Xiaopeng took the first place in sales, I am afraid that no one thought of it a year ago. When looking back on history years later, 2021 may be the most important year in the history of Xiaopeng Motors.
Looking at the sales data, you can only see one curve; there are a lot of stories behind it that we need to put on a larger time scale to see clearly.
For example, the problem of battery life. Before the rise of the lithium battery industry, battery life and battery cost have always been the primary problems plaguing the development of electric vehicles - from an engineering point of view, to solve this problem is to do subtraction!
In 1996, the first mass-produced pure electric vehicle, the Universal EV1, had a range of only 145 kilometers, but the scientific and technological content was not low. It does a lot of "subtraction": sacrificing space to achieve a streamlined drag coefficient of 0.19, using a lot of aluminum alloys and composite materials to achieve lightweight, high-energy density lead-acid batteries up to 522 kg...
The GM EV1 was photographed by Zhang Kangkang at the Shanghai Auto Museum
The generic EV1 concept car Impact
In 2016, before the launch of products by new car-making forces, domestic car companies basically developed along the idea of "since the battery is already very expensive, then put less, other configurations can also be reduced".
Electric vehicles in this period of time often bring users a terrible experience of use, all kinds of electric anxiety, all kinds of strange rumors, and the bad reputation of a car company, most of which are also produced at this stage.
It is conceivable that this "subtraction" idea is difficult to make a good product. The ultimate of this idea is Wuling MiniEV, but that is also after the maturity of the lithium battery industry chain, Wuling used its unique cost control capabilities to create; moreover, this model can not change the entire automotive industry pattern.
Under this mainstream "subtraction", Musk's "addition" thinking seems to be untamed and earth-shattering. Stacked 80kWh of batteries, paid a considerable cost, then find a way to recover these costs from other places - since the large battery also solves the problem of high-power discharge, then make full use of it to make a coupe, Model S came into being!
From Model S to Model 3/Y, Tesla has successfully embarked on a unique path under the decade-long SEXY strategy. Is this idea innovative? It is not difficult to put it in today's place, isn't Weilai doing the same, it seems sparse and ordinary. But a decade ago, this was really a strategic route that 99 percent of people couldn't see, couldn't see, and couldn't understand.
In 2019, before the birth of Xiaopeng P7, most of the new car-making forces built electric SUVs. The reasons are obvious:
Rear space: The bottom battery occupies a certain space and is very spaced, resulting in worrying rear space of the car.
Practical needs: Unlike Europeans who prefer small cars, Chinese like cars with large spaces. The independent brands that have risen before this have almost all risen by SUV - unlike cars, which need personality and need to have a reason for existence; SUVs can definitely be sold as long as you are full of stuffing, configuration piles, and low enough prices.
Styling design: In the trend of the times to be beautiful, as long as the car is big enough, domineering enough, not ugly, even if it is moderate, it is not worried about selling. On the contrary, the car should pay attention to some personality, the requirements for not being ugly are too low, and it must be beautiful.
The typical products under this idea are Weilai ES6 (SUV + service), WM Ex5 (SUV + cheap), zero-run C11 (SUV + cost performance), and the typical product knife method is the ideal ONE (extended range SUV + product accurate positioning).
The idea of P7 is also earth-shattering:
Idea one: Under the current technical conditions, all the product features that are tangled up are simply discarded in exchange for another product feature - since the rear space is difficult to be large, it is simply designed as a small bench in exchange for an elegant coupe posture and sold to users who do not need the back row (young people, children 5-15-year-old families).
Idea two: unavoidable pain points, to fill them up.
In 2020, some people on Zhihu raised the question of "whether the endurance of new energy vehicles is as long as possible". In that era when the long endurance was just over 500 kilometers and the Tesla Model 3 was working hard to reach 664 kilometers, the endurance was like a meal that could never be eaten, and the longer the better.
The P7 also gave its own answer at that time: NEDC had a range of 670 kilometers. It is very difficult to achieve such a battery life with a coupe, because the stack battery is more difficult to arrange, and a battery with a height of 110mm [2] was specially found in the Ningde era (generally above 140mm).
