Looking back at 2021, this is a year of rapid growth for Xiaopeng Motors. It took 7 years for this new car-making force to become one of the leaders in The field of intelligent vehicles in China.
At the beginning of its establishment, Xiaopeng Automobile had a simple idea, hoping to popularize and popularize intelligent cars, and always believed that the intelligent car track is the future direction of travel reform, so it took intelligence as an important development strategy of the enterprise. Based on the insistence on full-stack self-research, it has successively launched four intelligent products that are different from traditional cars, such as Xiaopeng G3, Xiaopeng P7, Xiaopeng P5, and Xiaopeng G9, and has continuously developed breakthrough functions and experiences in intelligent assisted driving and intelligent cockpit.
Based on the present, looking to the future, how does Xiaopeng Automobile face the challenges of the new stage of enterprise development? How to continue to lead in the future era of intelligent travel? On the sidelines of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum (2022) held on March 25-27, International Online had an in-depth exchange with He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Motors.
He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Motors
1. What does it mean for Xiaopeng P700,000 vehicles to go off the production line?
Since its listing on April 27, 2020, Xiaopeng P7 has achieved only 100,000 units offline in only 695 days, which has set a new record of 100,000 units of new car-making forces, marking that P7 has broken through the encirclement of joint venture brands in China's sedan coupe market.
He Xiaopeng said: "100,000 off-line models are very exciting for us, at the beginning of the design of the P7, we repeatedly discussed a problem internally, as a new brand, a new model, the average price is close to 300,000, and even touch the average price of Audi A4 and BMW 3 Series, how can it sell well? We found that the user base of Xiaopeng Automobile has a more different idea for the choice of scientific and technological intelligence and personalization. Originally, making a car required very comprehensive capabilities, but now it seems that some different differences should be explored in the new direction. ”
He made a small advertisement by the way, "Next year, the year after, Xiaopeng Motors' new car will have a lot of new explorations, may not be so balanced with comprehensiveness and balance, but will take into account most of the balance and a small number of extreme combinations, this is the gene of Xiaopeng Motors, always hope to do better."
Xiaopeng P7
2. How to deal with the current multiple dilemmas?
In August last year, He Xiaopeng sighed on Weibo: "It is more painful to cut off the supply of the core, and it is more painful to raise a glass to eliminate sorrow." Supply chain issues can be described as "bitter on top" in 2022. He Xiaopeng said frankly that this year for new energy vehicle manufacturers to face three external dilemmas: one is the material, mainly refers to the battery cell; the second is the chip, the original is expected to ease in the second half of 2022, but the first half of this year not only did not alleviate, but also some worsened; the third is the epidemic.
In these three cases, for a start-up like Xiaopeng, there will definitely be many challenges. Recently, some countermeasures have been taken, and the first round of price increases has been carried out in response to the rise in raw material prices, and the prices of three of its models on sale have been raised by 10,100-20,000 yuan. Since then, many manufacturers have also followed suit. "I expect that material prices will not continue to rise in the third quarter, and will remain stable, or even stable."
As the core cost of electric vehicles, the price of power batteries has risen all the way recently, He Xiaopeng said bluntly: "The intensity of the price increase of power batteries this year is beyond our original expectations, from the current point of view, it has not affected our sales, it may be that the recent oil prices have risen continuously, so the average price of about 250,000 yuan Xiaopeng car sales have not been affected." However, for those cars that are not intelligent, the number of batteries is relatively large, and the price is relatively cheap, it is estimated that there will be a certain degree of impact, specifically, it will take another 2-3 months to see a clearer impact.
In addition, the recurrence of the epidemic has also made He Xiaopeng quite hesitant, he believes that this is a huge setback for the automotive industry chain, if it lasts for several months, it may have a relatively large impact, and it is expected that April will have a certain degree of relief.
Regarding the waiting of users, He Xiaopeng said: "In the past, we expected to sell first and then deliver. However, at present, in the case of extremely tight supply chains, we are making a lot of adjustments, first having the supply chain to determine the production capacity and then selling. Without supply chain challenges, there can be a very noticeable increase in delivery volumes. ”
Xiaopeng P5
3. Three challenges for the future of the new forces
For new car manufacturers, He Xiaopeng saw some opportunities in the fierce competition, "because new car manufacturers are planning to deploy new models in 2023, 2024 and 2025." This year, Xiaopeng Automobile will still lay out according to the rhythm that has been set at the end of last year, and gradually put the main production capacity on models with higher gross profits. "Basically from 2024, the new car-making forces still need to solve three levels of challenges.
First of all, all new car manufacturers should make product differentiation more perfect. The car is both a product and not a product, as if it is doing Internet software, application + services, or other consumer goods, these products are visible and touchable. But the car is not, the car needs to improve all the system capabilities, reflected in the brand, market, sales, after-sales service, delivery, back-end systems, tools, process specifications and so on. Therefore, by 2025, the new forces of car manufacturing will first pull up the various plates of the barrel.
