Xpeng will release two new models in 2023, aiming to deliver 200,000 units a year

"The vast majority of car manufacturers will be out in the knockout round, Xiaopeng has no way back, and must break the cauldron and sink the boat"

On January 28, the first day of construction after the Spring Festival holiday, He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xpeng Motors, issued an internal letter to all Xpeng Motors. He briefly reviewed Xpeng's 2022 and proposed new vehicle planning, delivery targets and internal expectations for 2023.

In 2023, Xpeng Motors plans to launch 2 new models and replace 3 existing models, aiming to deliver 200,000 vehicles throughout the year. Xpeng's full-scenario assisted driving (XNGP) will be delivered in the third quarter of this year. The G9's driverless taxi (Robotaxi) has already begun operations in Guangzhou. He Xiaopeng said that it is necessary to firmly take automatic driving as the core label of Xpeng Motors.

2022 was defined by He Xiaopeng as "a difficult year, a year full of challenges, and a year of carrying on the succession". In this year, Xpeng Motors' sales fell short of expectations, and the stock price fell by 81.34%. Although it has a variety of products in the fastest-growing mass market, only 120,800 vehicles were sold for the year, which is lower than NIO (122,000 units) and Li Li (133,200 units), which are positioned in the mid-to-high-end market.

The brutal knockout match did not leave much time for Xiaopeng. In the internal letter, He Xiaopeng sighed: "The vast majority of current automakers will be out in this knockout race. He stressed that Xpeng Motors "has no way back, it must break through the cauldron and move forward courageously."

200,000 vehicles delivered in 2023

By the end of 2022, Xpeng Motors had delivered a total of 258,710 vehicles, of which 120,800 vehicles were delivered in 2022. In the internal letter, He Xiaopeng said that the goal for 2023 is to deliver a cumulative total of 450,000 vehicles, that is, nearly 200,000 vehicles in 2023.

After delivering more than 100,000 vehicles a year, Wei Xiaoli is collectively marching towards "200,000 units a year". At NIO Day, NIO co-founder Qin Lihong said that 2023 will be the year of NIO's second-generation platform switching and sales release, and NIO's goal is to surpass Lexus and "annual sales will reach 200,000 vehicles." Li Auto's sales target for 2023 is 350,000 units. Liu Jie, the ideal sales director, gave a forecast at the Guangzhou Auto Show at the end of last year: in 2023, the average monthly sales of L9 steady-state should be about 8,000 to 10,000 units, and the monthly sales of L7 and L8 should be 10,000 to 1. About 50,000 vehicles.

Only by selling more cars can you achieve your profitability target. In his 2022 annual speech, He Xiaopeng once said that Xpeng Motors' goal is to turn positive operating profits in 2025. NIO founder Li Bin also said in a speech at the end of 2022 that NIO's goal in 2023 is to achieve its first breakeven in the fourth quarter and a full-year profit in 2024.

In 2023, Xpeng Motors has laid out three model platforms, the E-platform sedan Xpeng P7 and SUV Xpeng G9 have been launched, and products for F platform and H platform are currently being developed. He Xiaopeng said that the new software and hardware platform and architecture have been initially built, and the platform reuse across models will improve development efficiency and significantly reduce costs, which will show advantages in the next few years.

This year, 2 new cars and 3 model facelifts were released

In 2023, Xpeng will make facelifts to three models: P7, G3i, and P5, of which the facelift of the P7 is expected to be unveiled in March this year.

At the same time, Xpeng will also release two new cars this year. "Late Auto" learned from a number of independent sources that the two new cars are based on the 800V high-voltage platform, and one car is the five-seat Xpeng G7 of the F-platform five-seat slip-back SUV, which starts from 200,000-250,000 yuan. It is expected to be unveiled at this year's Shanghai Motor Show. Another new car is the MPV (internal code H93), based on the H platform, and mass production is scheduled to begin in September this year.

"Late Auto" previously learned that Xpeng is also developing a large SUV (internal code "F62") on the F platform to benchmark against the Audi Q7. But people close to Xpeng said the F62 model has been cancelled.

