AVATR 06 Review – When A Model 3 Is Just Too Bland
One of the most common criticisms of modern-day electric cars is that they all look the same. Thankfully, one brand continues to be an exception to the rule. This is Inside China Auto, and this is the stunning Avatar 06. [Music] Yes, this is the Avatar 06, a Tesla Model 3 sized fully electric car that you can also get as an extended range EV as well with an engine under here that charges the battery and the battery drives the electric motors on the wheels to give it a fully electric drivetrain experience. So, you don’t have to miss out. If you want that extra range, you can get it with the Avatar 06. Now, this brand is a collaboration between Changan, one of China’s oldest car companies, CL, the largest battery company in the world, and Huawei, one of the world’s largest technology companies as well. And as ever, they packed all of their best stuff into this car. If you’ve seen our Avatar 11 one and two videos, you’ll know that I am just absolutely in love with the design language of this car. Check out these beautiful sharp creases mixed with full rounded surfaces. We got very distinctive daytime running lights here on the front. These this is the slightly modified modern face of this car. Bit different on the one and the one two. Along the side we get more of those sharp creases. So of a very low belt line here just below the door handles. Gives it a really live low look which is accentuated by this black roof as well. And then back here gets really interesting because you’ll notice when we get to the back there’s no rear window on this car just like on the Avatar one two. And when I first saw the shape of this car, my first thought was that would do really well as a convertible. And if you’ve seen our endofear video for 2024, you’ll know that a prototype Cabriolet version of this car has been spotted. So Avatar, please bring us that car. Would love to see this as a convertible. So let me tell you about some of the features on this car. Coming back to the front, we do get an active grill down there to keep those motors nice and cool. And on the electric version of this car, we get a 70 lit frunk in here as well. Really useful amount of space. Just behind that, we get the optional halo screen. On the previous versions of Avatars, you could say messages to say you were temporarily parking, for example. Very useful in China. And you could tell people they can cross the road in front of the car. On this version, you can actually write your own messages, which is very, very neat. Down here, we get 20-in alloys. All alloys on this car are 20 in. This is the beautiful cyclone sort of brushed face design on these. We also get double wishbone front suspension, five link independent suspension at the rear and air suspension as well on this car. Now down here you’ll see a little HI logo in red. Hi means Huawei inside. As I said, they put all their tech in here. So you get the Harmony operating system. You get a lot of Huawei components as well. And you get, of course, Huawei’s autonomous driving system, too, which I still believe is the best one in China. On this car with the lidar and the millimeter wave radars, you get the ADS 3.0 system. That’s not the latest one. 4.0 is the latest system. That might be reserved for the ITO M9 with, I think, four liars on the car. This one only has one, but nevertheless, very good system. I’ve been trying it in Beijing. Really, really competent and confident at the same time. Very few takeovers. It’s getting better and better. You’ll notice also more cameras to support that ADS system and a digital camera for the rear view mirrors as well. This is optional. You can get normal mirrors for this car if you prefer, but on this one with the digital mirrors, we get screens inside the dashboard that show us the view from these mirrors. Really quite neat, very techy stuff on this car. We get pop out door handles and you also get electronic opening front doors on this car, which is quite neat. Simply press the brake pedal to close that door back in again. Notice the frameless windows double glazed on the front but not on the back. This is a super stylish car from the front. It’s very nice from the rear too, but a little bit different. As you can see, the design from the rear 3/4 is a little bit more awkward than the front. It looks really sporty and live from there. Looks a little bit heavier at the back. You need to lift the camera up slightly to make the view a little bit better low down. It’s not great. But from there, you can see that we have no rear window on this car. This is that sort of chin or lip that I was telling you about. And you get cameras cuz you can’t see backwards. So, you need a digital rear view mirror inside. But because it’s got no window, we can’t call it a hatch. It’s technically a saloon. Even though to all intents and purposes, this is more of a hatch than a normal saloon. 