Test drive Studying "Yandex.Auto" in Geely Atlas
Listen to your favorite music, play in the cities and find out the distance from the Earth to the Moon - "Alice" from "Yandex" settled in the Chinese crossover Geely Atlas. And that's what came of it
One of the most popular Chinese crossovers on the Russian market - Geely Atlas - has got a new multimedia system. Now the Russian-speaking voice assistant Alisa lives in the Atlas, Yandex.Music plays, and Yandex.Navigator creates routes. The Chinese plan to sell up to 80% of cars with a Russian device in the coming years. But how does it work?
Right now on the Russian market, cars with Yandex are offered by Nissan, Renault, Lada, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Skoda and Volkswagen. The Geely Atlas system differs from all other models in that it is a completely new head unit. If other brands offer to embed Yandex into the already built-in multimedia of the car, which is often accompanied by errors and a trip to the dealer for flashing, then for Geely this system is already native, specially created by the Chinese together with Russian engineers. And it is delivered to the Belarusian plant in the form of a separate completely finished part, like a motor and a gearbox. The device is being assembled by the Chinese company EcarX.
The on-board computer is equipped with 4G Internet from MTS. At the same time, if other car brands have SIM cards, then for Geely Atlas a special SIM chip was created by the Russian operator, which is integrated into the multimedia system on the assembly line in China. In the first year of use, car buyers receive prepaid unlimited traffic to Yandex resources, as well as 2 GB of high-speed mobile Internet per month for other services.
The Yandex.Auto system remembers the routes to go home or to work, includes your favorite playlists and recommends music. After pronouncing the phrase “Listen,“ Alice ”the voice assistant is activated, which enters the address, helps you to call at a gas station, prompts the weather, finds the answer to a question on the Internet or just helps pass the time in a traffic jam. With "Alice" you can play in cities or "guess the animal", when the computer reproduces the sounds of different animals, and the driver guesses. Simply put, thanks to the constantly connected Internet through the MTS chip, the Chinese crossover is turning into a Yandex station.
A crossover with a turbo engine, like other modifications of the model, is produced at the Belgi small-unit assembly plant near Minsk. Three models in 27 different modifications are rolling off the assembly line today. The Belarusians assemble 120 cars per shift. The plant now employs 1500 people. The media system with Yandex comes to the Belarusian plant and is tested on a special computer installation before assembly, during assembly and after it.
During our test drive, most of the route passed through the territory of Belarus. And as soon as the Russian Internet disappeared, the system froze. "Yandex.Avto" works offline and continues to show the laid route, but if suddenly something is lost in the map or the landscape is not loaded in advance, you will have to go blindly. The Belarusian SIM-card in a separate phone, which had the option of distributing the Internet, helped not to get lost. Through the Yandex.Auto settings, the car connected to Wi-Fi and loaded the route.
Attempts to talk to "Alice" in a foreign land were still unsuccessful. The Belarusian Internet turned out to be slower than the Russian one, so the system periodically hung up, and the third-party phone had to be rebooted. All this time, when asked "Listen," Alice, instead of an answer, a record about the low speed of the Internet appeared on the screen. So the Russian "Yandex.Auto" works properly only on its own territory. And if you use the system through a third-party SIM card in another country, then, just in case, it is better to have something else with you for insurance (regular maps or other navigation). In Russia, however, there are no complaints about the work of Yandex from the word “absolutely”: traffic jams, gas stations, overlapping, road works - Alisa notifies about all this in advance, greatly simplifying life.
With Yandex.Auto, the Geely Atlas 1,8T crossover is available for $ 22. The guys from the Middle Kingdom are sure that Atlas is a direct competitor to Kia Sportage and Hyundai Tucson. And the statements of the Chinese are not unfounded: the high popularity of Geely Atlas in Russia is associated with the appearance of a turbo engine on sale in April. Together with other versions, the company sold more than 006 thousand copies of this model in Russia in six months, making it the most popular Chinese car in Russia today. How many more "Atlases" Geely will sell together with "Alice", we will count in December.
