Produced by | Tiger sniff car group
Author | Wang Xiaoyu
Edit | attentive
Header image | Oriental IC
"The urban NGPs that were pushed out this year are better than they (Tesla)."
On March 26, He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, was interviewed by the media at the Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, mentioning the competitive relationship between Xiaopeng's latest intelligent driving technology and Tesla. "Youshang (Tesla) is launching FSD (fully autonomous driving) overseas, but China has not yet launched, we see third-party analysis and sharing, we are very confident."
He Xiaopeng's confidence not only comes from the phased results of intelligent driving research and development, but also from the overall good business performance in 2021. On March 28, Xiaopeng Automobile announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2021. Among them, deliveries and revenue tripled year-on-year; in 2021, the delivery volume ranked first among the new car-making forces; and in Q1 2022, it is expected to deliver 33,500 to 34,000 units, basically locking in the new forces Q1 delivery champion.
In addition, He Xiaopeng also revealed the progress of new models and intelligent driving research and development at the subsequent earnings call: next year will launch two new models with new platforms, and will support XPIRAT4.0, which can achieve high-speed and intelligent assisted driving in all scenarios in the city.
As for the longer-term plan, He Xiaopeng's previous prediction was that "2026 may enter the unmanned stage." "If this time node has been clarified, then there is no difference, that is, who will achieve the ability of this stage first: Xiaopeng, or Tesla?
Lock in the 2022Q1 new forces first in advance?
Xiaopeng's sales are not in the same order of magnitude as Tesla. For the full year of 2021, Tesla sold 936,000 units, approaching 1 million. By comparison, Xiaopeng Motors delivered 9.8 units last year. But in front of Weilai's 91,000 vehicles and the ideal 90,000 vehicles, Xiaopeng is still the first place in the new car-making forces.
However, it is expected that it will beat Weilai and ideals in terms of sales. It should be known that the average price of Weilai's bicycles is more than 440,000 yuan, the ideal average price of bicycles is more than 340,000 yuan, and Xiaopeng Automobile is 250,000 yuan. Because the average price of bicycles is nearly 200,000 lower than Weilai and nearly 100,000 lower than the ideal, Xiaopeng is still at a low level in the top three new forces in terms of revenue scale.
Weilai, which can earn the most, has a car sales revenue of 33.1697 billion yuan in 2021, higher than the ideal of 26.13 billion yuan and also higher than Xiaopeng's 20.04 billion yuan. Although Xiaopeng sold cars madly in the last two months of last year, with a single monthly delivery volume of 15,000 units, it was still not as good as Weilai,000, which sold high-end cars. Xiaopeng Q4's car sales revenue was 8.19 billion yuan, WEILAI's was 9.2154 billion yuan, and the ideal was 10.38 billion yuan.
Although the ability to make money is not strong, Xiaopeng is not ambiguous in terms of spending money on research and development. In the whole year of 2021, Xiaopeng Automobile invested 4.114 billion yuan in research and development, and the proportion of research and development in total revenue was as high as 19.6%, 12.7% of Weilai, and 12% of the ideal. In terms of losses, Xiaopeng's net loss in 2021 reached 4.863 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 0.54%. Nio's net loss was 4.0169 billion yuan, ideally 321.5 million yuan.
In this way, Xiaopeng does not want to reduce research and development at the cost of narrowing losses.
Judging from the current trend, Xiaopeng Automobile will hope that while sales continue to grow, it will continue to introduce new models with higher prices to pull the average price to a higher level in order to obtain both delivery and revenue increases.
For the Q1 that is about to end, Xiaopeng has given a guidance for the delivery of Q1 that greatly exceeds the ideal of Weilai. Xiaopeng Motors expects 33,500-34,000 units to be delivered in Q1 2022. If nothing else, Xiaopeng will win the delivery championship for three consecutive quarters.
At the same time, in terms of new products, Xiaopeng will continue to increase the price of new models.
He Xiaopeng said on the earnings call that the new car G9 is expected to become another major killer for Xiaopeng in the smart pure electric medium and large SUV market after the explosive P7. In addition, the Xiaopeng G9 has entered a higher price range, which will further improve the overall gross profit margin level of Xiaopeng. Next year, Xiaopeng Motors will launch two new model platforms and its first model in 2023, namely the C-class platform and the B-class platform. Judging from the positioning of the new car, the price may remain at the level of 300,000 yuan, and even the possibility of reaching a high of 400,000 yuan is not ruled out.