416 L of space in the boot. It’s a decent amount. It’s not really massive, to be honest. And if you fold down the rear seats, which go down 4060, you get only 1,266 L of space, which is not massive at all. And the big downside is you can’t fold them down from the back. You have to get into the car to fold them down. And the back rests are bloody heavy as well. I will say that. But you do get a little bit more space under the boot floor there for things like a fire extinguisher or number plates on this car for some reason. We’ve also got obviously a very distinctive design. We get our slim sharp daytime running lights there. A little bit of a boot spoiler, little lip spoiler on there. You can get a light up avatar logo here too. And we get gloss black plastic at the bottom for that fake diffuser, which it’s still a stylish car. I would say just the front is better. [Music] Now, if you like how the 06 looks on the outside, you’re going to love how it looks on the inside. This is a very stylish, very premium space. Lot of lovely soft touch materials inside the 06 on top of the dashboard. This is all PU leather. The center console, the doors, even the lining on the inside of the door pockets is PU leather, which is really nice. One of the ways that I judge if a car is premium or not is how many plastic surfaces there are. And there are none. There is no plastic inside the 06. It feels very premium. And I think you’ll agree looks pretty stunning in this cream and purple color, too. You can get it in red and you can get it in black. I think if it was me, I would choose it in this color because it looks ace. Also, we get a very funky octagonal steering wheel. This reminds me of a go-kart I used to have when I was about 5 years old. Some people really don’t like this steering wheel. I have friends here in China who drive cars, too, and they say they don’t like this kind of steering wheel. I like it, honestly. I don’t find it any more impractical than on any other car. It’s just as useful, and it makes the car look pretty cool. makes you feel like you’re in a a bit of a cockpit, which is actually one effect that you get from the screen setup in this car. Now, I’m going to start by talking first about the center screen. This is a 15.6 in screen. Runs the Harmony OS operating system and the 8295 Snapdragon processor. Lovely and sick system for the most part. The great thing is you can get it in English here in China. You can’t talk to the car in English, but you can get all of your menus and settings and stuff. But there is a downside to the Harmony operating system, which is the toolbar. So, you can adjust your temperature at the bottom there by sliding. You can go into your seats menu here to do all of your kind of heating, ventilating, and massaging functions. But you can’t change the fan speed via the button there. You have to click on it, go into the menu page, and then change your fan speed in there, which for me is a convenience, an inconvenience that we don’t necessarily need. Almost every system now can change the fan speed from the front page. So, I think Huawei need to sort that little bit out. But you get access in there, of course, to all of your driving settings and your lights and ambient lighting. You can change all these tiles down at the bottom and you get your Huawei ADS system in there as well, which visualizes the road around you and all that stuff. Another interesting feature in here, by the way, which I will quickly do, is click on moon. Now, moon means zero gravity. The 06 is the only car in this segment that comes with zero gravity front seats. So, I’m going to press that button there. And you’ll see my steering wheel now lifts up and retracts out of the way. You can also turn this on, by the way, via a single button on the side of the seat. And now we lift up the seat slightly. The leg rest starts to raise. And in a moment, we’re going to rock the car back. The seat backwards and then chill out in zero gravity mode. Both of these two front seats have that functionality. And it’s really quite neat. Obviously, the Xiaomi U7 that we drove just recently also has zero gravity front seats. It’s good that people are thinking about the condition of the driver. It’s a little bit awkward when it goes back though because the leg rest is still up and foot room gets a little bit tight down there when it goes back to your normal driving position. But overall, very nice. Let’s come off that screen onto this one at the back. This is a 35.4 4 in 4K screen and essentially acts much like on the Xiaomi as a kind of a an alternative to a head-up display. We don’t have a head-up display here. This is our head-up display. It does make you feel like you’re in a cockpit when you’re sat here. You got your driving functions there, your maps in the middle, and then these different tiles over there. And on here, you can drag down from the left side. Click on this button and you can change all of those tiles. So you can have your energy, your mileage, your drive mode, air quality, the weather, calendar, music, time, all the different options that you want. Pop them on there so that you’ve got the things visible that you want to see all the time. You’ll also notice because we have the digital mirrors outside the car, we get 6.7 in digital screens on either side of the car. Definitely, if you come from a normal car, it does take some getting used to, not looking here, but looking here instead, but after a few days, it does become a little bit more natural to do so. So yeah, very stylish and all of that is backed up by a Meridian sound system. So Meridian, the high-end UK sound system. I thought the quality in the Avatar one was amazing. It’s brilliant in here, too. If you’re an audio file, this is definitely one of the cars for you. Lovely, lovely sound system. 