Since it is a national brand, it should be better for its own users.
1
Friends, I'm heartbroken
Xiao Peng, one of the new car-making forces, has been very unhappy recently.
What bothers it is at least three things.
The first thing has to do with the face. According to the China Fund News, Xiaopeng Automobile was recently fined 100,000 yuan by the Shanghai Xuhui District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau for infringing on consumers' personal dignity, infringing on consumers' personal freedom or infringing on consumers' right to protect their personal information according to law.
What's going on? According to the penalty letter, Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile Sales service Co., Ltd. installed face recognition camera equipment in 7 of its stores, and from January 2021 to June 2021, these face recognition camera devices collected and uploaded 431623 face photos.
This kind of thing is not unique. As early as this year's "315" period, CCTV has exposed Kohler sanitary ware, BMW car 4S stores and other businesses to install face recognition cameras, consumers as long as they enter one of the stores, without knowing it, they will be caught by the camera and automatically generate a number, after the customer goes to which store, go to several times, these merchants will know.
More importantly, today's face information has become the payment password, account password, etc. of many users, and once it is leaked, it will seriously threaten the user's property security and privacy security.
Although Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile said that it has dismantled the face recognition device and uploaded face photos have been deleted, in the eyes of netizens, the punishment is still too light:
"430,000 photos of faces, fined 100,000 yuan, a photo is only two cents."
The second thing has to do with subsidies. According to a report by Jiangsu Television, a consumer in Nanjing ordered a Xiaopeng P7 for a total contract price of 279,650 yuan. However, when picking up the car, the staff of the 4S shop of Xiaopeng Automobile informed the consumer that he had to pay an additional 7,000 yuan to deliver the car:
Because the price of the whole vehicle is less than 300,000, it is impossible to get state subsidies, so when selling the car, first do a low contract price, control the price below 300,000, and then make up the price.
Unexpectedly, the "yin and yang contract" drifted from the entertainment circle to the automobile circle. It is also this incident that makes Xiaopeng fall into the cloud of suspicion of "cheating and making up".
The third thing has to do with cars. On the official website of Black Cat Complaint, Xiaopeng Automobile was involved in 264 complaints, mainly due to the delay in delivery.
According to Xiaopeng Sales, the delivery period is generally 6 to 8 weeks, but in fact, there are not a few consumers who have not been able to pick up the car after waiting for 20 weeks. What makes some car owners feel more uncomfortable is that Xiaopeng Motors treats the pre-orders of vehicles in the market differently. "The P7 670 km high-endurance version order is fully arranged for production and supply of vehicles, while the order for the 480 version of the low-end model is frozen and will not be equipped."
For Xiao Peng, the things that are not peaceful are far more than that. At the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show, a car owner chose to defend his rights at the Xiaopeng Automobile conference. But the video exposed by the media shows that the activist was carried out of the auto show by the security guard, just like the scene at Tesla a few months ago.
Earlier, on July 10, 2019, Xiaopeng Automobile released the 2020 Xiaopeng G3, which was priced at 14.38-19.68 million yuan after subsidies. In the face of this new car, which is known as "pressing Tesla and tearing BYD", Xiaopeng's old owners expressed "welcome" in a unique way:
Pull up a banner at the headquarters of Xiaopeng Automobile to defend his rights.
The emotions of the owners are well understood. The listing of the 2020 G3 means that the new car they have just arrived in less than 3 months or even a few days has quickly become an old model that has been discontinued, and the "value" in the second-hand car market has also fallen from about 120,000 yuan to 780,000 yuan in one day, a discount of nearly half. These car owners were filled with disappointment and anger:
"Pengyou talks to Xiaopeng about his feelings, and Xiaopeng treats Pengyou as a fool."
Friends, I'm heartbroken.
2
A money-burning game: sell more and lose more
Outside of Za Pengyou's heart, Xiao Peng also has good news.
In the third quarter of this year, Xiaopeng achieved a total revenue of 5.720 billion yuan, an increase of 187.4% over the same period last year, and an increase of 52.1% over the previous quarter.
More importantly, in the sales volume of the third quarter of this year, Xiaopeng ranked first among the three brothers with 25666 vehicles.
But behind this "pin crown", Xiaopeng's net profit is a bit miserable. In the third quarter of this year, Xiaopeng's net loss was 1.595 billion yuan, an increase of 38.83% over last year. Among the three car brothers, although Xiaopeng's delivery volume in the third quarter was the highest, its net loss was also the highest. Someone even made a more exaggerated comparison:
This is equivalent to a loss of about 62,000 yuan for every car sold.
From the perspective of gross profit, the overall gross profit margin of Xiaopeng in the third quarter of this year was 14.35%, although it increased compared with the previous quarter, but there is still a big gap with Tesla's 26.6% and Weilai's 20.3%.