The Xiaopeng G9 is positioned as a medium to large 5-seat SUV
Xiaopeng's medium- and long-term goal is to increase the company's overall gross profit margin to more than 25%. But so far, Xiaopeng's gross profit margin level is still at a low level among the top three new forces. According to the financial report, the gross profit margin of Ideal Automobile in 2021 was the highest, reaching 21.3%, the comprehensive gross profit margin of Weilai was 18.9%, and the gross profit margin of Xiaopeng was 12.5%.
However, the matter of pulling up the gross profit margin cannot be counted on in the short term on those high-end models that are still on the PPT. The Xiaopeng G9 to be delivered this year has just been rolled off the production line from the factory PT production prototype, and it will not start to be put on sale until the third quarter of this year at the earliest. For the second quarter that is coming soon, Xiaopeng will face a lot of external pressure.
This is mainly due to the rise in raw material prices and the continued turmoil in the supply chain. It should be known that Xiaopeng has announced a round of price increases ranging from 10,100 to 32,600 yuan at the end of March, and its increase is at a high level even if it is placed in the new car-making forces. In contrast, Weilai is much more shrewd, and did not announce a direct price increase for the models on sale, but planned to launch a remodeled model, increase the configuration and adjust the price at the same time.
Considering that Xiaopeng's main price range is 150,000-300,000 yuan, the price sensitivity of this customer group is much higher than that of high-end consumer users in the market of more than 300,000 yuan where Weilai and Ideal are located. Therefore, the outside world also expressed concerns about Xiaopeng's sales in the next second quarter.
However, He Xiaopeng showed a "everything is under control" attitude on the earnings call, saying: "Since late February and early March, new orders have quickly returned to the peak season level in December last year, and although the epidemic has affected the delivery rhythm in some regions, the delivery volume in March is still close to last year's peak level." ”
But the fact that cannot be hidden is that delivery in the short term is still facing a severe test. He Xiaopeng also admitted: "We have challenges and problems in scheduling, and the user's demand for lithium iron phosphate is far greater than the ability that partners can support." On the official website of Xiaopeng Motors, the two low-configuration versions of the P5 model show that there is no inventory, while some of the configuration models have a delivery cycle of up to 17-18 weeks.
Although the delivery is difficult and the loss of money is not endless, He Xiaopeng still maintains an optimistic attitude: "Xiaopeng Automobile will adhere to the entrepreneurial spirit and business thinking, and continuously improve operational efficiency." System platforming will drive changes in our powertrain, manufacturing processes and BOM cost system. In his view, the gross profit margin of the new model, including the G9, and the gross profit margin of the company as a whole will be structurally improved. Moreover, with the help of scale effects and operating leverage, the expense ratio will continue to decline. To sum up, I don't plan to make a profit in the short term, but sooner or later I will be profitable.
Li Bin, who also invested heavily in research and development, put forward higher requirements for Weilai. "We will not compromise on R&D and hope to achieve full-year profitability in 2024." Li Bin set up a FLAG for himself on the earnings call. In contrast, He Xiaopeng did not release similar rhetoric.
Smart driving approaching Tesla?
Indeed, for Xiaopeng Automobile, which has only been established for 7 years, it is too early to talk about profitability. This is like what Li Bin said at that time: "Weilai has just been established for four years, and you can't ask a four-year-old child to support the family." Li Xiang believes that research and development is the lifeblood and must go all out. From the current stage of the trend, Xiaopeng Automobile's investment in intelligent driving technology has been close to madness.
In the financial report, Xiaopeng Automobile disclosed the number of employees as of December 31, 2021, of which the total number of employees was 13,978, and the number of research and development reached 5,271. According to the information previously revealed by He Xiaopeng, the team size of intelligent auxiliary driving has reached 1500 people, that is to say, the intelligent driving research and development team accounts for nearly 30% of the total number of research and development personnel, which is a high proportion in the new forces of car manufacturing.
The huge R&D team did deliver beautiful results. According to He Xiaopeng, "In the test area of Guangzhou City, the Xiaopeng P5 mass production car equipped with the urban NGP has repeatedly maintained that it does not need to take over for tens of kilometers, or only takes over once, which is very close to the effect of high-speed NGP." He believes that "from the test results, the city-level NGP launched within this year will be better than tesla FSD." ”
Here is a little supplement, Xiaopeng Motors currently delivers intelligent driving functions, mainly divided into three versions XPILOT2.5, XPILOT3.0, XPILOT3.5. First of all, XPILOT2.5 is a relatively basic ACC adaptive cruise and other functions, to XPILOT3.0 can achieve high-speed NGP navigation assistance driving and other functions, to XPILOT 3.5 can achieve urban NGP navigation assistance driving and other functions.
