Recently, He Xiaopeng and Li Bin's funny selfies on the high-speed rail have been on the hot search.
What has attracted the attention of the majority of netizens is not how funny they are taking pictures, nor that they are the founders of Xiaopeng and Weilai, but because the two of them have interacted too frequently recently, from the "three founding brothers" who advanced and retreated together with Wei Xiaoli before, it has faintly become the two-person turn of He Xiaopeng and Li Bin, and some netizens even joked: "Lei Jun killed three soldiers with one peach and disintegrated the Wei Xiaoli Alliance." ”
In fact, the latest developments of Li Bin, Li Xiang and He Xiaopeng are indeed due to the fierce competition in the industry, which has a certain relationship with Lei Jun's entry into the field of car manufacturing. However, among the new forces of car manufacturing, the ideal is unbeatable, and there is a faint posture to throw off Xiaopeng and Weilai. In 2023, when Weilai and Xiaopeng will lose 21.15 billion yuan and 10.38 billion yuan respectively, Ideal has taken a different route, with a net profit of 11.7 billion yuan, which may make Li Bin and He Xiaopeng have mixed feelings. The trio who started a business in the same track almost at the same time, Li Xiang has become the winner, will the alliance of Shu and Wu, which were weak during the Three Kingdoms period, fight against Cao Wei again?
Previously, the relationship between Li Bin, Li Xiang and He Xiaopeng was complicated, at least on the surface, they were harmonious. When Li Bin founded Weilai, he wanted to pull Li Xiang along, but Li Xiang didn't agree if he wanted to build a car, but in the end he invested in Weilai, and he can be regarded as Li Bin's investor. What Li Bin didn't expect was that the two investors Li Xiang and Lei Jun he found in the early days eventually became his strong opponents, and the ideal has made a profit of more than 10 billion, and Xiaomi Auto is in the limelight.
In fact, He Xiaopeng and Li Xiang have a good personal relationship, after Xiaopeng's price reduction caused dissatisfaction, he also took the initiative to ask Li Xiang to inform him of his experience and help Li Xiang step on a lot of pits, the relationship between the three of them was as close as the picture above, but this scene may not go back, Li Bin, as the eldest brother of Wei Xiaoli, watched the second brother make a profit but suffered a huge loss, psychologically, face, or can't hang up. This may confirm why Li Bin and He Xiaopeng have interacted frequently recently, sending cars and going on business trips together.
From the perspective of the capital market, it may be even more cruel. As of the close of trading on May 14, Wei Xiaoli's U.S. stock prices were $5.410, $8.09 and $27, and the three listed issue prices were $6.26, $15 and $11.5 respectively, with Weilai and Xpeng falling below the issue price, while the ideal stock price rose 135%. Wei Xiaoli's immediate market capitalization is $11.29 billion, $7.643 billion and $28.65 billion, which is higher than the $9.7 billion combined of NIO and XPeng.
Fortunately, boosted by the opening price of the U.S. stock market of Zeekr, the stock prices of the three U.S. stocks of Wei Xiaoli all rose to varying degrees on the same day, of which Weilai rose by up to 6.71%, followed by Xiaopeng, with an increase of 4.66%, and Ideal ranked third with an increase of 1.16%.
The higher the ideal profit, the higher the stock price increase and the higher the market capitalization, the more awkward the relationship between the three may be.
Tesla's "Three Apostles"
On June 12, 2014, Tesla founder Elon Musk announced that all patents would be disclosed for free, a move that changed the landscape of the entire electric vehicle industry. This move allows other companies to use its technology without the risk of litigation. This decision is seen by many as a bold attempt in the field of new energy.
Five months later, in November, Li Bin established NIO, in January 2015, He Xiaopeng established Xiaopeng, and in July 2015, Li Xiang established Ideal. The establishment of China's first batch of new car-making forces was after Tesla's patents were published, and in a very short period of time, which also made Li Bin, He Xiaopeng and Li Xiang called "Tesla's disciples" by netizens, although none of them admitted it.