16 speakers on the Pro and Max versions. You get 25 speakers on the Ultra version. That, by the way, is a 2016 watt system. Will do 7.1.4 4 surround sound. The smaller system is 1,416 watts. So, really good sound quality here inside the 06. It’s reasonably practical as an interior. So, we get decentiz door pockets. You can get a 500 mil bottle in there. Got a lot of space under here in the middle. And we’ve got a pretty reasonable size glove box, too. Another thing under here as well as two USBC sockets is the fragrance pack which you I believe is optional on all versions but standard on the Ultra version. That’s pretty stylish, isn’t it? Look at that. Very funky looking thing. And it smells really nice, too. Lovely interior smell. You get three different pot spaces down there. We’ve only got one on our car. Make the car smell nice. By the way, with the air con on this car, there’s something called a nano water ion system. So, a lot of air con systems dry out the air in the car. The nano water air ion system on this car makes the air more moist, which means that you kind of stay more moisturized. For ladies who get frizzy hair, it will help their hair to stay more glossy and nice. I assume something like that. So, yeah, good little kind of air con system in here, too. We also get our digital rear view mirror because, of course, we can’t see anything out the back of the car. And honestly, I don’t miss rear view m rearview windows. Not really a problem for me. Some people will be not so happy with that. We also get a 1.4 m squared panoramic roof which blocks out 99.99% of UV rays. The downside is no sun blind so it might still get a little bit warm inside the car. We also get a single 50 W vented wireless charger. This space here is just a space for a phone. That one doesn’t charge your phone. Pair of cup holders. By the way, look at this. Finally, a lovely key as well on a car. So many cars have really naff keys these days. This one’s very stylish. Made out of metal. single button just to turn on the car, open and close it. Basically, that’s it. So, yeah, it’s a lovely interior. This these front seats, let’s talk about these. These are heated, ventilated, and massaging. Really big side bolsters that go all the way to the top, so they’re very comfy. They hold you in place very nicely. We get airline style headrests. You get your speakers in here, by the way, as well, so you can isolate the noise from the car for just the driver, leave the rest of the passengers to be in peace. and they are 14-way adjustable because of that zeroravity functionality that I showed you just earlier. So yeah, if you’re looking for a stylish interior, I don’t think they come much more stylish than on the 06. You can, by the way, get microfiber for the roof lining, too, but we’ve just got the standard roof lining on ours. Let’s see if the back seats are as nice as the front ones. Now, where the front seats get all of the luxurious features in the 06, the rear seats are a little bit more boring. Let’s be honest, we do get mounting points. I believe these are so you can put tablets on the back of the front seat. So, you can get you can get some entertainment in the back of the car if you want to, but other than that, there’s not a lot to talk about. And let’s talk about the space. I mean, leg room is pretty good. You can see loads of leg room there. You’re going to need it because the base cushion is fairly low. So, you don’t get full thigh support under here. Head room though is plentiful. Foot room is not. If you have that seat as low as it will go, your toes are going to be stuck down there under the seat. So you have to pull your legs in a little bit, which then means that they’re not sitting on the base cushion. And the floor does rise up slightly underneath the front seat. So little bit annoying on the foot space, but everything else is fine. All the same luxury materials. You get more speakers in the door. Three speakers in the door here on this one. So we must have the 25 speaker sound system in our car. Decent door pockets, bit of space on the back of the front seats, a little tray down there that you can put some things in. You get rear ventilation here, so you can adjust the direction of your fan speed and you can have your USBC socket down there as well. We also get an armrest. So, these two rear seats are quite comfy. That is a unit. It is super heavy. Little cup holders in there. That’s pretty much it. There’s no hatch through to the rear sadly on this car. Maybe in Europe it’ll get a hatch cuz I know Europeans like to have one of those. Again, the same big headrests, more speakers in the roof and behind the rear seats. We also get our ISOIX mountings. They’re underneath the Velcro pad. I could do without the Velcro pad to be honest, but at least they’re very easy to get to once you’ve lifted that out the way. And another thing I’ve just spotted here, it says airbag in the Avatar 06. You get nine airbags, including side airbags here in the rear. So, it should be pretty safe in a crash. They’re probably going to