Smart cars under the hunt: hot track, cold thinking| Lei Feng net

The racetrack of smart cars is too fierce.

According to the data on the official website of the car company, the car-making map in October has made waves again. Weilai's deliveries fell by 60% from the previous month, while Xiaopeng delivered more than 10,000 vehicles for two consecutive months, leading the domestic ranking with 10,138 vehicles in October.

But did this make Xiaopeng stop being anxious? Not really.

At the recent annual meeting of the GGV RMB Fund, He Xiaopeng shared the keynote speech as a speaker. At the meeting, he admitted that the company was "very aggressive and very anxious."

On the one hand, the hard threshold of the chip cannot be crossed, and the output of Xiaopeng Automobile will always be in a limit. It is reported that every time Xiaopeng produces a smart car, it needs 1700 chips to be manufactured, and these chips are indispensable. The supply chain problem is not unique to Xiaopeng, the global technology community has suffered from a long "chip shortage", and the price of non-volkswagen chips has risen from the previous few cents to hundreds of dollars. Lei Feng network learned that Weilai's production capacity in recent months has declined, and the culprit is "lack of core". Such a "stuck neck" state, He Xiaopeng speculated that it may last for another year, and the battery cell problem may not be solved until the beginning of the following year.

Although the shortage of batteries is only a short-term problem, fierce peer competition is the eternal theme of the smart car track. In this "short-term contact" track, there is no eternal king. The previous domestic car-making "old order" composed of Weilai, Xiaopeng and Ideal is constantly being challenged by fresh blood. Car companies, no matter how big or small, are waiting for each other, while new competitors are still scrambling to enter the game. He Xiaopeng said that in 2022, domestic joint ventures can become wholly-owned enterprises, and he is still unclear how these wholly-owned enterprises will join the market, but this force cannot be ignored by car companies. In the first half of this year, the sales of the new car-making forces increased by 500%, but their share was even reduced.

External crises are rife, and He Xiaopeng is also concerned about the uncertainty of internal organizational management. In order to quickly develop and accelerate iteration speed, Xiaopeng will have as many as 10,000 new employees in 2021. It is estimated that the size of Xiaopeng's personnel has almost doubled this year. He Xiaopeng admitted that he had never recruited so many people in a short period of time. The influx of a large number of new employees and the rapid expansion of the company's personnel scale have undoubtedly given Xiaopeng a lot of challenges in organizational management.

Born in South China University of Technology majoring in computer science, he became famous after founding UC, and He Xiaopeng's entrepreneurial story began in software. After leaving Ali in 2017 to devote himself to the car industry, he felt more and more the challenges brought by hardware.

Different from software, the hardware manufacturing industry is characterized by many links and high marginal cost of production: structure, security, supply chain, public welfare, manufacturing, quality control, and after-sales are all links that software development does not have. At the same time, in terms of sales, software and hardware also have completely different marketing and marketing strategies. For He Xiaopeng, who is more familiar with software development, this is undoubtedly an examination paper full of difficult problems.

What is He Xiaopeng's answer?

First of all, in the relationship between software and hardware, Xiaopeng implements a hardware-first strategy. The underlying logic of this judgment is that for smart cars, the dependence of software and hardware has been unbound to a certain extent, and hardware has no longer become a constraint on software. For the car industry, you can focus your main energy on your main business and good at it.

Therefore, for Xiaopeng, their main focus is still in the hardware, and they always consider changing the hardware first, and then consider changing the software. The traditional car play method of pure hardware is not enough to adapt to the current ever-changing smart car competition track, and the structural innovation of software and hardware will become the main growth point of Xiaopeng towards the global leader.

Just recently, in response to the frequent auxiliary driving accidents, Xiaopeng launched the "smart driving points" system and will carry out public testing in the near future. Users will have to pass the Automotive Intelligent Driver Assistance Safety Test and be authorized to use the Smart Driving feature. In the process of using assisted driving, if the user frequently or for a long time to take off the steering wheel, did not take over according to the prompts, frequent or long-term inattention to the road surface conditions and other dangerous behaviors, the user's intelligent driving points will be deducted. When the score is deducted to 0 points, the user must retake the entrance test, otherwise the smart driving function cannot be used again.

