Another exciting EV with range extender is about to debut - AITO is launching its largest luxury SUV on July 4. Huawei, who jointly owns the AITO brand with Seres, is launching its latest Nova 10 series of phones and the new AITO Wenjie M7 will be unveiled at the same event.
The AITO Wenjie M7 is a large, 6 seat SUV
that is very similar to the recently announced Li Auto L9. The SUV is 5,020 mm
long, 1,945 mm wide and 1,775 mm tall. There are two versions of the M7 -
single motor rear-wheel drive with 200kW (268 hp) and all-wheel drive with two
electric motors giving it combined power of 330kW (442 hp).
Both models come with a 1.5T 4-cylinder
range extender that is not connected to the wheels, it is purely used to
recharge the battery, when needed. The battery in both versions is supplied by
CATL and we only have its estimated range of 135km according to the optimistic
WLTC cycle. Range extender cars are very popular in China and can be a viable
option for places where the charging infrastructure is patchy or non-existent.
The issue with the range extenders though,
is the fact that they don’t need to abide by any emissions regulations. For an
ICE powered car, the emissions need to fall within certain limits and the car
needs to be equipped with a catalytic converter as a bare minimum. Since the
range extender motors are not connected to the driving wheels they aren’t
powering the car technically and hence don’t need to observe any restrictions.
Here's hoping that regulation is put into place to prevent manufacturers from
exploiting this potential loophole.