Behind this "increase in revenue and no increase in profits", Xiaopeng's sales volume is not stable. For example, Xiaopeng's sales from July to September this year were 8040 vehicles, 7214 vehicles and 10412 vehicles, respectively, and the fluctuations were more obvious.
▲The source of the map is connected to travel
Compared with the three brothers who built the car, the ideal only relied on the ideal ONE model, and achieved sales surpassing in sales of Xiaopeng, which has two mass-produced models of G3 and P7, in 7-8 for two consecutive months.
Although new energy vehicles are a battlefield for burning money, looking at the ever-expanding vortex of money, even the most generous investors are estimated to have to weigh it.
Where did Xiaopeng's money go? I found part of the answer to this question in the earnings report.
According to the financial report, Xiaopeng invested 1.2642 billion yuan in research and development in the third quarter, which further aggravated the difficulty of Xiaopeng's profitability in the industry's view. Although this R&D investment cannot catch up with Tesla's 3.963 billion yuan in the same period, it exceeds Weilai's 1.193 billion yuan in the same period.
Reflected in the product, it is the flying car we see, the pony robot, the new model G9 and so on.
Playing the science and technology card - under the question of "increasing income and not increasing profits", this is the new story that Xiaopeng tells to capital.
3
"Tesla of China"?
For a long time, Xiaopeng was regarded by the outside world as the most Tesla-like of the three "Wei Xiaoli" brothers.
Even in the treatment of old car owners, Xiaopeng is a bit like its "model" Tesla.
In March 2019, tesla models underwent a sharp price increase, with a maximum drop of 340,000, and some car owners went to stores to pull banners to defend their rights.
But what is interesting is that on November 21 last year, He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Automobile, got involved with the "role model":
Prior to this, Musk had connoted Xiaopeng "plagiarism" on social media:
"They have an older version of Tesla's software, not our latest neural network computer."
"Yes, they also stole Apple's code."
Musk's words are not empty, in early 2019, Tesla will be Tesla senior engineer, and later job-hopping Xiaopeng Motors as the director of perception Cao Guangzhi and others sued the court.
The lawsuit alleges that former employee Cao Guangzhi stole source code related to the functionality of Tesla's Autopilot autopilot assist system before jumping ship to Chinese electric vehicle maker Xiaopeng Motors. It is understood that Cao Guangzhi is one of 40 employees who have access to the source code of Tesla's Autopilot project.
In addition, Gu Junli, who was the vice president of self-driving research and development of Xiaopeng Automobile and the founder of the self-driving research and development team of Xiaopeng Automobile, was previously in the Tesla Autopilot team.
All along, whether intentionally or unintentionally, many media have also referred to Xiaopeng as "China's Tesla".
As early as 2017, foreign media compared the models and functions of Xiaopeng Automobile with Tesla.
Battery pack, interior, exterior... In many details, you will find that Xiaopeng has traces of learning Tesla.
Moreover, according to the research of iFeng Technology, among many car companies, Xiaopeng is currently the only brand that has an absolute intersection with Tesla, not only the brand and product positioning are very similar, but even the main model Xiaopeng P7 also overlaps almost completely with the tesla Model 3 price.
In addition to the "plagiarism" questioning, Xiaopeng has also been criticized for being too heavy in marketing.
Touching porcelain Tesla need not say more, He Xiaopeng is even more blunt in public:
The core of smart cars is in operation, not manufacturing.
What's even more embarrassing is this sentence -
He Xiaopeng, an Internet veteran, successfully brought UC's set to the car manufacturing industry.
Although Xiaopeng has been promoting technology investment, whether it has really different technologies can "call" Tesla still has to be marked with a question mark.
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End
In the past two years, for new energy vehicle companies, it has been a feast of capital carnival.
Under the leadership of Tesla, other new energy vehicle companies shared a feast together, and the water rose. Needless to say, Li Bin directly changed from "the most miserable man" to "the happiest man"; Ideal and Xiaopeng also successfully listed in this frenzy.
But it's clear that the vent doesn't blow all the time. Today, on the new energy car-making track, in addition to the new forces, there are at least two powerful forces -
Cross-border rookies: Represented by Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Baidu, etc., they are rushing to intelligence at the beginning and directly pounding the core hinterland of new energy vehicle companies.
Traditional car companies: Don't say those big car companies abroad, just say that domestically, SAIC, Geely, BYD, etc. have begun to launch a fierce offensive.
▲Image source Yiou think tank
In the situation of the crowd, capital will gradually return to rationality. When the external "blood transfusion" is getting weaker and weaker, whether the so-called new forces can really develop in the long run depends on their own "hematopoietic" hard power.
Being able to win the "pin crown" of the new forces, Xiaopeng undoubtedly has its own unique advantages. But for Xiao Peng, if he does not quickly find his core territory, if he continues to chill his friends, it is really possible to do as the old saying goes:
When the times abandon you, there will be no goodbye.