get fivestar European end cap crash test rating on this car as and when it goes to Europe. No word on that yet, but they will go abroad. So, if you’ll enjoy this car, you can look forward to it. I’m going to go and take it for a drive and I’ll tell you how that goes. [Music] Now, for the driving section in this video, we’re going to do things a little bit differently because I haven’t had enough time to do a dedicated autonomous driving review with this car. So, what I’m going to do is let the car drive itself now while I tell you all about the specs, and hopefully we don’t have any issues. But we’re going to get to do a live test of how it is. If I make any mistakes, if I check my notes, I do apologize because I’m going to have to do this on the fly. So, let’s pull down on our tab twice. We’ve got our destination in the system and we’re now in navigation cruise assist. The car is now driving itself. I will have to touch the wheel every now and then to tell the car that I’m here, but the car will be doing all the throttle and brake input and the steering unless I take over, in which case I’ll tell you about it. So, the drivetrain on the Avatar 06 comes in two options, extended range or full EV. The extended range comes with a 31.7 kWh battery and a 1.5 L turbocharged engine. The engine is only there to charge the battery. Doesn’t touch the wheels. The battery then drives the electric motor. That one will do 230 km of EV only range and a total range of 1,190 km. And that’s on CLTC, so take about 25% off for real world numbers, but a decent amount of electric only range on that. That’s quite good. It will do 0 to 100 km/h in 6.6 seconds, courtesy of a 231 kW motor on the rear axle. That battery, by the way, will also charge from 30 to 80% in 15 minutes. So, a reasonable charge curve on that one as well. The Free Void battery is pretty good. The EV version comes in two variants with the same battery. The battery is a 72.88 kWh battery doing autonomous turn here around the corner into traffic coming from that way. It’s done that pretty successfully and change lanes again. It’s a little bit more jerky than it was in the Avatar 12, but it’s a forceful system and it does a pretty good job if I’m honest with you. So, back to the EV. You can get a single motor version which comes with a 252 kW motor on the rear axle. That is 280, sorry, 365 Newton meters of torque on the back. If you get the dual motor version, you get a 188 kW motor on the front. So, that’s 440 kW in total. and 645 Newton m of torque. The single motor version will do 0 to 100 in 3 in 6.1 seconds and the dual motor version will do it in 3.9 seconds. We’re slowing down there cuz a lady was trying to cross the road. So, the system detected that and was very careful which is good. Yeah. On the EV, as I said, you only get a 72.88 kWh battery. It’s 5C battery from CL on this 800vt platform. It will charge from 0 to 80 in 17 minutes I believe it is. Yes, 17 minutes. And it will give you a total range on the single motor version of 650 km and 600 km on the dual motor version. So decent range out of this car. Reasonable size battery. It’s got a pretty efficient drivetrain too over the our average power consumption at the moment is 16.8. 8 kW hours per 100 km. I believe we’re on the dual motor version of this car because it is rapid when you accelerate. In terms of the overall driving experience, obviously the car is driving itself now, but it’s actually quite enjoyable to drive the Avatar 06. Of course, you get this kind of interesting octagonal steering wheel, but you can change the system settings. You can have eco, comfort, and sport. Sport makes things a little bit tighter and makes the steering a little bit heavier. It’s not a sports car in terms of the the feel through the steering, but it does handle very well. For the amount of time that I’ve managed to drive it at high speed, it has been very receptive. It’s also got fantastic ride quality as well. You’ve got kind of uh I think they call hydraulic bushings and also sort of variable damping hydraulic bushings and ZF dynamic damping shocks. And honestly, really, really good on choppy roads. I took it yesterday on a rural road with a really battered concrete street. It is brilliant. And also the liar, by the way, can be used to scan the road and adjust the suspension in advance. I think it does a fantastic job. This is a very, very comfy car even on bad roads and obviously it’s very good on ordinary roads as well. It’s also got really nice inputs, I have to say. So, the braking, which is brake by wire by the way, comes from uh Continental, is very comfortable. The acceleration also very comfortable. It never feels like the car is skittish or out of control. Doesn’t feel like every anything’s harsh. It’s really well balanced. And when you come to a stop, it also gets comfort braking, which makes the car much more soft. Makes everyone feel a bit happier as they come to a stop. So, it makes the car stay more level. It’s also really refined. Super quiet in here. As I said, you get dual glazing on the front, but not on the rear. But, it is very quiet. I’ve been I’ve been driving it around for the last couple of days. The interior ambiance is excellent. on. I think they’ve done a very good job with the