Because of the sharp rise in raw material prices, Xiaopeng Automobile has announced a price increase at the end of March, ranging from 10,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan. After Labor Day, Xiaopeng Motors officially announced that it decided to adjust the rights and interests of some of its models considering external comprehensive factors such as the epidemic situation and supply chain. But this time, it is no longer simply for the sake of open source throttling.
Xiaopeng Automobile decided that from 00:00 on May 9, new users who purchased Xiaopeng Automobile's G3i, P5 and P7 would no longer provide lifelong free charging services and free home charging piles and installation rights. According to the Xiaopeng super charging pile electricity fee of 1.5 yuan / kWh, assuming a year of charging 1000 degrees, it is also 1500 yuan. Xiaopeng home charging pile service package has two gears, 7kW priced at 4,000 yuan, 11kW is 5,000 yuan. The two rights and interests add up, and new users can pay a minimum of 4500 yuan.
The money doesn't seem like much, but it's really not friendly enough for new owners. Xiaopeng Automobile also considered this, so it decided to provide free intelligent driver assistance system software and upgrade services for the E/E+/P version of Xiaopeng Automobile P5 and the E/E+ version of P7. Xiaopeng's smart software package service starts at 20,000 yuan, minus the loss of charging rights, and the new owner can actually save 14,500 yuan. Considering that most car owners mainly charge at home, this number should be even higher.
The equity hedging of one in and one out, new owners can save tens of thousands of yuan. The cost of software large-scale replication is extremely low, and the charging service with higher replacement cost is higher, and Xiaopeng Automobile achieves effective cost reduction. Both sides benefit, achieving the best of both worlds. But that's not all, at least not as simple as it seems. Xiaopeng Automobile's financial report for the first quarter of 2021 disclosed that the revenue of software services reached 80 million yuan. Why did you choose to let go of this Golden Bo after a year? The reason is simple, the carrying rate is not up.
As of October 24, 2021, the activation rate of Xiaopeng Auto XPILOT 3.0 was 59.29%, which means that 40% of users have not purchased smart software packages. Looking at the specific models, by the third quarter of 2021, the XPILOT 3.0 payment rate of the Xiaopeng P7 is 22%. Xiaopeng P5 has a high reprint rate, and more than 50% of the users of optional intelligent software will be installed in 2021. Only last year, a total of 5,030 vehicles were delivered, which translates to more than 2,000 car owners installing software.
The intelligent software loading rate does not come up, and the direct impact is that the cost of research and development cannot be apportioned. Let users experience intelligent driving for free, so as to drive brand reputation and drive car sales to create higher efficiency. But this is not the point, the car less want to explore today, why the loading rate does not come up, is intelligent driving a pseudo demand?
In fact, the low installation rate of intelligent assisted driving software is not an embarrassing situation encountered by Xiaopeng Motors, such as Tesla, the leader of new energy vehicles. Tesla's fully autonomous driving capability (FSD) is available for 64,000 yuan in China. This was followed by an enhanced version of the Automatic Driver Assisted Driving Function (EAP), priced at only 32,000 yuan. In order to arouse the interest of Chinese users, Tesla has also launched promotions such as 30-day free experiences, but this has not played a substantial role.
Tesla disclosed on the Q4 2021 earnings call that only 1%-2% of Chinese car owners choose to buy FSD. In 2021, Tesla China will sell 320,000 new cars, which translates to the owners who bought FSDs, and the maximum number of owners who buy FSDs is about 6,000. Tesla did not announce the purchase rate of Chinese users for EAP, but at this stage, the number is certainly not worth mentioning. Looking at the new forces of car manufacturing such as Weilai, no matter what the payment method of intelligent auxiliary driving software services, the loading rate is not ideal.
The biggest selling point of new energy vehicles is the intelligent assisted driving experience, why is the software loading rate so low? In the final analysis, intelligent driver assistance systems are not enough to fully gain the trust of Chinese and even global car owners.
Xiaopeng NGP, which is known as the most suitable for China's road environment, can realize intelligent navigation assistance driving from point A to point B, but the applicable scenarios are limited to most highways and some urban expressways. The Tesla FSD, which is known as the ceiling of the intelligent assisted driving system, cannot achieve high-level intelligent driving on Chinese roads because it is not equipped with a high-precision map and uses a pure camera to visually identify the route. It is no exaggeration to say that the intelligent driver assistance systems of all manufacturers are actually only semi-finished products.
If you want to enjoy intelligent assisted driving, the owner needs to know the software use regulations well, but who has this idle kung fu to remember the rules? In addition, a series of negative reports have damaged the reputation of intelligent driver assistance systems. Although some accidents are caused by human error, most people are willing to believe that software is the cause of the problem. For example, today's "Wenzhou Tesla brake failure" incident on the hot search, the final investigation results were caused by the owner's operation error, but at that time, public opinion was almost condemning Tesla, which of course had the malicious falsification guidance of the owner of the accident, and more was caused by the distrust in people's hearts.
There are many restrictions, the actual performance is bad, the word of mouth is poor, and the intelligent assisted driving system is labeled negatively. Driving well, not to try to be safe, naturally not too many people are willing to pay for software. Of course, we can't say that the intelligent driver assistance system is useless, but it is not enough to control the steering wheel at the moment.