Second, it's the way to replenish energy. At present, technical routes such as super hybrid and extended range can meet the needs of electric vehicle users and the needs of oil vehicle users. By 2024 and 2025, pure electric vehicles will see new changes and enhancements in terms of energy replenishment, which is a very important thing that new car manufacturers need to solve.
Third, today's intelligence is still the initial intelligence, and high-level intelligent assisted driving will gradually begin in the second half of this year. Since last year, many consumers in China's first- and second-tier cities have embraced electric vehicles, and when to start accepting smart cars in the true sense is an important challenge for 2023-2025.
4. Break the waves and accelerate out to sea
Under the overall trend of automobile exports, the pace of Chinese automobile enterprises going to sea has accelerated. On March 11, Xiaopeng P5 officially opened reservations in Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. To open up more international markets, He Xiaopeng is very confident about this.
Xiaopeng Automobile is the first brand directly operated experience store in the Netherlands
He said that Xiaopeng Automobile has a large team inside the sea, from 2020 to the first half of 2023 is the first stage of going to sea, to explore how to sell overseas, how to carry out brand market after-sales service and operation of the relevant logic, we are now on the road, and has made quite good progress.
At the same time, we must also see whether our products, that is to say, China's auto products can be close to European and American standards in terms of standards, and achieve consistency. In fact, there are some differences between Chinese standards and standards in other countries, and if the standards can be closer to consistency, it is more valuable for going to sea.
The core strategy of Xiaopeng Automobile to go to sea is to take developed countries or more developed countries as the main body and firmly do a good job of To C, which is the same as in China. In addition, it will also bring out China's differentiated capabilities, including a series of experiences such as intelligence, fashionable appearance of the whole vehicle, and easy driving.
He Xiaopeng revealed that by the second half of 2023, Xiaopeng Automobile will have two products that are fully aimed at globalization, and that is the time when Xiaopeng Automobile will really accelerate its going to sea. In the next year and a half, lay the foundation in several countries and wait for new products to go to sea. "I believe that Chinese companies in the direction of the car is so difficult, to go to sea need to have 10 years of deployment and preparation determination, Toyota and other predecessor companies have actually invested 10 years or even more than 10 years in globalization, we have to do a good job in the product, the team foundation is laid, how to find the new smart car in Europe and other more developed countries sales strategy, balance the differences between China and other countries."
He Xiaopeng expects that in the 5 years from 2025 to 2030, everyone will see that China's smart cars will go global, and there will even be a technical gap of about two generations or a generation and a half with mainstream smart cars in other countries.
5. Move towards high-level intelligent assisted driving
Intelligent driving is reshaping the way of travel, Xiaopeng intelligent driving cumulative mileage has reached 140 million kilometers, and intelligent driving auxiliary parking has achieved 7.34 million times, last year launched memory parking, memory routes have reached 30,000.
The user penetration rate of XPILOT 3.0 reached a staggering 96.2%, the penetration rate of NGP high-speed per 100 kilometers reached 62%, and the safety factor of intelligent assisted driving was increased by more than 10 times. "At present, L2 intelligent assisted driving is allowed in China, and we are doing it in strict accordance with relevant Chinese standards." From the current effect, we found that the safety and crashability of intelligent assisted driving in millions of kilometers are far better than manual driving, and we are currently further improving this indicator, and we hope to achieve an increase of about 50-100 times the safety level in the future. ”
NGP Intelligent Navigation Assisted Driving
Based on this, Xiaopeng Motors plans to launch XPIRAT 3.5 from high-speed to urban scenarios after the policy approval this year, which means that the second half of intelligent assisted driving is officially opened. He Xiaopeng believes that intelligent assisted driving will enter the stage of high-level automatic driving in the second half of this year, and the speed of change will be faster than most people think, and it will be much faster.
"I believe that Xiaopeng Automobile can be 2-3 years ahead of most companies in this field," He Xiaopeng said proudly, "We now have nearly 1,500 R&D personnel and data personnel for intelligent assisted driving." At the end of this year, Xiaopeng G9 will be equipped with XPILOT4.0 hardware, the first half of next year to strive to launch XPILOT 4.0 software and services, truly achieve all-scenario intelligent assisted driving, with more and more perfect technology, there will be a lot of new high-level assisted driving functions, such as automatic parking, automatic charging, automatic car washing, automatic driving out. Of course, this also requires us to communicate with the competent government authorities on how to legally and reasonably solve the challenge of bringing such a system to more places. ”
He Xiaopeng firmly believes that the arrival of high-end intelligent assisted driving will lay the foundation for automatic driving. From 2023 will enter a new era, "human-machine co-driving" will enter this era, may be to 2026 will be the transition to unmanned, the real high-end automatic driving and farther unmanned driving will certainly be more than the past decade of smart phones to bring about more changes to life, this is the beginning of a huge change, Xiaopeng Motors hopes to become an explorer of future travel.