soundproofing in and around the cabin here. I think don’t if the speakers play any part in that in terms of active noise cancellation, but it’s very very comfortable to drive and I just think it’s it’s it’s a car that’s very pleasing. There’s a lot of Chinese cars now that are very pleasing. That’s kind of the way that the the local market likes things. Soft suspension, but as I said, it’s it’s quite dynamic around corners. Very comfortable on choppy roads. Not a sports car in terms of the feel and the feedback that you get from the steering, but you do get a little bit of weight in there. So, you’re not totally devoid from the road, but a very, very lovely place to be inside here. Now, of course, the ADAS system, we are seeing it live at the moment. I’ve not had to do any takeovers. I had to pay attention to my wing mirrors and behind to make sure that everything’s fine. We’re currently at a traffic light waiting. We do get the functionality in here where you can see the countdown of the traffic lights on the screen so you can see what’s going on ahead of you. But yeah, that’s the the main stuff about this car, I would say. We have anything that I’ve missed? I don’t think so. The car is now driving off by itself. We also get an IGVC intelligent torque vectoring system, which is well, I assume that’s pretty good when you’re driving quickly. As I said, it’s it’s not a race car. You don’t really get the chance to drive like that in a big city like Beijing, but for the time that I’ve been driving it, it’s really been quite lovely. Terms of prices, you get five versions of this car. You get two extended range and three EVs. The extended range comes in Pro and Max versions. The EV, Pro, Max, and Ultra. Ultra being the dual motor version that we have here. They start at just 29,900 RMBB, which is basically the same as a Zika 007. So, it’s very much competing with the Zika 007. Maybe Model 3 is a bit more expensive here in China. But, yeah, that’s kind of the the range that we’re looking at. In terms of style, it’s very much competing with something like a Neo ET9, which is a little bit more expensive than this. That’s for the base version of the extended range EV. For the base version of the EV, it’s 219,900 R&B. Currency translations at the bottom of the screen. Those those prices then rise up to about 250,000 R&B for the single motor max versions of the car. And then you get the dual motor version that we have, which is 279,900 R&B. Pretty reasonable price, I would say, for this car. You do get a lot of kit in it. It is, as I said, very much style focused in terms of the way that it looks and the practicality and things, but overall, it’s a lovely car. And as you can see, over the last roughly six or seven minutes, it’s done everything by itself. You will have to take over at some point. It’s not a perfect ADAS system yet. We’re still some way off having a fully perfect, totally hands-free system with no supervision, anything like that. Of course, legally in China, every system is level two by law. You have to be in charge of the vehicle at all times. Level three systems are coming later in the year. But as far as ADAS system goes, ADAM’s ADAS systems go in China. This is by far, well, not by far. This is, in my opinion, the number one. One little mistake it just made. Then it went across a junction and turned into the right lane, not the left lane, which did cut off the smart car behind us. We’re now in a bit of a road where the road markings have gone a bit funny, and it’s kind of sitting in the middle. It’s not entirely sure what it wants. Now it seems to have found the right thing. So this is again one of the things with ADAS systems. They need to be the roads need to be very accurately marked otherwise systems can make mistakes and get confused and things like that. Overall this car is a lovely car to drive. I said not a sports car. It’s not quite up there with the Xiaomi SU7 in terms of engagement but ride quality very good refinement very good and a very good ADAS system too. So, that’s it for our review of the Avatar 06. A car that in all honesty does sacrifice some practicality in favor of style and design, particularly in the boot, where you get a bit less space and a bit less space in the rear seats as well. But there’s a lot more to like about this car than that. It looks absolutely drop deadad gorgeous. You get the best autonomous drive system in China. You get a beautifully premium, stylish interior with good infotainment, zero gravity seats, and a fantastic sound system as well. And you know what? It’s pretty fun to drive as well. It’s also comfortable and very refined on the move and has a good electric drivetrain, so it charges pretty well. And it comes with a very attractive price point. Thank you very much for watching. If you do, thank you for subscribing. If you like the video, give it a thumbs up so more people can see the great cars coming out of China. And as ever, we’ll catch you next time. [Music]
The AVATR 06 is the electric saloon for those who find the Model 3 just a bit too bland. Stunning to look at with a premium interior and top-end sound system, the 06 often puts style above practicality but that’s not always a bad thing.
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