2023 is a big year for new cars. Xpeng will have 6 products on sale, NIO has 8 products, in addition to the existing ES8, ES7, ES6, ET7, ET5, EC7, EC6, will also launch the ET5 hunting edition. Three models L9, L8 and L7, which will ideally have a range extender platform, and electric vehicles based on the 800 V high-voltage platform will also be launched.

In 2023, many models of Wei Xiaoli will meet in the same market segment. In the five-seat SUV market, Xpeng's G9 and G7 will encounter NIO's main price band SUVs ES6, ES7 and the ideal five-seat SUV L7. The MPV H93 meets the ideal all-electric vehicle. He Xiaopeng predicts that in 2025, the penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles will reach 45%, "Today's changes will make the competition quickly begin to converge, and become a cruel competition between current competitors and competitors." ”

XNGP delivered in the third quarter

Xpeng's intelligent driving has always been at the forefront of the industry, and last year Xpeng's advanced assisted driving system XPILOT was iterated to version 4.0, and the full-scene assisted driving function (XNGP) was launched on the Xpeng G9, which is expected to realize full-scene assisted driving from the starting parking space to the end parking space, including parking spaces, to urban roads, highways / expressways, and then to the city, and finally parking in the parking space.

The Max version of the Xpeng G9 with two NVIDIA Orin chips, 12 cameras, 5 millimeter waves, 12 ultrasounds, and 2 lidar can realize XNGP functionality.

According to He Xiaopeng's plan, in 2023, Xpeng XNGP will abandon high-definition maps and cover 50-100 cities in China. In 2024, Xpeng will open up point-to-point full-scenario (that is, from home to company, from home to anywhere), increase the city scope to more than 100 cities, and reduce the intelligent cost of XNGP to about 1/3 of the current Xpeng.

Xpeng Motors has the earliest layout in intelligent driving. In 2021, Xpeng officially launched the full-stack self-developed NGP high-speed intelligent navigation assistance function. In September last year, Xpeng Motors City NGP Intelligent Navigation Assisted Driving began to be piloted in Guangzhou and successively pushed to users of Xpeng P5. Xpeng Motors has also become the first automobile brand to allow high-end intelligent assisted driving to be mass-produced in urban scenes. "From 2023 to 2027, this is the era of rapid development of new energy to fully autonomous driving, and I believe this is a huge opportunity for Xpeng." He Xiaopeng said in his 2022 annual speech.

In 2023, more and more players will launch urban navigation driver assistance functions. Li Xiang, founder of Ideal Auto, said in a letter to all employees on January 28 that the ideal urban navigation assisted driving function will land by the end of 2023, "which will be an important starting point for software 2.0 for the transformation of the physical world."

G9 Robotaxi begins operations

On October 31 last year, after approval by the Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, the Public Security Bureau and the Traffic Bureau, Xpeng G9 successfully obtained the Guangzhou Intelligent Networked Vehicle Road Test License. In his speech, He Xiaopeng said that the Xpeng G9 Robotaxi has begun operation.

He Xiaopeng said that in the five years from 2023 to 2027, Xpeng Motors must actively explore new business models, "If you still want to make money with hardware, this is absolutely not enough." "Hardware can earn the most money, but can software earn 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 30% of the money, this is Xiaopeng must actively explore, and in the process of exploration, the dependency and decomposition path are clearly considered."

The commercial operation of passenger transport to Robotaxi is also one of the attempts. He Xiaopeng proposed that Xpeng's sales target for 2027 is more than 1.2 million vehicles, and it will reach a market share of about 30% in fully autonomous vehicles.

In the past, the participants of self-driving taxis were mainly autonomous driving companies such as Baidu and Pony.ai, but today's arms race of smart electric vehicles makes it possible for mass-produced cars to meet the hardware needs of Robotaxi, and new forces such as Xpeng have the ability to break into this track to explore new business models.

Wen 丨 Wu Xiaoyu, editor 丨 Wang Hailu