Cut the rights, send software, Xiaopeng's promotion you can't learn

Produced by | Tiger sniff car group

Author | Wang Xiaoyu

Edit | attentive

Header image | Visual China

"A free meal should be eaten at noon, because it will be cold in the morning and evening."

On May 6, Xiaopeng Motors' official WeChat released a message saying that considering the impact of external factors such as the epidemic and supply chain, the configuration, price and rights of some models under the brand will be adjusted from 00:00 on May 9, 2022. To sum up, there are three points: 5 new models, intelligent driver assistance system software as standard, free charging for life and free home pile rights and cancellation.

Two increases and one decrease, which seems to be the action of "special offer sale", but there is a deep meaning behind it.

In the past April, Xiaopeng Automobile won the position of monthly sales champion of the new car-making forces for several months, which was ruthlessly taken away by Zero Run. The epidemic superimposed on the price increase, and various unfavorable factors prompted Xiaopeng to play these cards.

20,000 pieces of package, free to send

On March 21, Xiaopeng Motors announced a price increase, ranging from 10,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan. The official reason is simple, affected by the continuous rise in the price of upstream raw materials.

The epidemic in April made the automotive supply chain worse. On April 14, He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Automobile, posted in the circle of friends: If the supply chain enterprises in Shanghai and the surrounding areas cannot find a way to dynamically resume work and production, all Chinese automakers may have to stop work and production in May.

Sure enough, on May 1, the monthly sales list of the new car-making forces was released, and zero-run cars squeezed Xiaopeng Automobile off the "crown throne". A week later, on May 6, Xiaopeng Automobile finally couldn't sit still and announced that it took the initiative to adjust the model configuration and user rights and interests.

This adjustment, the "software payment" model of the intelligent assisted driving system that Xiaopeng Automobile is proud of, has become a promotional means overnight. For the free delivery of the software package, the official explanation is: "In order to achieve the popularization of high-level intelligent assisted driving to more users, accelerate the next development of intelligent driving, and further expand the field of self-research." ”

Of course, in addition to the software for free, other rights and interests have also been reduced. Lifetime free charging and free home charging piles and installation rights will also be cancelled. In this regard, Xiaopeng wants to use the "cold treatment" method to reduce the pressure of public opinion. In the official WeChat push, the paragraph "free charging service rights and interests change" is hidden in an inconspicuous position at the end of the article.

But to be fair, this increase and decrease is a price reduction for most consumers.

For example, if you want to buy the "Xiaopeng P7 480E" version of the model priced at 259,900 yuan, you can enjoy a free charging line of 1,000 degrees. Now for the same price, you don't have a free charge, but you send an extra package worth 20,000 intelligent driver assistance systems.

To do another mathematical problem, according to the Xiaopeng super charging pile electricity cost of 1.5 yuan / kWh to calculate, a year charging 1000 degrees, that is, 1500 yuan of charging costs; in addition, the price of Xiaopeng 7kW home charging installation service package is 4000 yuan (11kW home charging pile is 5000 yuan), adding up to 5500 yuan. Of course, in theory, if there is a home charge, users will rarely go outside to charge. Even if the two rights and interests are superimposed, the maximum saving is 14,500 yuan compared with before the equity adjustment.

"One-in, one-out equity hedging makes it easier for customers to accept."

An industry insider analyzed to Tiger Sniff that high-speed NGP belongs to software, the cost of large-scale replication is extremely low, and there are a large number of hard costs in charging services. Then, replacing the rights and interests of free charging with the rights and interests of the standard software package actually achieves the best of both worlds, while achieving cost reduction for enterprises and maximizing benefits for users.

However, there may be some doubts here. You know, the industry is drawing the "software payment model" cake, for example, Xiaopeng announced in the first quarter of last year's financial report, the software revenue reached 80 million yuan. It's only been less than a year, and the package that was originally sold for 20,000 yuan is now given to users for free?

The answer is simple, the carrying rate does not come up. At present, the main paid software package of Xiaopeng Automobile is for the XPILOT 3.0 system, and the biggest highlight of this system is high-speed NGP intelligent navigation assisted driving, similar to Tesla's NOA and Weilai NOP. That is, based on navigation to complete high-level assisted driving in conditions such as highways and mature expressways.

