 yuan. Next year, Ideal Car will launch three products, including a new generation of flagship products with extended range, a new BEV high-voltage platform, and the first mid-size car with 200,000 to 300,000 yuan next year."

In fact, the ideal has long been aware of the constraints brought by a single model, and it is urgent to expand the product matrix. In its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Ideal said it planned to launch at least two high-voltage pure electric models each year from 2023.

As the second production car, the ideal L9 is difficult to reach the height of ideal ONE. On the one hand, the increase of the price of ideal L9 is bound to narrow its target group of users; on the other hand, the ideal L9 is positioned at a higher end than the ideal ONE, and the performance of size and configuration will be more considerable, but the space and configuration of ideal ONE are enough. Therefore, Li wants to say whether "September delivery can exceed 10,000" is just "lip service", and no one can predict how much performance growth and delivery growth the ideal L9 will bring to it.

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