At present, only the P5 model equipped with lidar supports XPILOT 3.5 and can realize the urban NGP function. However, the feature is not expected to be available until the end of the second quarter of this year in some Chinese cities. Functionally, this is indeed similar to Tesla FSD - in the city, intelligent driving from point A to point B based on navigation.
The high-speed NGP of the Xiaopeng P5
Of course, Xiaopeng's functional experience surpasses Tesla's there are some prerequisites.
First of all, from the path point of view, Xiaopeng is a hardware-driven intelligent driving technology, on the Xiaopeng P7 can only achieve high-speed closed road scene navigation assistance driving, and Xiaopeng P5 has the ability to achieve city-level navigation assistance, the key reason is that P5 has two more lidars. Tesla is more driven by software algorithms, relying on visual perception + AI learning to achieve high-end intelligent driving. It's like Iron Man and Superman, the former relying on external technology and the latter relying on talent.
Secondly, from the perspective of the scene, Xiaopeng is currently mainly focusing on the Chinese road driving environment, while Tesla's FSD research and development focus is in the United States, and the two actually have their own difficulties. For example, the uncertainty of road participants such as pedestrians and non-motorized vehicles in China is high, while there are some difficulties in the infrastructure of the road itself, such as the width of the road, the clarity of the road line and so on. It's like athletes from two countries, training and competing in their respective countries, and then comparing their rankings with their respective results. If that's the case, it will take much more from the Olympics.
It is undeniable that Xiaopeng's intelligent driving research and development in China's road scene has entered no man's land. Whether it's the first mass-produced lidar model, the launch of a cross-level parking lot memory parking feature, and the upcoming urban NGP this year. We can see that Xiaopeng's intelligent driving technology has come up with some original functions, which are difficult for us to pay behind.
However, the core competition of intelligent driving technology in the field of passenger cars is the ability of data to close the loop. Unlike robotaxi, which used to drive in a fixed area, users are driving your car to go anywhere. Only by allowing the vehicle to know more roads and encounter more situations can it respond more flexibly in the next similar scenario.
At present, Xiaopeng's urban NGP is mostly tested internally by Xiaopeng developers, while the Tesla FSD beta version is an internal test that has been carried out on real users' cars. Whether it is from the scale of the data or from the coverage of the scene, there is a certain gap between the two. At least from the current point of view, Xiaopeng's urban NGP has not yet reached the stage of pushing to users for internal testing.
The Xiaopeng P5 is only equipped with lidar in some high-end models
Then there is the problem of the carrying rate. Because Xiaopeng's urban NGP must be lidar, the carrying rate of lidar hardware will directly affect the scale of data and scene collection, and then affect the efficiency of algorithm iteration and function upgrade. Regarding the upcoming launch of XPILOT4.0 in 2023, He Xiaopeng said: "I personally think that the penetration rate of XPILOT 4.0 may be much higher than 50% in the sales model. ”
But this proportion is actually not high. You know, Weilai ET7 and Ideal L9 are equipped with lidar and large computing chip as standard. The logic behind this is that even if you don't buy my self-driving software package, the standard lidar on your car can still generate value for the research and development of car companies. At the same time, this will also add a certain degree of safety to users in basic assisted driving, which is the best of both worlds.
However, the lidar hardware on the Xiaopeng P5 is optional, which results in some vehicles not carrying lidar, which promotes the iteration of functions less than Tesla and other manufacturers. At present, G9 has not disclosed whether the lidar configuration is standard, but from the expression of He Xiaopeng's penetration rate of XPILOT4.0, Xiaopeng still has a certain proportion of products that are not equipped with lidar software and hardware in the future. Then the loss of these vehicle data is not good news for Xiaopeng.
Write at the end
On March 28, the same day that Xiaopeng released its financial report, ET7 was the first to deliver in Hefei, where WEIO's China headquarters are located. This means that the domestic models equipped with lidar are no longer only a single seedling of the Xiaopeng P5. It is believed that it will not be long before NIO ET7 will also exert its fists and feet in the field of city-level intelligent driving.
Xiaopeng Motors buried its head in the road to chase Tesla, and suddenly killed a Weilai.