Chang'an says electric car built with Huawei, CATL to be unveiled this year

After the release of the Arcfox α-S model built by Huawei and BAIC, the tech giant's jointly built model with Chang'an Automobile is coming too.

Chang'an, Huawei, and CATL are jointly building the first high-end smart electric vehicle under the CHN architecture to be released by the end of this year, yicai.com quoted Chang'an President Wang Jun as saying Tuesday.

"It's a brand-new architecture, a brand-new platform, a brand-new product that incorporates a whole new set of current technologies," Wang said.

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The collaboration between Chang'an, Huawei, and CATL began in the fourth quarter of 2020 and is internally codenamed "Project CHN," after the initials of the three companies, according to yicai.com.

The project aims to build on the strengths of the three companies' capabilities to jointly research automotive application ecologies, Vehicle OS, computing and communication architectures, high-voltage systems and chassis mechanics, and other platform technologies.

The three parties plan to jointly build a high-end smart car brand, a smart electric vehicle platform, a series of smart car products, and a smart energy ecology, the report said.

Last week, Huawei's Chairman-in-Office Xu Zhijun said the company had partnered with three car companies to create three sub-brands, and that smart cars with the "Huawei Inside" logo would start rolling out in the fourth quarter of this year.

Huawei has already selected three car partners to support them in building their own sub-brands with "Huawei Inside", Xu said.

On April 17, Arcfox, a dedicated EV brand by BAIC, unveiled its much-anticipated Arcfox α-S model, with a starting price of 251,900 yuan ($38,600).

Compared to the regular model, the most interesting part of the car is the version with "Huawei Inside".

With the release of the Arcfox α-S "Huawei Inside" version, Huawei's technology also appears for the first time on a production model.

This version starts at RMB 388,900 and the premium version is priced at RMB 429,900. They are expected to be delivered in November and December this year.