Avatr 12 set for the first full polar EV validation in Antarctica

Electric cars usually prove their mettle in Scandinavian winter trials, but Avatr decided to go a step farther—literally. The Avatr 12 liftback has been delivered to Antarctica aboard the vessel Snow Dragon and is set to work with a scientific expedition, facing temperatures down to minus 50 degrees Celsius. For an EV, that’s more than a tidy press-line: in that kind of cold, everything is under scrutiny—from battery behavior and thermal management to electronics, seals, and suspension. Polar duty has a way of stripping away illusions, so the outcome should be telling.

The trials are part of a collaboration announced in summer by Avatr Technology (Chongqing), the China Automotive Central Engineering Institute, and the China Polar Research Center. The goal is to speed up the development and rollout of technologies for new-energy transport, with the first global adaptive innovation base intended as a proving ground where solutions are vetted not in a lab, but in conditions that do not forgive mistakes. As benchmarks go, this is a tougher and more honest yardstick than a controlled test cell.

According to the project plan, the Avatr 12 is intended to be the first electric vehicle to undergo a full validation program on ice, in soft snow, and across routes with complex terrain, including zones marked by polar crevasses. For a liftback, that’s an unusual brief—and precisely why the results could speak volumes about the car’s underlying engineering.