Our contacts at Neta have confirmed that the first car built on CATL’s CIIC skateboard chassis will be the 800-volt Neta S Wagon.
Skateboard chassis were all the rage in the early 2000s as brands explored how electric drivetrains could revolutionise vehicle packaging, but no such product has materialised until now.
Of course it makes total sense that CATL, the world’s largest electric vehicle battery manufacturer, would be the first to create one, with the CIIC, or CATL Integrated Intelligent Chassis, claimed to have the battery, electric drivetrain, suspension, brakes, and other components all integrated in advance.
This should in theory make it possible to decouple the upper and lower bodies of the car, enabling two parts to be developed in parallel and shortening product development times.
CATL claimed last year that testing in China had found the car capable of a 1000km range on the CLTC cycle, energy consumption as low as 10.5kWh per 100km, and capable of adding 300km of charge in five minutes.
Neta’s parent company, Hozon Auto, was the first automaker to sign an agreement with CATL for the skateboard chassis in January 2023, with BAIC and Vietnamese car maker VinFast also signing up.
It’s rumoured that Huawei may also have an agreement, given their co-ownership of the AVATR brand.
Our source confirmed that the Neta S Wagon will therefore utilise two chassis, with their Shanhai 2.0 platform sitting under the EREV and 400-volt EV versions, and the CIIC platform hosting the 800-volt chassis version.
Utilising both 400- and 800-volt platforms under the same product is not a unique decision with Xiaomi offering two such platforms under its SU7.
