AVATR 12 EREV Review: China's Weirdest EV is a Beautiful NIGHTMARE

So this car here is half really, really, really frustrating, but half masterpiece. Welcome to eevee.com. This is the antidote to boring EV designs. This is the Avatar 1-2, probably one of the most special and original EV designs to date. Last time we reviewed the Xiaomi U7 and while I really liked that car and I thought it was a great car, design-wise perhaps it could have been a little bit more original, which is not something that is a problem for this car right here. This looks like, well, it looks like nothing else. The love child of the Batmobile and a UFO. Aggressive lines and unique light signatures to help it stand out on the road. Retractable door handles, digital wing mirrors, no back window and electric spoiler. And it is probably as long as it looks, just over five meters, which is longer than something like a Xiaomi U7 or a Tesla Model Y. But it's probably one of the most futuristic looking EV designs you will see today. But with perhaps the exception of something like the next P7 from XPunk. But for me, this car here is a beautiful disaster. How? Well, keep watching to find out. So the Avatar 1-2 is by no means a new release. It's been out for a couple of years. It's been refreshed a couple of times. This version I have today is a 2026 version and it is an extended range electric vehicle. So not the pure electric car it was when it was first released. This of course is a reflection of consumer tastes. People now are considering plug-in hybrids and extended range electric vehicles instead of going pure electric from the get-go. They are definitely becoming a more popular choice, especially in those places where public charging is a bit of rubbish and a bit expensive. Would you consider an extended range electric vehicle for your next car? Make sure you let us know in the comments. So we have a 1.5 liter gasoline engine and an electric motor. The Avatar 1-2 has a 52.01 kilowatt hour battery from CATL, who is a partner in the JV with Chung-An. We only have 4C charging, I say only, but the battery is not massive. So this kind of charging speed is probably going to be enough. The gas tank is a 45 liter gas tank and if you have a full gas tank and a fully charged battery this thing will go around 1,200 kilometers, which is a massive distance. From a fully charged battery the manufacturer claims a 356 kilometer CLTC range, but based on our tested efficiency we predict around 10 to 15 percent less than this. While officially the drag coefficient of the Avatar 1-2 is 0.21 cd, which would make it even lower than the Tesla Model Y, there was some controversy earlier this year when a Chinese blogger actually tested it as above 0.28. Needless to say, Avatar have not been very public about these numbers going forward. Realistically it's probably somewhere between 0.21 and 0.23. Much like the exterior, the designers were definitely given a very very long leash when it comes to the inside of the Avatar 1-2. In short, it's weird but I love it. It reminds me of some of those kind of classic sports cars that are kind of very quirky, but you kind of have to admire the design. Very premium, lots of soft touch materials everywhere. I think it's probably the EV which perhaps most closely resembles the inside of a spaceship. And I'm not just talking about this 35.4 inch screen we have going across the front here or these two side view mirror displays. And some of you may have noticed this is actually one continuous windscreen that goes all the way up to behind my head. So basically we have an uninterrupted view of the horizon and the stars. I like that. I'm not sure how well this will do on a hot summer's day in keeping you cool. We're talking about this car, we need to remember design comes first, practicality second. The side paneling, the curves and lines all have this kind of otherworldly vibe and this is something that I think is really cool. But there are a lot of things inside the Avatar 1-2 which will take some getting used to. For example, these digital rear view mirrors. I've been driving this car for a few days. I've been looking out here for 20 years and now I have to look here. It's an incredibly hard habit to shake and also it doesn't really improve the blind spot. It doesn't really improve on a normal wing mirror experience. It might help with drag coefficient and it might look nice in terms of design but it's probably not needed. I do admire the Avatar 1-2 for trying but it's not for me. And then of course we have a digital rear view mirror as well. I know you guys in the comments who are far-sighted are going to be screaming at me that these things are not what you want to see. I think for most case scenarios you probably wouldn't opt in for the digital wing mirrors at least. Another thing is the window button. So on the door here there's no things for opening your windows or closing your windows. They're actually in the center unit down here which okay is an interesting way to design your vehicle but all that happens is every time you arrive at a toll booth or you need to open your windows you're doing this and then you're like oh it's actually over here. So it's we've been doing this for so long and now we have to do this which seems a little bit unnatural. Feels very unnatural as well. Opening the door to rather than a kind of thumb button or a traditional handle down here we have this. This is the door opening button. Doesn't look very obvious and I feel like every time you had a guest in your car you would have to tell them how to open the door which suggests that it's probably a little bit more complicated than it needs to be. And to open it you have to press it not once but twice which to me suggests that many people would open this by accident. One cool thing about this door here is that we don't actually have any there's nowhere to put our drinks or whatever throw our rubbish in in our doors. Ah but actually there is because behind here is the button and this actually flips open so we do have a decent size enough to put a few bottles of water in there or hide whatever you might hide in there and we have our manual door open here so this is actually really cool. In the center here we have a 15 point inch floating touchscreen. This vehicle is powered by Huawei including the OS as well as the autonomous driving functions. The system is quick if perhaps a little Huawei S sometimes it tends to shout you a little bit but you can of course customize this screen as well as this what is called the remote screen with your chosen widgets. So avatar have been doing these screens for a while and now we can see brands like Xiaomi kind of taking this further with their hyper hud as it's called. The difference with the Xiaomi's is that it actually encroaches on your view of the road because it comes up the