The next big dual-cab off the rank is the GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV and it's time to go up against our 3500kg trailer, hill road and the ultimate torture test, the trailer dynamometer! Join Paul Maric as he figures out whether the GWM Cannon Alpha has the goods to topple the BYD Shark 6.
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Tow bar issue: 00:36
GCM Hill Road: 01:33
Trailer dyne performance: 07:07
Trailer dyne results: 10:13
Draining the battery: 11:02
Verdict: 12:37
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#gwm #cannon #hybrid #towing
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Tow bar issue: 00:36
GCM Hill Road: 01:33
Trailer dyne performance: 07:07
Trailer dyne results: 10:13
Draining the battery: 11:02
Verdict: 12:37
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
CarExpert:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au
Paul Maric:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric
#gwm #cannon #hybrid #towing
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00G'day, I'm Paul. This is the GWM Canon Alpha Plug-in Hybrid, and today we're going to do
00:05some tow testing. We're going to test this at its GVM, and then we're going to hook it up to our
00:09Trailerdyne, the ultimate torture test for a plug-in hybrid, as we found out with the BYD Shark.
00:14We're doing 74 kilometers an hour. It's not going any faster. We're basically running the
00:20internal combustion engine as hard as we can. Battery is virtually empty there, as you can see.
00:25So how's this going to work? Well, we've got 3,500 kilos worth of trailer. We've got payload in the
00:29back of this. This is a GVM. I'm going to hop in now. We're going to do our hill road, and then we're
00:33going to head over to the bowl and hook up the Trailerdyne. Now, before we get started, I just
00:38want to call this situation out. So this car, unfortunately, doesn't really have a factory
00:43solution for the tow bar. With the Shark, for example, or the Ranger, they've actually integrated
00:47it quite nicely. It's tucked in nicely. It's inoffensive, and it works. This, on the other
00:52hand, looks like an aftermarket job, because that's basically what it is. The end result of that is
00:57the whole thing sits quite low. So you're getting issues there with your departure angle,
01:01if you're doing any off-road driving. And if you're towing like this with 350 kilos on the down
01:05ball, you're pushing this even closer to the ground. And I would have concerns about that distance there,
01:11hitting a bump at highway speeds on the road. Just something to sort of look out for. Hopefully,
01:16they come up with a neater solution. But for the purpose of today, this is a pre-production car,
01:21and they've fitted this tow bar for us so that we can actually do the tow testing. We're going to get
01:24away with this in our closed environment here. But if I was actually towing with this out on
01:28the road, I'd want to have a better, more elegant solution than this that was a little higher off
01:33the ground. Righto. So we've just hit the road. I kind of touched on this before, but we're running
01:40this at GVM, which means we're towing three and a half tons on the rear. We have around 350 kilos of
01:47down ball weight. And then we've made up for the balance of the payload with bags in the back here
01:53that they used to use for load simulation when this was running as a proving ground.
01:58So let's see how this goes. So battery capacity is about 70%. We've got the trailer hooked up with
02:04a wireless brake controller. Comes up saying that it's in towing mode. So it switches off a lot of the
02:10safety functions. But interestingly enough, it does the same thing that the Shark does where cruise
02:14control doesn't work, which is just beyond me. I mean, people need to be able to use cruise control
02:18when they're driving their vehicles with their trailer. So it's a real weird one. So hopefully
02:25that is something they can fix as part of a software update. It's in hybrid electric at the moment. Let
02:29me flick it over to electric just to see how that fares. Okay. So it's not letting me select
02:36electric mode while we're towing, which is interesting. So I'll crack on with hybrid mode and see how we go.
02:43Now, one of the big bonuses here, in addition to regen braking, I also have paddle shifters here on
02:51the steering wheel, so I can actually go back through the gears to do some engine braking.
02:55And that gives us just a little bit more headroom there in terms of slowing the vehicle down.
02:59That was the issue I had with the Shark, that if you get to the point where you run out of
03:03regen, you're basically having to ride the brakes and you could end up cooking them if you
03:08don't watch your P's and Q's. So it was actually doing a pretty decent job there in terms of engine
03:12braking. I'm going to punch it out of here just to see how this feels.
03:17Nice. A fair bit of mumbo. So 750 Nm of torque when we are fully loaded like this, I reckon is pretty
03:29impressive stuff. You do get a lot of engine noise though, so that is a point of difference there with
03:35the Shark where that was basically pretty quiet. This is sort of making a fair old racket even with
03:41about 70% of battery in there. It is still running the internal combustion engine.
