Text | Karakush
At the end of the year, Li wanted to look quite idle.
He watched the anime "Ranking of Kings" on the B station; he worked out every day, in fact, he split the VR game "Rhythm Lightsaber" on the Oculus Quest 2; and he also reviewed an old book published in 2013, "Crazy Simplicity".
Last night, he wrote another small essay "40-year-old me and 14-year-old Li Xiang said a few words of heart", revealing that he had gained more than 20 kilograms in 26 years.
There is no point in pointing to the unsaturated workload.
Entrepreneurs, especially entrepreneurs with a personality like Li Xiang, are willing to show that life is a good signal that the company's operating conditions and management system are on track.
On the other hand, if the operation and management have been self-sufficient, it means that the company still has many problems, lacks a solution mechanism, and must make decisions in a big and detailed manner. So the boss who can't sneak around, how can it be a good company.
Idleness is actually a kind of solidity.
The most comfortable person in 2021
Li thought it should be quite idle.
After all, He Xiaopeng also said on the CCTV "Dialogue Challenger" column that among the three Wei Xiaoli, Li Xiang was the most comfortable this year. They have a small group that discusses industry policies on a daily basis.
Judging from the performance, I am not deceived.
Last month, ideal car deliveries exceeded 10,000 units, rushing to 13,485 units. According to the third quarter financial report guidance, the ideal is expected to deliver 30,000-32,000 units in the fourth quarter, which means that regardless of order stock, market demand or production/supply chain capacity, the ideal visual measurement is sure to remain over 10,000 in December, and may even exceed expectations. As for whether it is or not, the result will be known in two days.
At this time last year, the ideal delivery scale was only more than 6,000, which was already the best result of the full strength of the tail teeth. Sales doubled in one year, and the model guidance price also rose by 10,000, and the volume and price flew together, which was the ecstasy of the double kitchen that others could not envy.
The brilliance is more than face. As of the third quarter, the gross profit margin of ideal bicycles exceeded 20%, reaching 21.1%. Healthy and even strong profitability, coupled with restrained expenses, has enabled the ideal to achieve both positive operating profit and net profit under non-GAAP, and the cash reserve on the book is relatively large at 48.83 billion.
The ideal is already a mature ideal, and you can support yourself on your own.
Only three years ago, there were only 900 million left on the ideal book, and it had to rely on the relief of the jianghu people. Li Xiang once laughed at himself, because of the lack of funds, so that his requirements for cost and efficiency are almost "perverted", and everything must be explained with mathematical models to ensure that the car can be sold to obtain positive cash flow.
Behind the well-known "door cutting" in the industry, there is a nervous tension that is not allowed to take another wrong step, and if it fails, it is not even qualified to enter the ICU for rescue. Today's ideal survival ability is not only to run through the closed loop and settle down, but more importantly, they have a certain robustness, can tolerate risks slightly, and bear setbacks.
In fact, the ideal of 2021 is not so comfortable, and the chip problem that plagues Xiaopeng and Weilai also plagues the ideal. Just two months ago, they also had to decide to deliver three of the five radars first and two on credit because of the shortage of millimeter-wave radar chips, which caused a lot of ridicule. Until today, the students of the supply chain are still home all day, squatting everywhere, begging for a little here and there, piecing together delivery, and now the average waiting time after placing an order is still 6-8 weeks, which is not easy.
However, both the external vision and the internal confidence tend to be stable: for the ideal, the problem that can be solved is not a problem, and the general small scene can no longer shake the ideal.
Blockbuster of the Year
The solidity of The is based on the ideal ONE product.
This is actually frightening, the risk is too concentrated, and everything is lost.
Other small brothers who broke tens of thousands, Xiaopeng and Weilai each have three models on sale; the ideal is only the ideal ONE, and the ideal ONE has only one configuration. However, this car shows an unusually high efficiency, with one hundred against 100, and also presents two noteworthy features:
First, it didn't eat much of the policy dividend. There is no subsidy for more than 300,000 yuan; as for the license discount, according to the ideal insurance volume data, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Tianjin and other cities with license plates account for only 23% of the purchase, while the proportion of non-restricted cities reaches 76%, including Beijing, which is limited to purchase and has no license for the extended range.
Among the medium and large SUVs in the Beijing area, the ideal November ranked first in the amount of insurance, pressing the Volkswagen Tuang, Lanjing, BMW X5 and Mercedes-Benz GLE and so on. The ideal ONE is already competing head-on with fuel vehicles.
Its sales reflect more or less the real demand of the market, and there are few incentives to force hard buying. Good products do not expect subsidies and policies, and the impact of the later decline is relatively limited, and it is a compliant explosive product that has been tested by the market, and it is worth looking forward to the next depth.
Secondly, many of its replacement users come from luxury car owners, and the top 3 replacement brands are BMW (7.7%), Mercedes-Benz (7.6%), and Audi (6.7%), and the total BBA population accounts for 22%, of which the most replaced models are the BMW 3 Series and Mercedes-Benz C-Class in the same price band.
These users are not bad money, and second, they have a clear frame of reference, know what is excellent car quality and experience, and still give up respect, indicating that the ideal ONE's product power does have high-end attributes and brand sustainability.
The new energy vehicle market in 2021 is very magical, per capita high-end, because the intelligent driving ability has not yet been opened, the current shelf mass production model is around the suspension, machine computing power, audio, endurance to expand extremely limited and traditional parameters within the roll, the price is piled up high, but the high-end sense may not be very good.
