On the increasingly hot intelligent driving track, Xpeng Motors has taken another city.
Recently, Xpeng Motors announced that its XNGP urban intelligent driving has completed 100% mapless, and the available range of intelligent driving has doubled. In Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Foshan, the usable mileage of Xpeng's XNGP intelligent driving system has been expanded to 2.23 times, 2.15 times, 2.18 times and 1.31 times, respectively, and in Shandong Province and Jiangxi Province, the urban intelligent driving system has been expanded by more than 30,000 kilometers and 11,000 kilometers respectively.
In addition, there are reports that the trial production of MONA, a sub-brand of Xpeng Motors, has rolled off the assembly line. With intelligent driving and MONA as the fulcrum, Xpeng Motors will expand the existing market while sinking intelligent driving to the price range of 100,000-150,000 yuan.
Xpeng Zhijia has taken it a step further
At the 2024 Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, He Xiaopeng, Chairman and CEO of Xpeng Motors, proposed: "The next decade will be a decade of intelligence, and in the next 18 months, the inflection point of high-end intelligent driving will come." ”
With the intensification of the involution of the automobile market, intelligence is becoming the next key competition. At present, NIO and Ideal among the new forces, BYD and Geely among the traditional car companies, as well as Huawei and Baidu, which have crossed the border, have officially announced that they will increase their intelligent research and development efforts.
Among them, BYD announced that it would enter the intelligent field with 100 billion funds; On March 12, HarmonyOS announced that it would push OTA upgrades across the board, and NCA, which does not rely on high-precision maps, will also be fully pushed, covering the whole country.
In this context, Xpeng Motors, which is labeled as intelligent, must "run" in front.
Looking back at the development process of Xpeng intelligent driving: In January 2021, Xpeng Motors NGP was launched, and long-distance travel entered the era of intelligent driving for the first time; In September 2022, Xpeng Motors launched the urban NGP, the first in China to realize intelligent driving "into the city"; In August 2023, Xpeng XNGP was launched in Beijing, becoming the first urban intelligent driving without high-precision maps in China; In May 2024, Xpeng announced that XNGP urban intelligent driving has fully entered the era of 100% maplessness.
For more than three years, Xpeng Motors has firmly established the brand label of autonomous driving, and the user usage rate has been rising. By the end of last year, the penetration rate of Xpeng users in high-speed scenarios was 94.7%, and the penetration rate of urban scenarios was 83.2%; Since April this year, the penetration rate of monthly active users of Xpeng Motors' XNGP urban smart driving has reached 82%.
Regarding the future, He Xiaopeng, CEO of Xpeng Motors, said that it plans to realize a full range of domestic and point-to-point XNGP intelligent driving services in 2024, and the service scenarios will include small roads, internal roads, parking lots, etc., to achieve full coverage; In 2024, Xpeng Motors will also start the research and development of global high-speed NGP, and plans to launch XNGP services worldwide in 2025.
In addition, Xpeng Motors will create a differentiated label through "technology equality".
He Xiaopeng once said that Xiaopeng Motors will launch the AI intelligent driving model in the second quarter to fulfill the promise of "AI large model on the car" proposed in the "1024 Science and Technology Day" in 2023; At this year's Beijing Auto Show, Xpeng Motors also unveiled a new brand MONA in cooperation with Didi, which will officially enter the 100,000-150,000 global auto market, and is expected to become the first car company in China to bring high-priced intelligent driving capabilities to the 1-150,000-150,000 yuan A-class car market.
MONA+ intelligent driving, entering the mainstream market of 100,000-150,000 yuan
On March 16 this year, He Xiaopeng posted on his personal social platform: "After going deep into the car building, you will find that there is huge market potential in the price range of 10-150,000 yuan, but it is extremely difficult to really make a good car in this range that is excellent in all aspects and equipped with the intelligent driving ability that we are best at, and there is also a suitable profit." ”
But he also stressed: "Today, we are finally ready to believe that this brand will be a new species of disruptive innovation." ”
At the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, Xpeng Motors' new brand MONA was officially announced. At that time, He Xiaopeng said at the scene: "The MONA brand means Made Of New AI, and is positioned as a global popularizer of AI intelligent driving cars. ”
"Popularizer of AI intelligent driving cars" is not only MONA's positioning, but also its declaration of war to the mainstream market.
Looking at the current auto market, in the price range of 100,000-150,000 yuan, there are leaders born from traditional car companies such as BYD and Aion, and new power brands such as Leap and Nezha that have gained a firm foothold. In order to achieve sales in this range, Xpeng Motors needs more extreme cost performance and more prominent product features.
Intelligence is the answer sheet handed over by Xpeng Motors in the face of competition. According to He Xiaopeng, Xiaopeng Motors has excellent cost control capabilities in intelligent driving, and is expected to reduce the cost of intelligent driving by 50% in 2024, which is also conducive to MONA's cost control and rapid profitability.
Judging from the current information, the official debut of MONA is not far off.
According to reports, MONA's first prototype car has rolled off the assembly line at Xpeng's Zhaoqing plant and is about to enter the PT2 (Production Trial 2) stage, with battery suppliers including BYD. After the PT2 is completed, the MONA moves into pre-production and small batch production.
In terms of channels, Xpeng Motors will open a "shop-in-shop" in a qualified Xpeng comprehensive store in the early stage to reduce the financial pressure on the laying of channels in the early stage.
In terms of sales, MONA is not only aimed at the C-end market, but also the B-end market will become an important growth point. It is understood that Xpeng Motors has reached an annual sales valuation agreement with Didi for two consecutive years with a lower limit of 100,000 units and an upper limit of 180,000 units - this agreement will help MONA quickly increase volume and increase market share.
Conclusion: In 2023, Xpeng Motors will deliver more than 140,000 vehicles for the whole year, and the cumulative delivery in history will exceed the milestone of 400,000 vehicles. Although it has achieved its own leap, in the rise of dark horses such as Wenjie and Ideal, the market pressure of Xiaopeng is also increasing day by day. In this process, MONA, which is the first to realize the equal rights of intelligent driving, is expected to become a new sales fulcrum for Xpeng Motors.