Mobile phone maker LeEco's electric car coming to India?

It isn't often that you hear about a mobile phone manufacturing company venture into automobiles. But LeEco, a Chinese firm better known for its electronic products such as smartphones, smart TVs and online content has done just that, creating a history of sorts in the process. In partnership with British sportscar brand Aston Martin, LeAuto, a sub-brand of LeEco showcased the prototype of its first ever electric supercar christened the LeSEE, at a special event. 

The electric supercar was also displayed at the Beijing Motor Show, but the event held prior to it was held as a special do, to launch the brand's next generation smartphones and televisions which it calls 'Superphones' and 'Super TVs'. ZigWheels was part of the select media group invited from India to witness the showcase of the LeSEE at the LeSports Centre, the brand's own full-fledged indoor auditorium in Beijing, China. 

LeEco is known for its disruptive innovations, and expectedly, the new generation devices did create a huge buzz. The LeSEE supercar though is what stole the show, stunning media from around the world, as close to 10,000 journalists were present at the event. Making a grand entry onto the stage driving the LeSEE was Ding Lei, LeAuto's co-founder, global vice-chairman and CEO for the Asia-Pacific region. 

While no technical details were revealed about the car at all, the highlight of the showcase was the connectivity it offered, and its autonomous driving abilities. We did get to learn that the car an attain speeds of up to 130mph, or 210kmph, which does help establish its credentials as a properly fast car. Jia Yueting, found of LeEco went as far to say that his company is the first in the world to enter the automotive industry the way it has, and stressed upon how its partnership with Aston Martin has helped it under the world of automobiles. 

Yueting's focus while talking about the car was clearly on its advanced connectivity rather than the car's prowess as a modern-day electric vehicle. The LeSEE will incorporate autonomous driving, which will enable users to stream and watch videos on their way to work, or other drives through never before connectivity to the Internet and LeEco's own ecosystem. The LeSEE in fact has as many as 833 patent applications for it, which speaks a lot about the advancements in technology as far as smart connectivity for automobiles is concerned. 

A manufacturing plant for the LeSEE will be setup in Nevada, USA, while special teams are hard at work in Düsseldorf, Germany, the Silicon Valley in the USA and Beijing to make autonomous driving and smart connectivity an accessible reality. The LeSEE will also be connected to a special cloud based service called the LeAuto Cluster apart from the LeAuto Link, a smartphone app that will, at a mere voice command of the user, wake up and locate the car immediately. The highlight of the showcase was Yueting using one of LeEco's new generation smartphones to connect with the car using just his voice, without even touching the phone's screen and getting the car to park itself in a designated spot all by its own, without any occupants at all. 

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In terms of design the LeSEE is as radical as you can imagine. The front end looks like the mouth of a catfish, and can detect pedestrians and convey information about their location as well as the location of other cars to the driver or the system via the in-car display that sits behind the steering wheel. The front gets a very unique looking LED light which surrounds the entire face of the car, while the LeEco logo sits proudly right in the centre. The design is coupe-like, with a sloping roof, and I couldn't help notice the similarity of the design of the LeSEE's rear end with some of the Aston Martins. 

The interiors of the car expectedly are futuristic, with an ultra-modern looking dashboard and console, including a collapsible steering wheel that folds itself into the dashboard each time the car is being driven autonomously. The car can also learn about the owner on its own with facial recognition, emotion recognition and path recognition. Path recognition will in fact allow the car to learn about the owner’s daily commute or his destination and accordingly choose the quickest way possible to get there and also inform him about the traffic, weather updates and the like on the way. If he wishes to, the driver could even choose to let the car drive itself to his intended destination, while he sits back, relaxes and watches a movie on his individual screen like the other three occupants in the car. 

With the LeSEE, LeEco is clearly setting its sights on Tesla, who has caused a revolution of sorts in the electric car world. LeEco on the other hand is famous in the tech world for its disruptive innovations and pricing. Officials at the event refrained from confirming plans to launch the car in India, but we believe LeEco will have our country on its radar as well once production begins in 2017.