Whether Tesla's public patents have such a great influence will not be discussed for the time being, but its public patents do have a positive role in promoting the development of new energy vehicles in China.
It is understood that Tesla currently has nearly 4,000 patents, including 387 public patents, including appearance, technical inventions and vehicle manufacturing and other different fields, of which 9 are appearance patents and 213 are technical inventions. Technical invention patents involve batteries, motors, electronic control, vehicle manufacturing, human-computer interaction and charging piles, etc., which are urgently needed at the beginning of the establishment of new energy vehicle companies. It is undeniable that some of Tesla's open patents are not key technologies, and Wei Xiaoli has not publicly acknowledged the number of technical patents using Tesla.
After 2014, domestic new energy vehicles have sprung up, and Tesla's success has also become a sample for many domestic new energy vehicle companies to learn, increasing investment in research and development, and the number of related patents is the last, even surpassing Tesla. Qichacha data shows that as of 2022, the number of BYD's utility model patents has surpassed Tesla.
Zhang Zhiyong, an automotive media person, believes that Tesla's patent role is not so big, "at present, Wei Xiaoli has not publicly used Tesla's patented technology, it is worth emphasizing that the proportion of research and development of the three is higher than Tesla, and Weilai has spent more than 10 billion yuan on research and development for two consecutive years, and China's new energy vehicles can achieve such results, more due to the technological innovation and market development of domestic enterprises themselves." The achievements of domestic vehicles in the field of new energy vehicles are inseparable from the government's policy support and the improvement of the industrial chain. ”
Now no matter what the current situation of Weilai, Ideal and Xiaopeng is, they all have the confidence to call Tesla.
Malls are, after all, battlefields
The photo of the three brothers above was posted by He Xiaopeng on Weibo in June 2020. At that time, He Xiaopeng's copywriting for the photo was "three hardships, thinking about change in memory".
At this time, Weilai is the boss of the three families, and Li Bin sits firmly in the C position, in fact, when He Xiaopeng posted this group photo, there were two pictures, one is the three heroes of Marvel, and the other is the three heroes of Lu Bu. It goes without saying that the Lu Bu he is referring to is Tesla, and Li Bin, Li Xiang and He Xiaopeng are like Liu Guanzhang.
In 2019, Wei Xiaoli's three families had a hard time, and the sales of new energy vehicles this year were only 1.206 million, a year-on-year decline of 4%, setting a record of negative growth for the first time in 10 years. Li Bin is also known as the worst man in 2019, NIO once faced the risk of bankruptcy, and the "range extender" and "automatic driving" of Ideal and Xiaopeng are not too recognized by the market, and life is difficult. But in 2020, when the group photo was taken, NIO got an investment of 7 billion yuan from Hefei to temporarily survive the crisis, and Xpeng's factory in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province also began to put into production, and everything is developing for the better. A month after the photo was posted, Lee Xiang successfully rang the bell on the NASDAQ, and the ideal survived the crisis.
The ideal days in 2020 were relatively better, with a loss of only 151.7 million yuan, NIO also narrowed from a loss of 11.41 billion yuan in 2019 to 5.611 billion yuan, and Xpeng also narrowed from a loss of 3.692 billion yuan in 2019 to 2.732 billion yuan. In 2021, the three are still losing money, with Ideal losing 321.5 million yuan, Weilai losing 10.57 billion yuan, and Xpeng losing 4.863 billion yuan, with losses increasing by 169.8 million yuan, 4.959 billion yuan, and 2.131 billion yuan respectively. Ideal is still the best form of the one.
The tipping point occurred in June 2022, when Li released its new car L9, which Li Xiang announced in a high-profile manner that it was the best SUV within 5 million, and the benchmark was Rolls-Royce Cullinan – although it was priced at less than 500,000. The problem may lie here, because Xpeng is also going to release a high-end SUV at this node, and the ideal early move directly compresses Xpeng's living space. So, a few days later, He Xiaopeng publicly declared that the target of Xiaopeng G9 was a Porsche Cayenne, and also @ Li Xiang, such a-for-tat, or a little bit of gunpowder.