03:47But it is holding gears really nicely, so I can feel that it's basically picked a towing mode for
03:52the transmission, which means that you are able to have better responsiveness to the throttle and
03:56you're not waiting for it to kick down through gears constantly.
04:03Alrighty, here comes the fun bit. Our 15% grade. This is a very steep hill and basically once I
04:11line this up, I'm just going to kick the throttle down and see how it goes in terms of pulling this
04:15much mass up here. Here we go.
04:26Nice.
04:29Getting along quite nicely there without any dramas at all. I mean, it is just crazy to think that
04:34we're towing with such a big load here. This feels far more confident and punchy than something like
04:43a V6 diesel, which I wasn't expecting for such a heavy vehicle. With this fairly complex drive
04:51train, it actually gets along and moves really nicely.
04:57One other thing I'll mention here as well is the ride. It's actually really good. The trailer isn't
05:02leading the vehicle at all. And I don't know, I just feel that the added mass that you have here
05:07just in the base platform before you start sort of adding weight with the trailer helps it just sit
05:12a bit better on the road. If you think about some dual cab ids that weigh around that two ton mark
05:17and you've got a three and a half ton trailer, it is causing that rear to sort of move around a bit.
05:21You're getting that porpoising over bumps. So I think it's a good little middle ground there they've
05:25got here in terms of the mass. It is a big mass, almost three tons and well over three tons once you
05:31actually add down ball weight and payload to the vehicle as well. So there you go,
05:36at lower speeds it's actually switched into EV mode, which is pretty cool.
05:40All right, time for our big descent and then the bumps down the bottom.
05:44Okay, big long descent here. So right now I'm just using as much of the
05:49engine, oh sorry, the regen braking as I can. You can see there, energy recovered 50% and as I get
05:55onto the throttle it rolls out. But then you can see it jumping back up to about the 60-50% mark.
06:01As it tries to recover energy with the trailer on the back. But it is dropping away, which is what
06:06the Shark did as well as it runs out of the ability to capture that regen. Right, here comes the bumpy
06:12bits. This is probably the bit I'm most concerned about because of how low that trailer is. So let's just see.
06:18It's actually surprisingly good. Yeah, that is really impressive. I think they've done
06:34such a good job with this on the towing front. It is genuinely surprising that there is so much mass
06:40on the back, but you just don't really notice it from behind the wheel here. So yeah, pretty impressed
06:45with that. Like I said, only real concern I have is how low the tow bar sits. That is going to be an
06:51issue until they actually properly integrate that. And then if you hit a big bump, I can just see that
06:57becoming a little bit of a problem. So just something to keep an eye on. Alrighty, let's head to the bowl.
07:01And let's test the Trailerdyne and see what happens once we start putting some proper load on this.
07:08Okay, so we are on the bowl with our Trailerdyne. It's a pretty cool piece of equipment.
07:13It basically simulates, pretend it's an anchor and using this computer here, I can change the weight of
07:19that anchor so that we can simulate a trailer load on the vehicle going up a hill. If you do want a more
07:25sort of detailed explanation, here is one that I gave earlier when we did one of our big mega tests.
07:30What exactly is a Trailerdyne? Well, that is a very good question. It may look just like a normal
07:35box trailer here, but it is actually a pretty complex piece of machinery with a lot of electrical
07:40components as well that allows to do some more dynamic testing with the ute. So let me show you
07:45what it looks like on the inside. Think of this trailer as an anchor. We hook this up to the car,
07:49it weighs 1600 kilos before we even touch any of the controls. What we're then able to do with the
07:54controls is vary the weight of the anchor that's behind the vehicle and that allows us to simulate
07:59different loads. In this particular setup here, you can see there's a retarder, there's also
08:04a differential, and we're able to then communicate with this using a computer inside the car and vary
08:09the load from no load, which is just towing a 1600 kilo trailer, all the way through to 10
08:15kilonewtons of load. And to put something like that into context, it would be like having a fully loaded
08:21dual cab ute going up the steepest hill you can find, and it's constantly pulling it back. So for us,
08:27we're going to dial back the load to 3 kilonewtons in an automatic load setting, and that's going to
08:32simulate a steep incline that some of these utes are going to fail to overcome. The automatic load
08:37setting allows the dyne to temporarily limit load when the vehicle changes gears to gradually apply
08:42it again. So it's going to simulate what you will experience driving up a big hill. So the way this is
08:46going to work, we're going to accelerate through to 100 kilometres an hour, so I can log our 0 to 100 time.
