JAC Yiwei has finally started exporting its inaugural sodium-ion battery-powered electric vehicles from its parent company JAC’s Smart Factory in China. According to Car News China, the first E10X compact electric cars are on their way now to the Central and South American markets.
Notably, the Chinese automotive brand just rolled the first E10Xs off the production line in its home country on December 27 last year.
JAC Yiwei to ship 5,000 E10Xs to Central and South America
JAC Yiwei formally held the launch ceremony for the brand’s first batch of 10,000 electric vehicles, E10Xs Huaxianzi and Yiwei 3, aimed at the Central and South American markets on Wednesday.
Of that total, 5,000 electric hatchbacks come with sodium-ion batteries while the other half use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery packs.
About the E10X
The JAC Yiwei E10X Huaxianzi utilizes HiNa Battery’s cylindrical sodium-ion battery packs Na-ion and JAC’s Unitized Encapsulation (UE) honeycomb technology. The sodium-ion battery offers a 23.2 kWh capacity that enables a CLTC-rated driving range of 230 km. It also has about 10 kWh per 100 km of power consumption, Chinese media XChuXing noted.
The model can support fast charging technology, enabling it to hit 10%-80% charge in just 20 minutes, dropping to 15 minutes from 30%-80%. As for the dimensions, it measures 3650 mm long, 1670 mm wide, 1540 mm tall, and has a wheelbase of 2390 mm.
On the other hand, the JAC Yiwei 3 is an LFP battery-powered version with a CLTC-rated range of 405 km to 505 km depending on the battery configuration (41 kWh or 51.5 kWh).
Brief background
Yiwei, founded in 2023, succeeds JAC and Volkswagen Anhui’s joint venture brand “Sehol.” Meanwhile, Volkswagen Anhui was the former JAC-Volkswagen joint venture, Electrive reports.
Volkswagen decided to eliminate JAC from the joint venture’s name as soon as it secured the approval to take over a majority stake. The Wolfsburg-based legacy automaker then included the headquarters’ province name “Anhui.”
In hindsight, Hina Battery and Sehol already developed a test vehicle with sodium-ion batteries nearly a year ago using the Sehol EX10. VW transferred Sehol to JAC in 2021, followed by the establishment of the Yiwei brand in May 2023. At that time, JAC replaced the Sehol nameplate with JAC or Yiwei.
The commencement of JAC Yiwei’s E10X exports paves the way for the wider uptake of sodium-ion batteries as a potential alternative to expensive li-ion batteries.
