PLA will buy 2100 BJ2022JC Light Utility Vehicles

this article once published on JDW

August 2rd, Beijing Automobile Works (BAW) announced that PLA will purchase 2100 BJ2022JC “Brave Warrior” light utility vehicles for the troops. Resources said that the 1000 vehicles will provided to Fujian sub military district where the frontline of Taiwan Strait is.

BJ2022JC is the successor of classic “BJ212” light wheeled vehicle (a Chinese copy of the Soviet UAZ469B), which has been used in PLA for over 40 years. In 1999, PLA invited a public bidding for its generation utility vehicle in China automobile manufactures. After 3 contends, “Brave Warrior” beat other competitors and won the final bid

BJ2022JC series has 0.5 ton class and 0.75 ton class chassis for providing a wide using role in battlefield commanding, materials transportation, personnel carrier, communication and ground assaulting (with light weapons).

BJ2022JC is a full- time 4WD vehicle, which has HMMWV-kind differentials for both and rear to power the wheels. And its independence suspension system learned from Land Rover for greatly improved control in off-road conditions.

The Engine, a 3.2L turbo-charged inter-cooling diesel engine, has output 101.5 KW at 3600 RPM and can reach the biggest torque 313 N·m at 2000 RPM. This diesel engine also has an excellent performance in low temperature. The vehicle can be initiated and run in 20 seconds when lowering than -30℃, and by some assistant measures, the engine can be operated in 45 seconds when in condition between -30℃ and -45℃.

“Brave Warrior” has a creative design: dual-fuel-tank. The main tank has capacity of 85L and the back-up tank’s capacity is 18L. The fuel feeding can be easily manually switched from different tanks. BAW claims that the engine fuel efficiency is average 6L /(100 km) and BJ2022JC can reach max range over 1000KM. But some resources from users said that the engine fuel economy is very hard to be complimented.

In the research of the vehicle, BJ2022JC passed the endurance testing in Hei Longjiang Province (High latitude area), Yunnan Province (hot-humidity area), Gansu Province (Desert area) and Tibet (High altitude area). The vehicle was also actualized in an air-drop test for Air-borne performance evaluation. The total test driving range is over 350000 km.

Actually, BJ2022JC is manufactured in the Shunyi District factory owned by Beijing Benz-Daimler Chrysler Automobile Co,Ltd, which was once the Beijing Jeep Automobile (a BAW- Chrysler company) and now is a joint-venture by BAW and Daimler-Chrysler. And BAW also acknowledged that most technologies in BJ2022JC are from BAW’s over 20 year cooperation with western automobile manufactures.