08:51Some cars don't have enough power to get to 100 k's an hour with 3 kilonewtons worth of load on,
08:56so we'll also measure 0 to 90, so you can have a bit of a comparison to other vehicles in the
09:00segment. Then what I'm going to do is two laps of the bowl with the trailer load on, so that we can
09:05compare fuel economy of this vehicle unladen with it laden. Again, so you can do a comparison between
09:11this and other cars in the segment when it comes to fuel economy as well. Then the nasty stuff is going
09:16to happen. We're going to replicate the edge case test that we did with the BYD Shark, where we basically
09:21drain the battery and see whether the vehicle can cater for the load of the trailer when there is
09:27no more battery capacity left. Just as a note, we're kicking off now with 75% worth of battery charge.
09:33Okie dokie, so we'll pop this into sport mode, pop that into drive, that's all set up, we'll set our load.
09:43Okay, here we go.
09:56Nice and strong off the line there.
10:00All right, 80, 90, hit 100. Boom, yes it does, very nice. All right, let's do our two economy laps.
10:10Okay, let's have a look at these results. So, in terms of acceleration though,
10:190 to 90, 9.43 seconds, which is really good. That's really impressive. So, the acceleration time
10:26outperformed the Shark as well. 0 to 100, 11.41 seconds. Yeah, that is really impressive.
10:35So, in terms of fuel economy, unladen it consumed a combined 6.3 litres per 100 kilometres, laden it
10:43consumed around 22 litres per 100 kilometres. So, that's an increase of around 250%. But if you compare
10:49that to the Shark, because it was having to work so hard, it consumed 6.2 litres per 100 k's unladen,
10:55but 30 litres per 100 k's on the combined cycle when it was laden, which is an increase of almost 400%.
11:02Now, we're going to do our edge case. We're going to drain the battery. So, we'll give that a shot now
11:07and see how it goes. Run it all the way down to its failure mode and then just see how it performs
11:11towing a 3 kN load. We're down to 19%. This is our edge case, right? So, it's kind of like you've been
11:19camping, you've used all the energy thanks to vehicle to load and immediately out of your camping site,
11:25you've got a big drive coming with a long hill. I want to see how this performs when the battery is expired.
11:32So, getting up to 100 k's now and we're going to sit it here until the battery basically drains and we'll see
11:38see what happens. Okay, down to 15%. So, we're getting close now to the expiry range of the battery.
11:46It's worth noting with plug-in hybrids, they actually never get down below something like 10% because
11:51you don't want to be in a position where you don't have the explosive energy for your electric motor.
11:57But I'm curious to see now with down to 14% what happens when it does actually run out of usable capacity.
12:04Okay, so done about 20 kilometers of driving now and cannot get the battery to go below 11%. We're
12:11basically at this vehicle's expired state and all that happens is if I wanted to go quicker, I put a bit
12:18more throttle in and it drops down a gear and it's able to use the engine's peak power and torque band
12:23to just get it moving. So, yeah, it appears here that you just can't get this to fail. So, we'll pull over
12:31and have a quick look at the results.
12:37Okay, so we're in. I'm pretty amazed by this. I had to drive about 20 kilometers on the bowl here to get it
12:45to basically its expiry state, which is 11%. At 11%, I'm able to maintain 100 k's an hour. If it does dip
12:53at all, I apply more throttle, it kicks back a gear and this is the big advantage you have with this type of
12:58plug-in hybrid drivetrain. Here, you've got gearing, so it means that you can just kick down a gear and you'll be
13:03back in your peak torque or power band even without the hybrid assistance. So, they've done a really good job with this.
13:08This is the king of plug-in hybrid vehicles for towing. It does three and a half tons. You cannot
13:16falter it even with the three kilonewton load on board, even when the battery is expired. Like,
13:21you go to the lengths of expiring the battery, which took forever, but it still tows really confidently.
13:26So, yeah, really impressed with this and I think that if you are looking at a plug-in hybrid dual cab
13:31ute for towing specifically, this is the one I'd be going for. The Shark has not only a lower towing
13:37capacity, but also can't cut it when the battery expires. So, they have rolled out some fixes to
13:41the Shark, but it's still not enough to get it to the point where it will just keep going. This will
13:46just keep going. Super impressed with this. So, let me know what you reckon in the comments section
13:49below. We've done some towing on the hill road at GVM and now towing here at three kilonewtons and,
13:56yep, pretty damn impressed with it. Let me know what you reckon. If you did enjoy the video,
13:59please make sure you like it and share it with your mates. If you do want to see our full single car review of
14:03this, there is a link in the description below and we're going to do a comparison with
14:06the Shark 2 to give you a better idea of how they stack up against each other. But until next time,
14:11take it easy.
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