If you want to ask who has the most momentum among the new car-making forces in 2021? There is no doubt that Xiaopeng Automobile can win a seat.
Since October last year, Xiaopeng Automobile's "full firepower" has not only won the sales championship for three consecutive months, but also finally called "King" on the year-end list.
According to the data, Xiaopeng Automobile sold up to 16,000 vehicles in December, of which Xiaopeng P7 delivered 7459 vehicles and P5 delivered 5030 vehicles, which is still the highest selling new power brand. From the perspective of annual deliveries, Xiaopeng Automobile sold a total of 98,000 vehicles in 2021, leading Weilai Automobile to win the annual sales championship and ranking first among the new car-making forces.
For the final submission, He Xiaopeng himself was also full of emotion: "98155 vehicles, 12 months, 365 days, sweat, tears, laughter, step by step we have come!" "It wasn't all smooth sailing, but thankfully all the effort was worth it.
2021 is the starting point for new energy vehicles to begin to rise, in the case of the favorable situation of the market, Xiaopeng Automobile uses a beautiful report card to make everyone think, leading the first echelon of new forces, What is Xiaopeng doing right?
With technology as the cornerstone, adhere to intelligent self-research
With the gradual landing of intelligent driving technology, infrastructure enters the "arms race" in the second half. Cross-industry technology integration and innovation, global collaboration has intensified, and the supply chain system of intelligent electric vehicles is expanding and upgrading.
For intelligent driving cars, commercial landing has become a standard for measuring the technical strength of car companies. The battle entered the second half. The mission of the second half of intelligent assisted driving is to realize the evolution from intelligent assisted driving to automatic driving. In fact, from the beginning of its birth, the layout of Xiaopeng Automobile has been around intelligence.
He Tao, co-founder and senior vice president of Xiaopeng Motors, once said: As one of the earliest batch of technical personnel in China to do autonomous driving, Xiaopeng Motors is a game-breaker and will do its best to change the existing automotive industry pattern. He judged that the next 5-10 years must be the era of intelligent manufacturing, for which Xiaopeng Automobile has been laid out in advance.
Under the development path of technological leadership and intelligent self-research, Xiaopeng's product layout ideas and differentiated positioning sought in various market segments, under the core technology of intelligence, each product has its own unique label and charm.
From the perspective of products, the model that helps Xiaopeng Automobile break through is undoubtedly the Xiaopeng P7. As the "biggest hero" behind Xiaopeng's sales crown, since the second half of 2021, P7 has led the way in the sales list, changing the trajectory and destiny of an enterprise by itself. It can be said that Xiaopeng P7 has become a benchmark product for smart electric vehicles in China.
As the "first car of intelligent coupe", a total of 5 OTAs will be realized in 2021, which has brought the high-speed NGP intelligent navigation assistance driving system that understands China's road conditions the most, the memory parking of the strongest VPA parking lot on the surface, the AI sound of the new intelligent voice assistant Xiao P, and the optimization and upgrading of many intelligent auxiliary driving and on-board system functions. In order to provide users with more choices, in March 2021, the Xiaopeng P7 Pengyi Edition was officially delivered, helping the Xiaopeng P7 to continue to become the best-selling model in the market segment.
Looking at the G3, as its first car, unlike other car companies that will automatically park as a selling point, or even a gimmick, Xiaopeng will use it as the fist of G3, solving many problems in parking space recognition rate, scene coverage, parking efficiency and so on. In 2019, Xiaopeng Automobile's first intelligent operation report showed that the G3's automatic parking function was used at a monthly rate of 70.4%, the number of monthly uses was 32,000 times, and the average time spent each stop was 30 seconds. Under the leadership of Xiaopeng, there are more and more automatic parking functions that experience well on the market, so that the configuration that was originally regarded as "chicken ribs" has become a high-frequency use function for users. This battle has allowed Xiaopeng Automobile to have its own foothold in the field of intelligent cars, and also allowed its first car, G3, to gain a firm foothold in the market.
With the rapid development of the main force of automobile consumption and the new energy vehicle market, the needs of users are changing at all times every year, and the gradual expansion of young consumer groups has greatly increased the rate of automobile update iteration, and once the update is delayed, it will lag behind. In this regard, Xiaopeng G3 also needs to usher in a new upgrade, so that it can be more in line with the appetite of young consumers.