Although the function can be achieved by everyone, due to the high price of the software package, the payment rate of such software has not been able to rise in China. As we all know, Tesla's FSD is currently priced at up to 64,000 yuan, and the domestic selection rate is only about 1%. Xiaopeng's situation is slightly better, and in March last year, XPILOT 3.0 had a payment rate of 25%. As of October 24 last year, Xiaopeng Motors gave the XPILOT 3.0 activation rate of 59.29% - but this still means that 40% of users have not activated the XPILOT 3.0 package.

You know, Xiaopeng Motors has invested heavily in autonomous driving technology. According to the financial report, the scale of Xiaopeng R & D personnel will reach about 4,500 at the end of 2021, of which about 1/3 of the R&D personnel related to autonomous driving. The investment in the full-stack self-developed automatic driving software system is relatively high, and Xiaopeng's R&D investment will grow rapidly in 2021, and by the third quarter of that year, it has become the new force with the highest R&D investment.

The current situation is that huge R&D investment cannot be fully translated into corporate benefits. Then at this time, Xiaopeng actually changed his thinking - the "housekeeping skill" high-speed NGP function is sent to users in the form of standard equipment, further improving competitiveness and thus driving sales.

However, it is the norm in the industry to "send" assisted driving functions to users in the form of standard equipment.

For example, Weilai has added the functions of adaptive cruise and lane keeping in the NIO Pilot select package, which originally needed to spend 39,000 yuan to buy, to THE ET7 in the form of standard; for example, BMW's pure electric models iX3 and i3 have been equipped with automatic driving assistance system Pro as standard; and the ideal ONE has sent high-speed NOA navigation assistance driving to users in the form of standard from the beginning, and finally at the end of 2021, more than 60,000 units of activation and use data have been realized. At that time, it exceeded the sum of other brands of navigation assistance in the Chinese market.

Since they are now given to users for free, does it mean that the bubble of the software payment model has been punctured?

Theoretically, implementing a software payment model in China is an extremely difficult road. You know, there are many people in China who are not even willing to spend 9.9 yuan on watching movies, and you let them spend tens of thousands of yuan to buy a vehicle function, the difficulty can be imagined. Previously, according to a report released by Deloitte, consumers around the world are very willing to pay for advanced technology in cars. In China in particular, if the amount exceeds 2500 yuan, Chinese users will not be willing to pay for this advanced technology.

The shrewdness of Tesla, Weilai, and the ideal is that the hardware is standard for you first. The advantage is that it can take a time-limited OTA push method to allow users to try out the assisted driving function, and finally naturally promote conversion rates. For example, Tesla once upgraded the EAP (enhanced version of automatic assisted driving function) for all Tesla owners during the holidays.

At present, Xiaopeng's thinking is more "straight man" - you have to buy the hardware of automatic driving first, and then buy the software package of automatic driving, and finally you can enjoy the corresponding functions. In fact, this invisibly increases the threshold of the software payment model.

For example, Xiaopeng's "P7 480E" model and "P7 480N" model have almost the same configuration, except for different autonomous driving hardware. The former is XPILOT 3.0 hardware, which supports high-speed NGP intelligent navigation assisted driving; the latter is XPILOT 2.5+ hardware, which does not support high-speed NGP. Due to the difference in hardware, the difference between the two in the purchase price is 10,000 yuan. Counting the 20,000 yuan of software optional packages, the total difference is 30,000 yuan.

Embarrassingly, if you buy a car, if you do not have an optional package of 20,000 yuan, it will cost 36,000 yuan to buy the package separately after picking up the car. On the Xiaopeng Auto App community, many car owners have been dissuaded by this late-paid price. What's more embarrassing is that this equity adjustment, for those who want to buy software packages, there is no change - free charging continues, and packages are not free.

Of course, what makes the old owners a little happier is that if the Xiaopeng in their hands is never sold, then the Xiaopeng will always have to charge their cars for free.

Free benefits, sooner or later to cut

Free charging is not a special case of Xiaopeng, but Tesla's first head.