This matter was originally not directly related to Li Bin, but the turn and praise between Li Xiang and He Xiaopeng was quite exquisite, and many netizens read the faint smell of gunpowder from the three brothers of the new car-making forces.
The three brothers who built the car took different paths
The three brothers of the new car-making force have many similarities, such as being laymen in making cars, and for example, they all achieved financial freedom before building cars.
Li Bin previously founded Yiche.com, Li Xiang engaged in Autohome, and even in the field of automotive vertical media, Li Xiang is more famous than Li Bin, which is also the fundamental reason why Li Bin was politely rejected when he asked Li Xiang to join the gang. UC, founded by He Xiaopeng, was acquired by Alibaba for $4.35 billion, and as the founder, he has already been wealthy. Li Bin and Li Xiang were somewhat related to cars before, but He Xiaopeng had nothing to do with making cars. Coincidentally, on the third day after He Xiaopeng sold UC, Tesla opened its patents around the world, and He Xiaopeng invested in the research and development of new energy vehicles of Xia Heng, He Tao and Yang Chunlei, who were born in GAC.
Whether it is NIO, Ideal or Xiaopeng, what is most lacking in the early stage is funds. Because new energy vehicles, as an almost new format, are extremely money-burning industries, requiring a lot of money, even if Li Bin, Li Xiang and He Xiaopeng have achieved financial freedom, their money can not afford to burn, then they can only finance.
At that time, Internet bigwigs were the biggest financiers, so Internet giants such as Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Meituan, Didi, and Xiaomi became their best choice. In the early days, NIO had a huge advantage, because Tencent, JD.com, Lenovo and Baidu all became Li Bin's financiers, and the worst mixed up at that time was Xiaopeng, although He Xiaopeng brought Ali's investment with the resources of Ali's executives.
After all, once those big factories enter the track, their own financial support is much higher than theirs, and they will be their most dangerous opponents, such as Lei Jun, who was the first to find by Li Bin, although Lei Jun made it clear that he would not build a car at that time, and also voted for Weilai, but he didn't expect Lei Jun to finally break his promise and claim in a high-profile manner that "building a car is the last business in my life, and I am willing to bet on all my reputation to fight for Xiaomi cars." ”
Lei Jun really mass-produced the Xiaomi SU7 3 years later. Robin Li, another Internet tycoon who invested in NIO, has not been directly involved in car manufacturing, but Baidu has always regarded intelligent driving as one of Baidu's most important business segments, and intelligent driving was once a major selling point of new energy vehicles. In 2021, Robin Li also announced that he would join hands with Geely to build a car, and the former investors have become competitors, and the saddest thing at this time is Li Bin.
Li Bin and Li Xiang were originally engaged in automotive vertical media, and they better understand the pain points of users' needs, especially Li Bin is even a little paranoid about user experience, which also makes Weilai spend a lot of money on user experience, and a large part of Weilai's total loss of 100 billion yuan is spent on the so-called user experience, in comparison, Li Xiang and He Xiaopeng spend a lot less in this regard.
After the end of 2023, Li Bin, He Xiaopeng and Li Xiang should have different mentalities. The happiest thing this year is Li Xiang, Li Xiang not only sold 376,000 vehicles for the whole year, exceeded the target of 300,000 vehicles, and made a profit of 11.7 billion yuan, so that Li Xiang's tense nerves could take a breath. NIO and Xpeng did not complete the target task, NIO sold 160,000 units, with a target completion rate of 64%, and Xpeng sold 142,000 units in the same period, with a target completion rate of 70%. In 2023, NIO will lose 21.15 billion yuan, an increase of 45.3% from 14.56 billion yuan in 2022; Xpeng will lose 10.38 billion yuan in 2023, an increase of 13.53% compared with 9.139 billion yuan in 2022.
In the face of the ideal of standing out, Li Bin and He Xiaopeng are still struggling on the profit line, and they may be able to survive the crisis together.
During the Three Kingdoms period, the Wushu Alliance was not unbreakable, after all, the goal of the three families of Liu, Sun and Cao was to win the world.
Author | Dream Shaw