The car brand IM stands for Intelligence in Motion. It was born from an idea of the Chinese company SAIC (64% of the shares), the Internet giant Alibaba and the Shanghai Pudong district administration (18% of the shares each), which founded the joint company Zhiji Auto in 2020 and al early 2021 shown their first developments. The IM L7 sedan was the first to hit the conveyor belt: in China these cars started going on sale last summer, and now the first expansion of the range has been announced.
The IM L7 itself is conceived from the Chinese analogue of the Tesla Model S. The 5098 mm long sedan has an aerodynamic body (Cd coefficient of 0.21), spacious interior with retractable AMOLED display on the front panel, an IM AD level 2 autopilot with standard lidar and exceptional performance. The all-wheel drive chassis with adaptive suspension was developed with the involvement of specialists from the English office of Williams Advanced Engineering.
The standard IM L7 also has four-wheel drive with two electric motors that produce 578 hp. and 725 Nm. The sedan can accelerate to “hundreds” in 3.87 seconds and the traction battery with a capacity of 93 kWh should be enough for 615 km on the CLTC cycle. In addition to the standard connectors, there is also a wireless charger with a receiver under the bottom, but its power is only 11 kW. All this splendor costs 51-56 thousand dollars and the Chinese market is already recruiting 1,000 buyers a month.
Now, an even more powerful IM L7 Snake Performance sedan has appeared in the range and in two varieties at once. The Snake Performance Lite starter kit includes only high-output electric motors (605hp, 730Nm), a steering wheel instead of a steering wheel, suede seat covers and matte body paint (only three dark colors are offered). The acceleration time to “hundreds” has been reduced to 3.7 s.
The full version of Snake Performance is also a significantly modified chassis. The suspension was retuned, the Brembo brakes were strengthened, lightweight wheels were installed, the settings for the driving electronics were changed and the steering was shortened. Such a sedan should really become that of a driver, and to confirm this, the developers cite the lap time at the Chinese Zhejiang International Circuit: 1 minute and 42,212 seconds. TO absolutely this is far from a record, but the result of the Porsche Taycan Turbo S electric car was beaten by more than two seconds!
The “Snake” versions are already available for order in China. The IM L7 Snake Performance Lite sedan costs 66 thousand dollars, but for the record version they are asking for 80 thousand, and such cars will be produced in small quantities.