windscreen. Here the dash has actually been lowered and it sits even below the windscreen so we don't have any of our view compromised however the result is that this dash has been lowered and it means less space in the footwells. I like this screen all I would say is that the bezels are a little bit big and it'll be nice if it was a continuous screen rather than having these big black spaces in between the center screen and the digital wing mirror screens. So in the middle here of course we have our wireless charging for our phone and it's really cool you have a sensor ceremony you get in the car the pad actually drops down so your phone is more secure and actually it has some vents here to blow some cold air on your phone to make sure it doesn't overheat so that's kind of like a cool way to enter your car and begin the driving experience. The only thing is if you're you know stopping at a traffic light and you lift your phone up you know this thing ends up coming up and it's got to go down again and the motor in there sounds tired already and this is a new car so I can imagine this motor not holding out for a huge amount of time. Pretty much sums up a lot about this car. Is it the most practical way to do it? No. Is it cool from a design perspective? Yes. Does it look good? Yes. Does it make you feel happy? Yes. In the back and we do kind of have electric doors by the way all the doors in the avatar one two are fully electric so in the back here we do have kind of like this bordering on executive travel experience we have lots of leg room the seats are very low and kind of angled back so it's kind of like comfortable as if you're driving a cruiser headroom a little bit tight for me but I think most people would be fine ideally you would only have two people in the back so you could have this armrest down in the middle so you've got a place to put your phones or the charging port here as well you have our cup holders here and then we do have heated ventilated and massaging seats same as in the front here although these are zero gravity as well the funny thing about this is the types of massage we have are wave what I can only describe as a dog paw and butterfly so if you want to make heads or tails of that I don't know we have a nice sunroof up here and we do have a tv screen here I don't know how to bring this down I've checked in the screen I've checked here there doesn't seem to be any obvious way bring this television down I guess it'll just be another one of the mysteries of the avatar one two but if you did bring it down and you were sitting in the back here getting a massage it would be a very nice way to spend a longer journey what do you think of the avatar one two's interior do you think is interesting quirks outweigh the minor problems make sure you let us know your feelings in the comments so the back of the avatar one two is probably even more interesting than the front so we have this kind of light cluster here that cuts through onto the door panel this is a lift back and there is no rear window on here at all so we have a digital rear view display nice little electric spoiler here which I think helps to break up the design in the back and if we look inside we can see that the opening of this trunk is almost as high at is as it is wide we still have a good size boot 425 liters there but as you will see throughout this review this car doesn't really prioritize practicality rather a great interesting and memorable design so this car of course uses electric motors only to move so it's kind of a toned down version of the pure electric version which i think is actually for the best so in terms of power we have 231 kilowatts and for torque we have 367 newton meters so these numbers are fairly conservative for you know new energy vehicles and it gives us an acceleration time of 6.7 seconds which for me is really in that sweet spot it's kind of similar to a kind of a single motor pure electric vehicle it's not crazy but it still has a little bit of acceleration should you need it and I think for the most part this is better because over the long term you're getting better efficiency I don't think this car is meant to be driven quickly or aggressively I think it's a cruiser we have digital rear view we have digital wing mirrors the combination of these really messes with my spatial awareness and my perception of space actually maybe you guys have better experiences of using these digital rear view and wing mirrors make sure you let us know in the comments below but for me it's something which I haven't got used to yet and I'm not actually incredibly confident when I'm driving this car it's quite a long car and for maneuvering and things like parking it's supposed to be improving things but for me it makes things so much more difficult and then we have this steering wheel which isn't exactly a yoke but then again it's not really your traditional type of steering wheel obviously it's been chosen because it doesn't obstruct our view of this long screen we have on the dash here as I mentioned this car is much more of a cruiser kind of like you put your hands here you kind of chill out and you you follow the road you know it is quite heavy it is quite a low slung profile it is a sedan you do feel a lot of the road you feel a lot of the bumps but for things like highway driving it's very smooth it just eats up those motorway miles so another reason why this this type of steering wheel is also great for if you're not even driving at all so if you're using the car's autonomous functions and having a steering which is smaller and kind of out the way makes more sense and I think we'll see these kind of steering wheels more and more as self-driving improves further. Our efficiency during testing was between 15.2 and 15.5 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometers which consisted of mainly urban driving so we predict an actual battery range of around 320 kilometers so I think if you're driving 20 or 30 kilometers a day this is enough but further than that you're probably going to have to be adding gas. This car here is not very practical at all you should buy one in all seriousness there are a lot of practical EV options on the market today but you won't find another more original more unique design than this avatar one two a design which keeps you on your toes a design that keeps surprising you a design that makes you go huh every time you step inside we need more original EV designs like this. While it might be the more practical choices that win out in terms of sales it's designs like these that will be remembered. What do you think what do you think of the design of the avatar one two and do you think you could overlook its imperfections be sure to give us a like and a subscribe and make sure you let us know what you think in the comments below I'll see you next time