After the endurance anxiety was basically opened, Xiaopeng began to focus on charging anxiety - deployed hundreds of exclusive supercharge piles, and Weilai built more than 700 substations in response, becoming the two most powerful enterprises in the construction of electric vehicle infrastructure in 2021.
Idea three: intelligent strategy throughout.
This point does not need to be repeated, P7's vehicle-machine interaction and NGP have laid a leading position in intelligence, and it is expected that G9 will strengthen the intelligent positioning of Xiaopeng.
In 2019, when He Xiaopeng first brought the P7 to the Shanghai Auto Show[3], the above three ideas were almost played out, but they did not attract everyone's attention. More people will feel that these three ideas are just not understanding the whimsy of new car players, reality will teach him to be a man again; and P7 is just a big toy to play with the concept, whether it can be mass-produced is not easy to say!
Including me, this was actually the same attitude at that time.
Lonely He Xiaopeng at the 2019 Shanghai Auto Show Image source[3]
It wasn't until 2020, when I deeply test-drove the P7, that I realized the importance of this car. The first impression is that the face value is high, the voice is strong, and the automatic parking is super easy to use.
In addition, the driving experience is very comfortable and advanced - this is also the biggest difference from the Model 3, the coupe suspension and the shape of the car, into a family car comfort orientation. This practical but not fun tuning is very annoying to car critics, and this just shows Xiaopeng's product confidence.
When it was first released, everyone's expectations for P7 were: pessimistic points of six or seven hundred per month, optimistic points of two or three thousand per month. Although I gave the highest evaluation of "the significance of the P7 to Xiaopeng, just like the significance of the Mate20 Pro to Huawei" [4], the psychological expectation is that it will sell two or three thousand vehicles per month, but I also secretly hope that it can break through to 5,000 units per month.
Here's what I said about the P7 before it was delivered in April 2020: "The historical significance of the Huawei Mate20 Pro and the Xiaopeng P7 may be higher than everyone thinks - a magnificent and dramatic historical event that felt ordinary and no big deal for ordinary people at that time."
At that time, most people not only felt that it was commonplace, many people thought that I was crazy to make this evaluation of P7, waiting for me to come out of the ocean.
Fortunately, history did not punch me in the face, but instead felt that my predictions at that time were still too conservative.
P7 2021 deliveries stabilized at six or seven thousand units, exceeding everyone's expectations.
Even He Xiaopeng himself could not imagine this achievement: "In early 2017, I began to design the P7, faced with the disbelief of many people, until now the delivery of P7 has reached thousands of units, we have finally done it, thank you!" ”
The P7 is certainly not the perfect product. On the contrary, from the perspective of its product ideas that dare to choose, it must be a product with "outstanding advantages and more disadvantages than ordinary models". For example, when I parked in an unfamiliar location yesterday, because the P7's ass was relatively cocked, it reached the blind spot of the camera and radar, and then it was hit by an iron window - this is the price of the ass and beauty!
There are many, many more such small drawbacks on the P7. This kind of product with "outstanding advantages and more disadvantages than ordinary models" has no successful precedent in the history of independent brands - I am afraid that such a good product will die and thus lose touch with its target users. So in the year and a half since the P7 delivery to now, I admit to having a preference for this car: more advantages and fewer small shortcomings.
Although I prefer it, the results are good: P7 car owners who read my article and buy a car are because my experience sharing helped them find a good car that suits them.
There are currently no users who have been brought to the ditch because of my article. If so, please leave a comment under this article.
If the P7's product concept has grown from a crumbling sapling to a towering tree, it can not only fly by itself, but also drive the transformation of friends and businessmen. In a sense, the product concept of Weilai ET5, Zhiji L7, WM M7, Negu S and other models has the imprint of P7, at least if there is no success of P7, the above cars will be a lot late.
Among the P7's benchmark models, I think the innovation of THE NIO ET5 is the most systematic and the most likely to succeed. Several others remain to be seen: the Zhiji L7 is subject to institutional factors, and there may be a misalignment between product, marketing, and sales; the WM M7 brings the MEDU thinking of the Ex5 SUV into the car, and may eventually take the cost-effective route...
The P7 has reached a monthly sales of more than 7,000 vehicles, and is destined to remain famous in the history of Chinese automobiles. I'm also so happy that I've completed my mission and it's time to dig for the next treasure car! Which car would it be?