A fundamental differentiator may lie at the level of the core product manager. In the ideal, it is Li who thinks that his intuition about the product is largely derived from his direct experience of buying a luxury car and driving a luxury car. For example, at a meeting of the product development department, Li wants to make a decision that Bentley is doing this, and everyone will study how Bentley does it. The ideal ONE has some inexplicable 5 million metaphysics, probably derived from Bentley cut out of the cost.
In a survey from business consulting firm Geran Road, after long-term tracking of 18 new energy brands, it was found that Ideal ranked first with a net recommendation of 90.2%.
At the product level, only something that is difficult to eat will explain to you that "it is difficult to adjust"; a good product will always find the identity of the greatest common divisor.
Exclusive closed loop
On the outside, this year's iteration is the basis of victory, while increasing the configuration and price, consumers perceive super cost-effective, flocking to come. It's all to go back and make up for it.
Before June, no one was optimistic at all. In May 2021, the ideal base number was 4,000 units, and it was announced that it would sell more than 10,000 yuan a month with one car in four months, and the cost performance was high, even the ideal biological employees did not believe it at that time.
This is not a completely willing situation, a single product is a legacy of no money in that year, there is no spare energy to develop multiple products; the goal is not based on reality, but based on the backwards of the expansion strategy - because by the inflection point of the market in 2025, the market share will reach 20%, that is, 1.6 million units per year, and the ideal will have the opportunity to survive in the competition.
A 1.6 million enterprise cannot reach that level by relying on three or five thousand bicycles. In the future, ideal will launch a variety of products on the second-generation extender platform and two pure electric platforms, until then, the ideal ONE must be strong to support a relatively healthy gross profit margin, in order to continue to invest more than 10% of research and development for a long time and lay out future development.
According to Li Xiang's plan, such a good product should be able to sell more than 10,000 yuan a month last year. In addition to the product itself, the biggest is due to channel construction, sales costs account for more than 10%, the effect is immediate, the sales service network expanded rapidly, covering 100 cities and nearly 200 stores by the end of the year.
This speed is also the result of the strategic adjustment at the beginning of the ideal year, the original efficiency is the first, but the ideal judgment knockout is accelerating, so in front of the scale, efficiency gives way.
In terms of the general trend, in the ascending track, it is still difficult to make a decision on how bold and productive people are, and it is still difficult to make a decision when the ideal is put into force; this focus on a single hit proves to be a feasible closed loop. This model cannot be copied, only on the ideal ONE product can be achieved, only ideal such a company can do.
You have to insist on being willing to make a lot of choices that are not understood. For example, the power of the extended range, which has become the premise of undifferentiated rollout across the country.
Ideal sales exceed Weilai, the price is higher than Xiaopeng, profits and good cash flow is stable, but in the capital market, the market value is still the smallest one, because it focuses on creating market segments of cost-effective products, this simple strategy does not see too much imagination, the excitement of capital in pure electric investment and intelligent technology.
In fact, in the early days of entrepreneurship, some investors suggested that Li wanted to do pure electricity, pure electricity is easier to tell stories, that is, to do China's Tesla, investors can understand and like to listen.
Li thought that the words at that time were: "I didn't make this car for investors. ”
The courage to be hated
It's not just capital. In September 2020, Volkswagen Feng Sihan bluntly said that the increase in range is the worst solution.
This sentence Lee wanted to remember for a year. In December, he sent a Weibo post to compare sales, recording the mental journey from 1,011 units per month to the champion of medium and large SUV sales in 24 months:
Only three nodes were marked: the ideal ONE began to be delivered; last year Feng Sihan gave an opinion; and this year the ideal ONE topped volkswagen.
In the eyes of many people, Li Xiang is a fanatic. His WeChat signature reads: "Do not participate in any public meetings, thinking and practicing will be reflected in the product and organization."
It doesn't look very tear-resistant. If you've read the book "Crazy Simplicity," you might call it "Conciseness." It is regarded by Li Xiang as the "key book", which is the second and third things recorded by Jobs, a former creative director of Apple.
For example, concise communication is to give clear feedback very directly and clearly, good or bad, where is not good; concise meeting, that is, to hold a small meeting and not to open a conference, do not need "bystanders"; concise organization, that is, to elite small teams, up to 100 people, more will eliminate the poor, because Jobs can only remember 100 people. Wait a minute.
You'll find that this is pretty much the way emerging business figures have succeeded in the last decade.
Take Musk, for example. This year he wrote an internal Tesla email, "If I send an email with clear instructions, managers can only behave in three ways." 1. Email me back explaining why I'm not saying it right, sometimes I'm completely wrong. 2. If what I say is unclear, please check further. 3. Follow the direction I say. If the above points are not done, the relevant manager will immediately resign and leave. ”
In the ideal, it is an organizational structure called "network collaboration". Information transparency, decentralization, and focus on growth allow everyone to align their cognition, take the initiative to make decisions within their own responsibilities, and effectively collaborate with their classmates around them to mobilize the strength of Cthulhu.
One notable thing is the rapid iteration. Ideal Store shared a story this year, ideal internal will regularly hold front-line staff communication meetings, Shen Yanan will also participate. The views and suggestions she reflected at the communication meeting in Beijing in the morning, and the store rectification plan that returned to Shanghai in the evening can be implemented.
Simplicity is the result of deliberate design through the correct way of organization, the core of which is to streamline the decision-making mechanism. Finally, it is presented in efficiency, less money and large industry; products, one and better; also presented in communication, easy to understand and clear.
The other side of simplicity, Li Xiang also knows clearly.
In the small essay, he reflected that the 40-year-old is still unobstructed, provocative, annoying, and does not live as mature and stable, broad-minded, rational and objective as others want, almost the same as when he was 14 years old.
"Not complicating yourself with circumstances is perhaps the proudest in 26 years."