After the G3i was listed in July last year, whether in terms of appearance and styling, or comfortable configuration and assisted driving, Xiaopeng G3i has fully combined the current needs of young consumers to optimize, in addition, G3i has also upgraded the strongest in-vehicle entertainment chip in the same level: Snapdragon 820A vehicle specification level chip, bringing the industry's first all-voice car system for more young people, "Hello, Small P" AI voice assistant, continuous dialogue, visible can speak, dual tone area recognition, Easy-to-use and easy-to-use intelligent voice functions such as small P image and flexible customization of voice commands are the standard of Xiaopeng G3i. This makes it a model tailored for Gen Z.
Like Tesla, Xiaopeng Motors is the only mass production car company that adopts a full-stack self-developed approach to the development and application of intelligent driving technology, and behind the excellent experience of NGP is the support of many industry-leading technologies such as powerful automatic driving architecture and hardware solutions, high-precision positioning capabilities, 360° dual perception and fusion capabilities, and dual computing platforms that are redundant with each other.
In the next step, Xiaopeng Motors aims to expand the coverage of NGP to urban expressways and some urban roads outside the highway, and it is xiaopeng P5 that takes the lead in provoking this heavy responsibility. In September of the same year, Xiaopeng Automobile's third product, the world's first mass-produced smart car equipped with lidar, the Xiaopeng P5, was unveiled.
Whether it is the new urban NGP intelligent navigation assisted driving function in P5 or the VPA-L cross-floor parking lot memory parking function brought by XPIRAT3.5, it is constantly increasing consumers' experience of smart cars.
In November, Xiaopeng Automobile's fourth product, Xiaopeng G9, made its world debut. According to reports, Xiaopeng G9 is the first mass production flagship model developed by Xiaopeng Automobile for the global market, using the industry-leading X-EEA 3.0 electronic and electrical architecture and 800V high-voltage SiC platform, and will be equipped with XPILOT 4.0 intelligent driving assistance system, which is scheduled to be delivered in the third quarter of 2022.
As one of the few new car manufacturers in China that adheres to full-stack self-research, with the landing of XPIROT3.0 equipped with P7 in 2021, Xiaopeng has become the only car company in China to complete full-stack self-research, and in 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile has gradually realized the landing of high-level auxiliary driving functions and technologies such as NGP, VPA memory parking, and lidar mass production.
Xiaopeng Motors said that from 2023 onwards, it plans to further improve the company's intelligent model matrix with 2-3 new models every year, and will support XPILOT4.0 or above systems.
It is not difficult to see that from G3, P7, to G3i, P5, and now to G9, each of the "first in the industry" technology marks the improvement of Xiaopeng Automobile's technology in the field of intelligence. Xiaopeng Automobile has firmly attached the label of "intelligence" to the product. And SUVs and cars are staggered, but each other's positioning is different, each car has its main market, facing different groups of people, which means that every time a new car is launched, it can take away a group of users from the fuel vehicle market and become a Xiaopeng user. After all, through the accumulation of full-stack self-developed technology, Xiaopeng Automobile has a very good performance in terms of intelligent assisted driving NGP and full-scene intelligent voice, VPA parking lot memory parking, etc., cool and young, becoming a label for Xiaopeng for a new generation of consumers.
Pushing the limits, quality and performance stand the test
"If you want to really do a good job in quality and intelligence, you must find the best partner, and the price will definitely be more expensive." But only in this way can safety and reliability be done well. He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, always believes that Xiaopeng Motors needs to strive to control costs as much as possible while ensuring that autonomous driving technology and the Internet continue to upgrade, but the cost of quality must not be saved.
Xiaopeng Automobile can dominate the new forces of domestic car manufacturing, in addition to benefiting from its comprehensive, extensive and sustainable manufacturing system layout, quality is also a very important value in the Xiaopeng system.
In November, the in-white body of the Xiaopeng P7 underwent a public test of 23 consecutive days and more than 550 hours of uninterrupted seawater, and tens of thousands of users in the 798 Art District, a popular landmark, witnessed the entire experimental process at zero distance.
This is an extremely demanding challenge for any car. As a natural electrolyte, seawater can cause severe corrosion to metal parts, as well as cars.
On November 22, the authoritative organization China Automobile Research Automobile Inspection Center conducted a comprehensive inspection of the body-in-white body of the Xiaopeng P7, analyzed the life of the corroded solder joints, and issued an authoritative verification report.
