Annual awards praised the ET’s range extender drivetrain, four-wheel drive system, and intelligent driving system.
The Chery Exlantix ET EREV has won CATARC’s 2024 Car of the Year Award at the fifth running of the event hosted by China Media Group.
The Exlantix ET, known as the Exeed Sterra ET in its home market, beat off competition from 30 other vehicles courtesy of its blend of range extender powertrain, four-wheel drive system, and intelligent drive system, which the judges claimed set a new benchmark for the premium new energy vehicle market.
Fourteen major automotive groups were represented in the 31-car shortlist but the Exlantix ET, which supposedly represents Exeed’s ‘Tech-infused new luxury’ philosophy, took the award for Chery, China’s largest exporter of cars for over 20 consecutive years.
We actually drove the European version of the car, the Exlantix ET, on our YouTube channel back in December and you can see our review of it in the video below.
Dr. Gao Xinhua, Executive Vice President and CTO of Chery Automobile, accepted the award and stated, “With its Golden Extended-Range system, Snow Leopard 4WD, and Falcon Intelligent Driving technology, the Exeed Sterra ET EREV 4WD delivers an experience that exceeds expectations.
“This award not only acknowledges the product’s strength but also inspires Exeed’s ‘Dare to Surpass’ brand spirit. We will continue to strive for excellence, creating globally admired tech-infused luxury vehicles.”
In a year that saw a raft of innovative models launched, such as the Li MEGA, XPeng X9, and Zeekr MIX MPVs, as well as sporting and technical powerhouses like the Xiaomi SU7, the Exlantix ET might seem like a surprising choice for Car of the Year but it perhaps represents the priorities of the current market.
Extended-range electric vehicles, or EREVs, have become particularly popular in China in the past 12 months for their blend of electric power and torque with combustion engine range and several brands are planning to launch EREV variants of their own cars this year. The Exlantix ET might be the first such car offered in Europe when it lands in Norway later this year.
Award-winning Extended-Range Drivetrain
The Exlantix ET EREV 4WD pairs up a 1.5-litre turbocharged engine boasting 44.5 percent thermal efficiency, with a pair of electric motors producing a combined 345kW of power and 634Nm of torque.
This enables the car to produce 3.7kWh of energy for the battery per litre of fuel used, giving a WLTC fuel consumption of 5.9-litres per 100km, a figure we got quite close to in our video of the car.
This provides a 240km electric-only range and a combined range of 1,500km, both on the generous CLTC cycle, figures claimed to be the best in its class.
It’s also particularly quiet on the move with impressive sound insulation around the engine bay and delivers a linear torque curve, something recognised by CATARC who made the EREV system the first to be certified as “Premium Drive High-Quality Extended-Range”, adding to its earlier “Top 10 New Energy Vehicle Powertrains of 2024” award.
Snow Leopard 4WD
In addition to the EREV drivetrain, the Exlantix ET was commended for its 4WD system, which can accelerate from 0-100kph in 4.8 seconds, somewhat faster than the similar system in a Li Auto for example.
It also boasts seven all-terrain driving modes, including off-road and snow modes, something demonstrated in a promotional piece by Exeed that saw the Exlantix ET driving up a ski jump slope, much as Audi demonstrated with the Quattro back in the 80s.
This system enables the car to distribute torque between the front and rear axles from 0-100 percent, making the car capable of climbing 50 percent sand slopes and crossing 0.5-metre cross-axle obstacles.
It can also climb 35 percent gradients without any throttle input thanks to an electronic limited-slip response time of less than 0.05 seconds.
Falcon Intelligent Driving
Finally, the Exlantix ET got recognition for its Falcon Intelligent Driving system, which features 30 high-performance sensors, including a lidar, and twin NVIDIA Orin-X chips with a computing power of 508 TOPS.
This makes the Exeed Sterra ET capable of highway and urban autonomous driving in China, though the European Exlantix ET comes without the lidar and thus won’t get the same high-end system as that in China.
Exeed is expected to rollout end-to-end map-free intelligent driving capability on the Chinese version in the coming months, and it’s said to be capable of performing three-point turns, HPA cross-floor memory parking, and remote parking.
We’ll look forward to trying that out as and when the chance comes.
In the meantime, the very same model apparently completed a 1,873.2km journey from Wuhu, Chery’s base, to Guangzhou, loaded with four passengers, with air conditioning on, and reaching top speeds of 120kph, without refuelling or recharging, beating its own stated range by some margin.
In addition to claiming 2024 Car of the Year and Top 10 New Energy Powertrain awards, the Exlantix ET also claimed a 2024 China’s Top 10 Chassis award, and NESTA Functional Safety Car of the Year, after it survived a 31.9-metre drop test and conquered a 37.82-degree snow slope.
It appears that it might also become one of the first non-NIO brand cars to be capable of battery swapping at NIO swap stations after Chery let slip some images of such earlier this year.
You can read that story here.
