Recently, in response to the rumor that "a number of core executives left the company" in the market, Xpeng Motors responded to the relevant media, "The article is false, and we will use legal means to pursue the relevant parties."
According to reports, a number of core executives of the company are involved in the rumors of departure, involving two vice president-level executives and two core founding members, among which Liu Minghui, vice president of powertrain, has left; Chief talent officer and vice president of sales, Liao Qinghong, will also leave and is currently on leave. The two core founding members, Xia Heng and He Tao, may also undergo business changes, Xia Heng will be transferred to be responsible for Xpeng's various independent parts business, and He Tao's whereabouts are unknown.
On March 10, the day after the rumors occurred, Xpeng's facelifted model P7i went on sale, a delicate time point that gave Xpeng a rare wave of noise. However, it is not easy for Xpeng Motors, which has been mired in a decline in sales, to get out of trouble, and the butterfly effect caused by internal turmoil has already made it pay a "price".
There must be a reason for it
Although Xpeng Motors denied the rumors of "the departure of several core executives", the extent of the "untruth" did not specify. The outside world is justified for doubting this rebuttal, because Xpeng Motors has adjusted its organizational structure many times since the second half of 2022.
In October last year, Xpeng Motors began to carry out personnel adjustments and established five committees: strategy, product planning, technology planning, production and sales balance, and OTA. Among them, He Xiaopeng served as the director of the top three committees, He Tao (co-founder) served as the director of the production and sales balance committee, and Chen Yonghai (vice president of Internet business) served as the director of the OTA committee.
At the same time, the person in charge of Xpeng's E model product platform is Liao Qinghong, Xpeng P7 and G9 are built by this platform, and the F platform is responsible for Xia Heng, and the person in charge of the two platforms reports directly to He Xiaopeng.
One month later, on November 30, Xia Heng, the "second in command", resigned as executive director due to the company's organizational structure adjustment and personal affairs, but retained the position of president, and announced that his future work energy would be more focused on products.
However, at the end of January this year, "Iron Lady" Wang Fengying was appointed president, responsible for Xpeng Motors' product planning, product matrix and sales system, and part of the business that originally belonged to Liao Qinghong and Xia Heng has actually been handed over to him.
Why did He Xiaopeng trust this airborne executive so much?
First of all, Wang Fengying has experience in hand. Prior to joining Xpeng Motors, she worked for Great Wall Motor for more than 30 years, starting with first-line sales and working her way up to various leadership positions, including vice chairman and general manager. Her leadership and professional ability are obvious to everyone in the industry, and it can be said that she has single-handedly created the sales system of Great Wall, which naturally trusts her.
Moreover, the failure of Xpeng G9 listing made He Xiaopeng "angry". He once confidently declared that the Xpeng G9 was "the best SUV within 500,000", but the reality hit hard, and the G9, which was highly hoped for, could not sell about 2,000 units a month. At the year-end summary meeting in January this year, He Xiaopeng even bluntly said that the company's organizational ability led to inefficient departments, "Such organizations are all about grassroots students working, and many management students have to be eliminated, and they must be encouraged or re-screened." ”
According to media reports, Xpeng Motors is still making personnel adjustments and work content changes in many business lines this year, but has not issued a notification email to all employees. However, according to the Tianyan investigation, in February and March, Xia Heng stepped down one after another as the legal person, manager and director of Guangzhou Xiaopeng Technology and Guangdong Xiaopeng Technology, and He Xiaopeng personally filled the position.
All these signs make people smell the "second-in-command" fade, and it is no wonder that the outside world has reservations about the rumors of executive departures. The question is, can it really be "established" again after "breaking"?
Internal unrest triggers a butterfly effect
For Xiaopeng, 2022 is a year of "loss". According to data from the Passenger Association of China, among the top ten manufacturers in the new energy market sales in 2022, Xpeng Motors ranked first from the bottom, with sales of only 120,000 units, and Ideal ranked ninth, with sales of 135,000 units, but the year-on-year growth rate far exceeded Xpeng's by 48.2%.
He Xiaopeng blamed all this on the mute of the G9, and even triggered a series of personnel adjustments, but the G9 may only be the fuse, and the long-term strategic habits of Xpeng Motors are bound to cause today's difficult situation.
First of all, Xpeng Motors' internal management is chaotic, and the lessons of marketing mistakes are directly manifested in the G9. On September 21, 2022, Xpeng Motors released the first model with a starting price of more than 300,000 yuan, the Xpeng G9, a blockbuster model built with all leading technologies, equipped with LiDAR, NVIDIA Orin chip, 800V voltage platform and other technologies. But it is a flashy existence, and the conference on the same day has become a "complaining meeting" for investors and consumers, with high prices and low allocations and complicated product configurations. Relevant data show that after the press conference, Xpeng G9 has a low proportion and many withdrawals.
As a result, a dramatic scene began to be released, and the day after the press conference, He Xiaopeng "quickly" adjusted the price and configuration, and the G9 actually ushered in a secondary listing "48 hours" after the listing. Although He Xiaopeng humbly listened to market feedback, the speed of adjustment also made people doubt the "sloppiness" of Xpeng's online products, after all, cars are products that require technical content, and the attitude of jumping at the speed of light inevitably makes people feel "child's play".
