During the sensitive period of March 15, many car companies invariably entered the "silence", but Xiaopeng Automobile once again fell into the whirlpool of public opinion.
According to Xinmin Weekly, a Xiaopeng P7 owner in Beijing was suspected of having a brake failure in the process of passing through the gate at the exit of the car garage, and he rushed out of the gate out of control and crashed into the wall, resulting in a fracture of his right wrist.
Xiaopeng Automobile immediately responded: "We are willing to cooperate with customers to find qualified third-party testing agencies to test the vehicle brake system, and meet the reasonable demands of customers as much as possible." ”
This is not the first time that Xiaopeng Motors has been exposed to such safety accidents.
As early as the end of last year, Xiaopeng Automobile was exposed to brake failure. There are also public reports that in Dongguan, Wuhan and other places, there have been owners who questioned the "brake failure" of Xiaopeng's car.
Xiaopeng Motors has also initiated a recall for stall problems. At the end of January last year, Xiaopeng Motors filed a recall plan with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China, and will recall some Xiaopeng G3 cars produced from March 29, 2019 to September 27, 2020, involving a total of 13,399 vehicles.
In the "Wei Xiaoli", the head camp of the new car-making force, the number of complaints of Xiaopeng Automobile ranked first.
According to the data of black cat complaints, Xiaopeng Automobile has received a total of 362 complaints, which is much higher than Wei Automobile and Ideal Automobile, which adopt a fully direct-operated model.
Among them, the reason for the complaint is that Xiaopeng Automobile has problems such as "not delivering the car according to the prescribed date", "suspected maintenance car", "being tricked into signing a contract", and "defrauding consumers".
However, it is worth noting that in the face of many complaints, Xiaopeng Automobile's sales of new cars delivered in January still exceeded 10,000.
According to the data, Xiaopeng Automobile delivered a total of 12922 new cars in January, of which Xiaopeng P7 delivered 6707 vehicles, P5 delivered 4029 vehicles, and Xiaopeng G3 delivered 2186 vehicles, leading a number of new force car companies.
First, Xiaopeng Automobile wins in "direct operation + authorization"?
In fact, in December 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile also became the only new car manufacturer in December 2021 that sold more than 15,000 vehicles per month.
Among them, the Xiaopeng P7 sold 7459 vehicles and the G3 sales of 3511 vehicles in the month, and the sales of the Xiaopeng P5 listed in the second half of the year have exceeded 5000 vehicles.
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.
If there is a magic weapon for the sales growth of Xiaopeng Automobile, it must be impossible to escape the "direct operation + franchise" business model originally adopted by Xiaopeng Automobile.
In 2019, Xiaopeng Automobile officially opened its authorized business model, and in 2020, Xiaopeng Automobile's national sales and service network covers 166 stores in 57 cities. In March 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile had a total of 178 sales outlets and 61 service outlets across the country, covering 70 cities across the country.
On the other hand, ideal cars that adhere to the direct retail model officially opened in July 2021 when the 100th store was officially opened. In June of the same year, NIO had a total of 259 stores, including 25 NIO centers and 234 NIO spaces, covering 128 cities.
To some extent, expanding stores means increasing market share.
Secondly, once the opponent gains a competitive advantage, it will take away the best resources, the resources of suppliers, the resources of users, the resources of media, and the resources of channels.
As a result, under the simultaneous growth of sales outlets and service outlets, it has also led to most of the sales volume growth.
In December 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile delivered 16,000 new vehicles, an increase of 181% year-on-year. Total deliveries reached 98,155 units in 2021, up 260% year-on-year and 3.6 times higher than in 2020.
NIO delivered 91,429 vehicles in the whole year, an increase of 109.1% year-on-year; Ideal Automobile delivered a total of 90,491 vehicles in 2021, an increase of 177.4% year-on-year.
In addition, according to the data previously released by Xiaopeng Motors, in 2022, it will ensure that the annual sales of 250,000 vehicles will hit 300,000 vehicles.
However, according to the GF Securities Research Report, the global power battery is in a tight supply state in the next few years, that is, considering the dynamic production capacity of the annual expansion, the global power battery will still have a gap of 30GWh in 2022.
SNE Research predicts that by 2023, the global demand for electric vehicles for power batteries will reach 406GWh, while the supply of power batteries is expected to be 335GWh, a gap of about 18%. By 2025, this gap will widen to about 40%.
Looking back at Xiaopeng Automobile's lack of power batteries, which led to the inability to deliver, and the expanding power battery gap in the market, it seems difficult to imagine that Xiaopeng Motors can complete the target of 300,000 vehicles on time to complete the annual sales of 250,000 vehicles in 2022.