In 2012, in order to attract users to buy a car, Tesla first launched its supercharger network in the United States, and it provided free charging services to car owners at that time.

After entering China, model S and Model X owners, who were once priced at nearly one million yuan, also enjoyed free supercharger rights for a period of time. However, with the gradual increase of entry-level Model 3 and Model Y models, the rights of "free charging" have been adjusted to the rights of "a certain amount of free charging", and finally all of them are cancelled free.

The same is true of Xiaopeng's thinking, using charging rights to first attract consumers to experience and buy, and then shrinking rights step by step and finally canceling.

At the 2020 Beijing Auto Show, Xiaopeng Motors announced that it would provide a lifetime free charging service for the first non-operating owner of Xiaopeng Motors to charge at a designated charging station. But it's just a limit charge, with a limit of 3,000kWh per car per year. By August 2021, Xiaopeng had shrunk his "lifetime free" rights. Adjusted from 3000kWh per year to 1000kWh. This time, Xiaopeng Automobile completely canceled the right of "free charging". (Equity adjustments do not include old car owners and owners who booked cars before May 9)

Similar to Tesla's equity adjustment, models that sell lower are "injured."

For example, Xiaopeng's current cheapest model, G3i, after the cancellation of the lifetime free charging service and free household charging pile and installation rights, did not add some models with standard intelligent driving systems like the P5 and P7 models, because the hardware of the G3i model was not enough. At the same time, some low-end models of P5 and P7 are also because the hardware does not support it, so in this adjustment, the user's rights and interests have "decreased or increased".

Before Xiaopeng, weilai frequently made adjustments to car purchase rights.

For example, Weilai's "lifetime free electricity replacement rights", from October 2020, from the original first car owner can enjoy unlimited mileage unlimited lifelong free power exchange rights, to the first car owner of the first monthly power exchange discount; in March 2021, the rights and interests are adjusted again, and users who choose the rights and interests of home charging piles are adjusted from the original first 6 times per month to collect electricity charges and waive service fees, adjusted to the first 4 times per month for free electricity changes.

In fact, weilai and Xiaopeng's adjustment logic is similar. The starting point must be to analyze the user's behavior, at the beginning of the number of power changes, charging amount is more, most of the user rights and interests can not be used up, and then cut off a part to see the user reaction. Of course, like our Chinese have always been proud of being diligent and thrifty, and in the end there will still be some people whose rights and interests will not be exhausted.

In particular, in the two years since the epidemic has continued, the demand for long-distance self-driving travel has been decreasing, and may even affect travel within cities. Then new energy vehicle companies, there is more reason to adjust the charging rights.

Another starting point is from the perspective of the cost of the enterprise.

Charging rights and interests in promoting sales at the same time, but also means the increase in costs. Taking Xiaopeng as an example, in 2019, Xiaopeng Automobile sold only 16,608 vehicles in the whole year; in 2020, after the promotion of free supercharging began, the annual sales reached 27,041 vehicles; and then in 2021, after expanding the free overcharge network, the annual sales volume was 98,000 units.

But the growth of sales is behind the "hard cost" invested by enterprises. According to the financial report data, Xiaopeng Automobile's sales, general and administrative expenses reached 5.3 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 81.7% year-on-year. The reason is also very simple, the expansion of sales channels and charging networks has further increased the cost of Xiaopeng Motors in sales and operation.

Nio is even more so. According to the financial report, NIO's sales, general and administrative expenses last year reached 6.878 billion yuan, an increase of 74.9% year-on-year; the ideal car that has not yet built its own charging network only recorded 3.492 billion yuan, but the year-on-year increase also reached 212.1%.

All in all, the rights to buy a car will shrink sooner or later, nothing more than divided into several stages of contraction, and the final destination is all canceled.

Write at the end

User rights are like playing poker. At the beginning of the hand, there are a few fried, and every time the user's rights are reduced, it is equivalent to every time you throw out a bomb, but if you throw all the fried and you don't have a better card in your hand, then your card will also lose a mess.

Nowadays, Xiaopeng has finished playing the "cancel free charging" card, and has come up with another "package free to send" card. We'll see what cards he has left.