This kind of mistake is not unrelated to the chaos of Xpeng Motors' internal management, and the business lines have been in a "fighting" situation for a long time, and the research and development of products is used in internal struggles, which is bound to affect the final state of the product. According to relevant media reports, He Xiaopeng "does not like to engage in a bunch of business things", and product-related matters, he will make a general decision, but will not look too closely.
He Xiaopeng said frankly at the year-end summary meeting that Xpeng's organizational ability led to inefficiency of the department, born for the leader's data, born for reporting, not customer-oriented, single-product, high-quality oriented, not for the logic of simultaneous development of multiple products.
It is not difficult to understand why Xiaopeng, who has already had successful experience in P7, will make many basic mistakes on the G9, whether it is in technical configuration, pricing strategy or marketing planning. When a collective centripetal force is insufficient, G9 Waterloo is not accidental but inevitable.
As mentioned above, after that, He Xiaopeng reflected on the company's problems and adjusted the organizational structure and personnel management. However, the new environment requires new cohesion, and Wang Fengying's strict style from traditional car companies requires Xiaopeng to meet the challenge of whether to gather scattered sand in a short period of time or trigger more personnel changes.
Don't put the consumer "heart", lose in the details
In addition to internal management reasons, the core competitiveness of Xpeng Motors' products is not strong, and it has never put consumers in their "hearts". Wang Fengying's first public opinion challenge after joining was the "farce" brought about by this, which made people laugh and cry.
On March 3, a Xpeng owner complained that Xpeng's car machine update APP required face authentication from the front camera of the vehicle, and users had to get out of the car and kneel half-kneeling to verify success. This is because the APP is not an APP that comes with the Xpeng vehicle system, but a third-party application. In the function development of third-party APP, the default user is generally using a mobile phone or Pad and other devices, and there is no APP adapted to the vehicle system. Therefore, when the third-party APP needs face verification, there is an embarrassing scene.
Although Xiaopeng once again apologized at the speed of light to admit the mistake, and removed the relevant third-party applications to start optimization, what is more valuable than admitting mistakes is fewer mistakes, not to mention such basic "mistakes". Since Xpeng Motors has not installed the in-car camera, but still has to launch this function, it can only show that the product design is unreasonable, and it has not considered the actual situation from the perspective of consumers from the beginning, and the details of the consumer's use process are insufficient.
This deficiency is because Xpeng Motors puts more design energy on practicality on technology, and as a travel tool, consumers' demand for "practicality" far exceeds "technology", which can be seen in the sales comparison.
According to data from the Passenger Association Association, in the sales ranking of new energy manufacturers from January to February 2023, BYD still rode the dust and ranked first; In "Wei Xiaoli", ideal ranked seventh, with sales of 31,761 units, followed by NIO ranked eighth, with sales of 20,663 units, while Xiaopeng fell out of the top ten, ranking thirteenth, with sales of 11,228 units, a sharp decline of 41.4% year-on-year.
Even the monthly sales of Nezha Automobile in February far exceeded that of Xpeng Motors, which has to be said that Nezha Automobile's main low-price strategy has achieved remarkable results. And why is the difference between "Wei Xiaoli", who is also in the high-end market, so significant?
NIO is accelerating the expansion of the battery replacement system, and Li Auto is working family products, and their main strategic points are related to the personal needs of consumers to use products. In contrast, Xpeng's main intelligent driving does not seem to have resonated widely with consumers.
According to IDC's "China Consumer Smart Car Attitude and Willingness Survey Report", more than half of consumers recognize the long-term prospects of L5 autonomous driving, but still believe that its safety needs to be further verified. At the same time, consumers hate cumbersomeness and tend to pursue the integrity of intelligent experience. For the online functions and services of the vehicle, the mainstream group's first choice is the front-mounted configuration of the vehicle, believing that this method can be more closely integrated with the car experience itself.
In other words, consumers' expectations for intelligence are based on practical experience, and if intelligence cannot serve practicality and safety, then it is better to choose BYD, which is not smart enough.
In terms of customer thinking and customer reputation, He Xiaopeng also admitted that Xpeng Motors pays too much attention to scientific and technological innovation, but it does not make customers feel it in time.
So, what about Xpeng's recently released facelift model P7i?
As a facelifted model, the new P7i is positioned as a super intelligent coupe, which has not changed much in appearance, and is mainly optimized for intelligent platform, vehicle performance and handling, charging and energy efficiency. The price range is 249,900 yuan to 339,900 yuan, although the top price is down 10,000 yuan, but the entry version has increased by 20,000 yuan.
This naturally caused dissatisfaction among some prospective consumers, because just before the P7i was launched, the clearance of Xpeng P7 was very common, with a direct drop of 35,000 yuan in superimposed discounts, and the top-equipped model only needed a little more than 200,000. If the P7i does not meet consumer expectations in terms of configuration, it will affect this model that is regarded as a "straw".
After all, for the current Xiaopeng, "selling" is more important than "making". According to Xpeng Motors' plan, the operating profit will turn positive in 2025, and the minimum comprehensive gross profit should reach 17%; The sales target is more than 1.2 million units by 2027, accounting for 30% of the market share in fully autonomous vehicles.
There is no doubt that the P7i listed by the top wind has more unknown pressure.
The pictures in the article come from the Internet