Second, be prepared: "embrace" lithium battery suppliers
With the continuous shortage of upstream lithium resources, most car companies seem to be looking for ways to find a shortage of power batteries.
According to relevant media reports, Xiaopeng Automobile's upcoming medium and large SUV G9 will use The Sunwoda 4c power battery, of which Sunwoda will be a certain version of the G9 A supply, with a supply share of more than 50%.
With the gradual increase in the delivery of the new car Xiaopeng P5 launched in mid-last year and the imminent delivery date of the Xiaopeng G9, in order to impact the annual sales target, it is also reasonable to choose Sunwoda as the A supply of the G9 at this time.
And before that, Sunwoda was actually a Pack supplier of Xiaopeng G3 batteries.
In fact, it is not only Xiaopeng Motors, but even Tesla, which has been tied to the NINGD era since entering China, has been rumored to seek more lithium battery suppliers. According to a research report published by Credit Suisse Bank (Credit Suisse), BYD's battery production this year is 90GWh to 100GWh, and the battery may be supplied to Tesla's European factories.
According to the data, in 2021, the top ten domestic power battery companies are Ningde Times, BYD, Zhongxin Airlines (AVIC Lithium Battery), Guoxuan Hi-Tech, LG New Energy, Hive Energy, Tafier New Energy, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Fu Neng Technology and Sunwoda, of which ningde era loading volume is 80.51GWh, accounting for 52.1%, And Sunwoda loading volume of 2.06GWh, accounting for only 1.3%.
In addition, in order to obtain batteries in the Ningde era, car companies not only have a passive scheduling order, but even need to pay a huge advance payment in advance, in this case, car companies like Xiaopeng Automobile that aspire to be the annual champion of the new forces are often difficult to get more support.
To this end, in the case of the current shortage of battery accessories, getting more power batteries is equivalent to winning half.
Because even the Ningde era, which occupies more than 50% of the market share, still cannot fully meet the needs of car companies.
To some extent, whether it is due to the shortage of accessories or changes in market behavior, as long as more power batteries can be won, it means more market share.
In addition, from a longer-term perspective, in fact, it can be said that in addition to the current shortage of accessories, Xiaopeng Automobile also hopes to grasp the greater initiative in the future suppliers of power batteries.
Third, the second half of Xiaopeng Motors
With the gradual landing of intelligent driving technology and the entry of infrastructure into the "arms race" in the second half, cross-industry technology integration and innovation, and intensification of global collaboration, 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 war entered the second half, and the mission of intelligent assisted driving in the second half was to realize the evolution from intelligent assisted driving to automatic driving.
It is reported that the Xiaopeng G9 will open pre-sale at the Beijing Auto Show in April this year, and the Xiaopeng G9 is also the first mass production car supported by Xpylot 4.0 Intelligent Assisted Driving System, which will provide a higher level of intelligent driving capabilities.
It is true that Xiaopeng Automobile is currently in the intelligent driver assistance system, and there is still a distance to practice the current intelligent auxiliary driving system to a higher-level L4 automatic driving.
Xiaopeng Motors provides L3 level autonomous driving services, usually L3 level automatic driving power requirements of 20-30TOPS, L4 level requires 100TOPS+ computing power.
The price of Xiaopeng Automobile is more competitive at this stage, but with the advancement of the automatic driving level, the hardware equipment of the existing models may not be able to keep up with the demand for computing power, at present, Xiaopeng P5 and P7 are equipped with NVIDIA's Xavier chips, and the single car computing power is 30TOPS, which can support L3, but cannot meet the demand for L4 level computing power.
If Xiaopeng Automobile wants to meet the L4 level of mathematical power, subsequent models may need to continuously upgrade their hardware.
In addition, if Xiaopeng Automobile, which focuses on cost performance, adopts lidar-led instead of visual dominance in the follow-up high-end automatic driving, the cost will also increase.
In addition, from 2018 to 2020, Xiaopeng Automobile's R&D investment was 1.051 billion, 2.07 billion and 1.726 billion yuan. In terms of R&D personnel, as of the first quarter of 2021, nearly 40% of the more than 6,100 employees of Xiaopeng Automobile Company are R&D personnel, focusing on R&D work such as automotive design and engineering, autonomous driving, and intelligent operating systems.
Although the patent ranks first among the new car companies, combined with the expenditure, if Xiaopeng Automobile continues to use the cost performance to increase sales, it may be difficult to turn the net profit negative to positive in a short period of time.
With the advent of automatic driving, there may be more than just a sales war between new forces car companies, with absolute power battery dominance, it will also become a competition model, after all, in the automotive industry, no one wants to be an "empty shell" forever, as long as you want to survive, this will be an inevitable competition.