The report shows that it is evaluated and inspected in accordance with the ISO 4628 "Grading method after performance test of colored paints and varnish coatings" series of international standards. The performance of Xiaopeng P7 is very excellent, no blistering, no edge corrosion, no weld corrosion, front cover, front wall, front wheel package lower part, left and right fenders, left and right front door, left and right rear door, left and right side doors, left and right side doors, rear tail door surface corrosion grade are all 0 (the highest grade, no corrosion), front cabin components, trunk and rear floor parts Surface corrosion level is 1 (secondary high grade, rust area <0.05%).
The test itself has created many "firsts" in terms of duration, corrosiveness of the solution, body-in-white for samples, or test methods witnessed by users at zero distance. In such a context, Xiaopeng Automobile can still achieve such excellent results, which is naturally inseparable from the company's quality control in the field of manufacturing technology.
First of all, in terms of materials, Xiaopeng P7 uses aluminum parts such as aluminum cover and cast aluminum shock absorbing tower seat, and more than 90% of the other parts of the body are also used galvanized steel plates, which have good corrosion resistance. In addition, in terms of welding process, Xiaopeng P7 adopts BASF's latest generation of CG800 ultra-high penetration cathodic electrophoresis paint technology, industrial durable sealant seal sheet metal weld joints, sheet metal lap edges, hot melt plugging covers, durable patches to seal the opening holes in the outer media of the lower body that may enter the car or sheet metal inner cavity, and better improve the corrosion resistance inside and outside the car.
In addition, in order to focus on the real pain points of low temperature start and low temperature defrosting in the user's winter driving, Xiaopeng Automobile simulates the real car use scenario of the user in winter, and in the industry authoritative organization China Automotive Technology and Research Center, Xiaopeng P5 conducted an extreme cold test lower than the national standard test temperature.
For the low temperature start test, the requirements of the national standard are carried out at a temperature of -18 ° C, and this time Xiaopeng Automobile in order to more realistically simulate the extremely cold conditions in winter, the experiment first carried out the Professional Experimental Cabin Extreme Cold "soaking" of Xiaopeng P5 for up to 8 hours, until the temperature inside and outside the vehicle dropped to -23 °C.
After the preparation, the staff of China Automobile Research Institute officially started the test, first of all, the remote low temperature start test, when the staff pressed the remote start button on the mobile phone, Xiaopeng P5 started successfully instantaneously, faster than the national standard required within 7 seconds to start; followed by the detection of the defrosting speed of the vehicle, after the vehicle started, Xiaopeng P5 immediately entered the working state, within 20 minutes the front window defrosting reached 99.8% (80% of the 20 minutes above the national standard requirement); in 40 minutes it has reached 100% defrosting. (90% of the 40-minute defrost required by the national standard), and the windshield is not blurred and does not affect the driver's vision. In the end, Xiaopeng P5 successfully passed these two tests with a number of indicators higher than the requirements of the national standard.
Pengpai quality transcends the limit and arms quality to detail. For the Chinese automobile industry, which already has a mature car-making process, Xiaopeng Automobile's approach is to let users see sincerity and persistence from the details. From the 550-hour seawater shower experiment to the extreme cold challenge, Xiaopeng Automobile has shown its determination to put quality first.
In just a few years, Xiaopeng Automobile has established a "smart and reliable" quality reputation in the minds of consumers, and The Xiaopeng P7 is J.D. Power released the 2021 China New Energy Product Attractiveness Index (NEV-APEAL) Mid-size Pure Electric Market Attractiveness Index Champion this year, and the Xiaopeng G3 is the champion of the quality ranking of new car compact models of new energy vehicles.
For the "latecomers" of the pure tram market, using the most traditional "quality" as a weapon to knock on the door of consumers' hearts is a routine that will never go out of fashion.
Write at the end
In the competition of intelligent electric vehicles, intelligent and sophisticated, high-quality manufacturing will become the key point of victory. On the basis of safety and comfort, people have put forward richer requirements for smart cars. The car will no longer just take on the mission of travel, it will become a new type of mobile terminal.
Looking back at 2021, whether it is the epidemic or chip shortage, it is a huge challenge for car companies, and the competition in the new energy market has become more and more fierce, especially the competition between new car-making forces, which has never stopped. But even so, Xiaopeng Automobile has always firmly occupied the top echelon of the new energy market with rock-like determination. We also have reason to believe that in the future, Xiaopeng Automobile will build more good cars that take into account quality and intelligence based on its own technical system, and use its strength to improve the user's travel experience.