Last month we reported on the IM L6 doing the moose test, also known as elk test, driverless at 71 km/h. Technically this was a fail due to a pass speed being 72 km/h and requiring the car to be fully laden – the car in the test was empty. However, any doubts about the ability of the L6 have been laid to rest by a driver who has exceeded the speed record. The actual speed will be revealed at the car’s launch event on May 13th but the teaser poster tells us that it is 85+ km/h and the record was set on April 22.
The previous record had stood since 1999 by none other than a Citroën Xantia Activa V6. It’s speed of 85 km/h (53 mph) has failed to be beaten by sports car from Porsche and McLaren. Strangely SAIC is not emphasizing the fact that the L6 beat a Citroën!
Like the Citroën key to the result for IM Motors has been the setup of the car which makes it different to a conventional car. For the L6 it is what IM call the lizard digital chassis. This has collaborative management for movement of the car on three axes -the third being vertical – along with six degrees of freedom for movement of the whole vehicle. It’s claimed that the response time is 30% faster than traditional ESP and that an intervention takes only 0.3 seconds.
Extreme obstacle avoidance ability is upped through a dual intervention strategy of the L6’s rear wheel steering and adjustment of longitudinal torque. This helps suppress the flicking of the tail and increases the limits of the car by 5-8 km/h which obviously helped with beating the moose test record.
IM claims the L6 chassis has the only intelligent four-wheel steering system in its class and claims that it makes not only the steering action of the whole vehicle extremely stable but also greatly improves driving stability in the event of an emergency.
Features of the intelligent chassis include an electronically controlled vibration system which has an adjustment time of 10 ms in response to perceived road surface information. Furthermore, the L6 has lightweight aluminum front double wishbone suspension and rear five-link performance suspension plus the car rides on high performance tires.
Pre-sales for the IM L6 opened last month with three models going on sale priced between 230,000 and 330,000 yuan (31,850-45,700 USD). The most expensive of these features the 130 kWh Lightyear battery which IM claims to be the world’s first mass produced semi-solid state battery giving the car over 1000 km CLTC range. Within 23 hours of the opening of pre-sales last month the L6 racked up over 10,000 orders. More details will be known at the launch event on May 13 and deliveries should commence by the end of the month.
Source: Fast Technology
