On April 25, during the 2026 Beijing Auto Show, SAIC Volkswagen ID. ERA 9X was officially launched. The new car is available in three four-wheel-drive versions: Pro, Max, and Ultra. The official guide prices range from $45,559 to $52,912, with a limited-time offer price of $44,088 to $51,441 (April 25–May 31).
Image source: SAIC Volkswagen
Equipped with nine cutting-edge technologies, orders exceeded 10,000 within one hour of launch.
As SAIC Volkswagen's first masterpiece of the joint venture 2.0 era, the ID. ERA 9X precisely targets the $44,118-level high-end new energy vehicle market. It combines the dual strengths of 'German heritage + Chinese intelligence,' starting from actual user needs, and is equipped with nine cutting-edge technologies to achieve 'luxury at entry level, full equipment across the lineup.'
Among these, the new car is equipped with the EA211 golden range extender, which ensures almost no power loss whether in high-altitude extreme cold or during commutes with low battery. Paired with a 9-layer protected CATL Xiaoyao battery, the CLTC pure electric range exceeds 400 km, and the combined range reaches 1,651 km. The Xingyun intelligent chassis features dual-chamber air suspension, DCC electronic damping control, and rear-wheel steering, achieving a tight turning radius of just 4.85 meters, as agile as a small car. The Yunqi smart cockpit enables nine-screen interaction; the Smart Surface magic screen combines technology with practicality; dynamic zero-gravity seats provide a luxurious long-distance comfort experience; the Wanfeng air conditioner eliminates the discomfort of direct airflow; and the ANC active noise cancellation system creates a quiet space, truly achieving 'human-centered technology' to meet consumers' real needs.
It is precisely because of this that since pre-sales began on March 30, the ID. ERA 9X has received over 10,000 orders and has already secured more than 3,000 locked orders, with numbers still growing. Among the orders, over half of the customers are young users seeking intelligent driving and control pleasure; the proportion of female users is also prominent. It is also noteworthy that more than half of the orders come from users of other brands.
Image source: SAIC Volkswagen
Global debut of Momenta R7 reinforcement learning world model
At the press conference, Momenta CEO Cao Xudong officially announced that the ID. ERA 9X will be the first in the world to feature the Momenta R7 reinforcement learning world model, bringing 'physical AI' on board and leading intelligent assisted driving to officially enter the industry's first tier.
Image source: SAIC Volkswagen
In summary, R7 enables AI to truly understand the fundamental laws of the physical world—understanding physical properties, motion causality, and potential interactions. Building on this, the reinforcement learning world model also provides a training ground that complies with physical laws. For scenarios encountered for the first time in reality, R7 has already completed multiple rounds of deduction in this training ground. It can be said that R7 is specifically designed to tackle those 'one in ten thousand' rare long-tail problems—this 'one in ten thousand' represents the switch from 'useless moments' to 'highlight moments' for assisted driving, the key to building trust between users and intelligent assisted driving, and is a baseline for life safety that must be met and a peak that must be climbed.
Therefore, this capability ultimately translates into users' daily driving, intuitively reflected in earlier anticipation of complex scenarios and more composed handling. When facing 'dooring' incidents, it can predict in advance the full opening of doors and the trajectory of pedestrians exiting, preventing accidents before they happen. When encountering debris like plastic bags on the road, it can accurately determine whether they pose a threat, avoiding unnecessary hard braking or sudden steering. In complex scenarios like a box of apples falling, it can instantly predict the scattering trajectory of the items and plan the optimal avoidance route. It can even accurately identify special scenes like workers loading and unloading bicycles, reducing misjudgments, with its false braking index improved by at least threefold.
Image source: SAIC Volkswagen
More notably, SAIC Volkswagen, with an almost obsessive safety standard, has increased the AEB braking to 140 km/h, covering extreme weather and special scenarios. Combined with R7's 'spatiotemporal window' perception capability, this makes intelligent assisted driving safer, more efficient, and smoother, truly achieving seamless end-to-end driving from parking space to parking space, completely alleviating commuting anxiety.
The deep integration of this "German hardware foundation + Chinese AI algorithms" propels intelligent driving assistance from "rule-driven" to a leap of "learning, reasoning, and anticipation." For the industry, the arrival of the R7 means the efficiency of solving long-tail scenarios will be redefined, while the deep partnership between Volkswagen and Momenta offers a replicable model for global automakers to build localized AI capabilities in China.
For SAIC Volkswagen, the ID. ERA 9X is not only the first answer in the joint venture 2.0 era but also a touchstone to test whether "China-led R&D empowered by global standards" can truly close the market loop. What the industry expects is not just another "range-extender king," but a replicable path for joint venture automakers to break through in intelligentization.
