WM Motor to release 2 electric sedans this year
Chinese EV startup WM Motor has unveiled its first sedan called the M7 and a second sedan-like EV specifically for the mobility market called the E5. Both are supposed to launch in China before the end of the year. The company has also revealed a new logo.
The two new electric sedans now announced for launch this year will be the company’s first. The Chinese startup was founded in 2015 and has two electric SUVs on the Chinese market, with a third announced for this year. WM Motor also offers its own range of charging solutions and a charging network of over 200,000 public chargers across China. The company has its own proprietary technology in the electric platform ‘Ajax’.
For the first release, the M7, the company’s is offering a little more variety from its first three models, all of which were electric SUVs. So far WM Motors has not revealed any technical data for the electric car, just a peek at a minimalist interior design, complete with a screen that extends from the driver’s side to the centre of the dashboard. Also visible are pixel lights built into the passenger side above the glovebox displaying the text “Hello M7.”
It seems the company is making the most of the high-tech advances in the Chinese automobile industry and kitted the sedan out with some significant computing power. CnEVPost has stated that The car will have powerful self-driving hardware with multiple LiDARs and 500-1000 TOPS of computing power. To give this a rough ballpark, the computing power of Tesla’s chip is 144 TOPS.
In the same announcement, WM Motor also mentions an upcoming E5 vehicle. This electric car is specifically designed for the mobility market as a cab or rideshare vehicle. WM Motor has not yet revealed any other specs or pricing for the M7 or E5. Both electric cars apparently remain on schedule for delivery this year.
As mentioned initially, WM Motor has revealed a new variation of its logo. According to CnEVPost, the logo the company is using for the mobility market (so presumably for the E5) will remain the circular frame design, while the logo for consumer electric cars like the WM Motor M7, will have a rounded square design.
WM Motor revealed plans for its first electric sedan when the company also announced its second and third electric SUVs just over a year ago. With this report, it was already clear that the company is focussing on computing technology rather than hyping hardware revelations. In the announcing of this year’s models, the carmaker did not reveal anything about the models’ drive technology or the possible common platforms of the three models. Instead, the company revealed some information on autonomous driving and connectivity. The six-seater electric SUV, which was launched last year, will allegedly have features such as face recognition and “visual activation.”
The company’s third model, the electric SUV also planned for this year should then have some “innovative applications” in autonomous driving and 5G. When this third model was launched, the electric carmakers said that the upcoming electric sedan will have autonomous driving at level 3 and autonomous parking at level 4. A cw value of 0.23 and a range of up to 800 kilometres according to the Chinese standard NEDC. The all-electric SUV is to be equipped with a cloud-based parking system developed by MW-Motor investor, Baidu, among other features.
At the beginning of this year, our report on electric car sales in China in 2020 states that WM Motor sold a total of 22,495 vehicles in 2020, representing 33 per cent year-on-year growth. In 2020, the startup’s debut model, the WM EX5, sold 40,000 units since its 2018 launch.
While WM Motor has not said if the two new sedans will be built on its previous electric platform, used for the company’s first two electric SUVs. Both of these current models are built on WM Motor’s ‘Ajax’ platform. The company says this design accommodates the installation of a large array of prismatic battery cells, producing a maximum range of 520km NEDC. WM Motors sources its battery cells from different manufacturers including CATL and Tafel.
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