Summary: When the shuffle is in progress (welcome to follow the leverage game)
Written by | Zhang Yinyin
During the Spring Festival holiday, the relevant departments of the enterprise propaganda of the new car-making forces do not seem to be idle. On February 1, 5 new car-making forces posted a report card of January delivery, and from the data, the 5 brands achieved year-on-year growth in January delivery.
Recently, the Network News Agency learned from the official of Xiaopeng Automobile that in January 2022, Xiaopeng Automobile delivered more than 12,000 units, reaching 12,922 units, an increase of 115% year-on-year, delivering more than 10,000 units for five consecutive months, and the cumulative delivery volume exceeded 150,000 units in history, which is really gratifying.
Previously, in 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile's performance was also particularly eye-catching. The number of sales seats xiaopeng ranked first, and then Weilai and Ideal bit very tightly, ranking 2 and 3 places respectively.
Behind the eye-catching data, it is not without hidden worries. For example, losses. According to the latest release of the third quarter report of 2021, its operating loss is about 1.8 billion yuan and the net loss is about 1.59 billion yuan. Compared with the previous quarter's -1.195 billion yuan loss margin increased.
An important reason for the widening of the loss was the significant increase in R&D expenses. From the first quarter to the third quarter of 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile's R&D expenses continued to expand, and in the second quarter, the growth rate was as high as 61.5% month-on-month, and even in the third quarter, it was 46.3%, and the expenses were as high as about 1.264 billion yuan.
Judging from the performance in the third quarter of 2021, the net loss of Xiaopeng Automobile is close to 1.6 billion yuan, which is the largest among "Wei Xiaoli". And the gross profit margin in the third quarter was less than 15%, and the leverage game noted that it was the lowest in "Wei Xiaoli".
In addition, there are public opinion controversies, such as the end of 2021, the media broke the news that consumers were increased by the store when ordering Xiaopeng Cars, and the store was suspected of deliberately making low contract prices to defraud the state subsidies for new energy vehicles.
Shanghai Xiaopeng Automobile Sales Service Co., Ltd. was fined 100,000 yuan by the Xuhui District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau. The reason for the punishment was that the parties purchased 22 camera devices with facial recognition functions and installed them in their stores, so as to count the number of people entering the store and analyze the proportion of men and women, age, etc.
At the Guangzhou Auto Show in November 2021, a similar scene was seen: a male car owner "made a big fuss" to defend his rights, and then was carried away from the scene by several security guards. This time, the car companies that were defended were replaced by Xiaopeng Motors.
According to media reports, the owner of the car has not been resolved due to repeated complaints about the "on-board air conditioning problem", and then adopted the method of defending his rights at the auto show.
And on the Black Cat complaint platform, an anonymous user launched a collective lawsuit in November 2021 entitled "Xiaopeng Automobile does not deliver according to the prescribed date, seriously delayed for three months", and dozens of users have participated in it...
Before 2016, Xiaopeng Automobile was not well known, and the first "mass production" model launched in 2017 made it stand out, not only achieving a leap from 0 to 1, but also because it got rid of the shadow of the Internet "PPT car", and the outside world was full of expectations. But He Xiaopeng, who came from the Internet, did not really get rid of the Internet thinking.
After the establishment of Xiaopeng Motors, He Xiaopeng also repeatedly emphasized the importance of "radicalism". For example, in an open letter sent to all employees of Xiaopeng Motors at the end of 2020, He Xiaopeng said: "We must maintain balance in the aggressive fast run, rather than looking for opportunities to accelerate on a stable basis." ”
It is precisely for this reason that looking at the many key nodes since the establishment of Xiaopeng Motors, we can see that it chooses to take shortcuts and seize the market "aggressively".
Not to mention Xiaopeng, compared with traditional car companies, several years of slow accumulation to achieve enterprise expansion, today's new forces car companies can be called "acceleration".
In addition to the avant-garde Internet thinking to quickly complete the role change of cross-border car manufacturing, in the face of insufficient funds, they also supplemented funds to expand their product lines through financing and listing.
As the three carriages of the new car-making forces, Xiaopeng, Weilai and Ideal almost all adopt the same tactics to quickly solve the problem of capital investment in car-making with listing financing.
Although from the perspective of the market, Xiaopeng Automobile has successively become the monthly sales champion, but this can not hide the contradiction caused by Xiaopeng's excessive pursuit of efficiency.
Traditional large factories will obviously exert their strength in 2022 and 2023, and Xiaomi and Apple will undoubtedly be fast. No matter who "Wei Xiaoli" is, the pressure in the future will not be less than today.