Secondly, in the face of sales, Xiaopeng is stepping up his pace to go to sea and become bigger and stronger in overseas markets. Although the globalization of Xiaopeng's business is still full of uncertainties due to different standards in terms of safety, carbon emissions, data protection and other aspects, going to sea must be done, and it must be fast.

He Xiaopeng judged that on the track of going to sea, entering the field cannot wait for everything to be ready. Domestic companies entering the global market as latecomers face far greater difficulties than existing giants in the United States. If you wait until you become bigger in China and then go to sea, it will be too late.

Absorbing the lessons of UC, He Xiaopeng in overseas markets is more inclined to developed countries; and the high requirements of developed countries for products can also force car companies, so that products can maintain high competitiveness in all parts of the world. For smart cars, He Xiaopeng believes that there is no need to specifically position users, as long as the technology reaches the user will naturally come.

In the future, He Xiaopeng hopes to gradually improve the role of overseas markets so that it can become one of the important pillars of Xiaopeng Automobile, and overseas revenue can account for 50% of total revenue.

As mentioned earlier, the smart car track pattern is far from formed. What changes will the smart car market of the future?

Due to the intelligent "convergence speed will accelerate", the market for smart cars will be more concentrated than traditional cars, He Xiaopeng judged that in the next 5 to 10 years, the competition on the smart car track will soon be settled. Between 2025 and 2035, the automotive market will become like the current mobile phone market, with 70% to 80% of the market share being occupied by the top five companies. The head smart car company will be able to reach annual sales of $300 billion to $500 billion, and the delivery volume can also reach 1-20 million units. In the short term, Xiaopeng expects to "stand firm" and reach the "small target" of 100 billion yuan in annual sales.

As a new car-making force, Weilai is widely regarded as a strong competitor of Xiaopeng. Even if production is affected by the "lack of cores", annual deliveries in 2021 have so far led the way. Nio is the main high-end market, in addition to the product itself, the community it provides, services and other elements have also brought strong competitiveness to NIO. With word-of-mouth as the main starting point, WEILAI has carried out its unique marketing model: unlike traditional car companies that rely on advertising promotion and telemarketing to complete conversion, WEIlai mainly relies on core users for word-of-mouth marketing. According to reports, 69% of THE ORDERS DURING THE EPIDEMIC IN WEILAI CAME FROM THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF OLD USERS.

Although domestic competition has fallen into a white-hot situation, the overseas "big devil" cannot be ignored. Tesla's domestic car deliveries in October were 12,143, actually surpassing Xiaopeng's October achievements. Compared with 11,329 units in September, this figure increased by 7.18% month-on-month. In October, Tesla received an order for 100,000 new hertz cars, and the volume of an order can even be comparable to the annual delivery volume of any one in "Wei Xiaoli". Tesla's investment in hard technology has made it see a return, and lower energy consumption and maintenance costs, better performance, and a smarter OTA system are the keys to Tesla's dominance in the smart car competition.

The "hunt" of the smart car track is still continuing, dark horses are constantly killing, and it is not uncommon for old giants to fall behind.

Anxiety has become a constant theme of every car company, start-ups think about how to overtake in curves every day, and car companies with small achievements think about how not to be overtaken by curves every day. This anxiety has driven smart car companies to innovate and break through from multiple perspectives such as business, products, and services, and has also allowed the entire market to move towards a mature form at a high speed.

In the fierce competitive environment, domestic intelligent car companies continue to optimize and iterate, and the best of them will naturally have stronger competitiveness when they step onto the world stage, and have a higher right to speak in the international market.

The opportunity for the smart car track still exists, and it is not yet known whose hand the deer died. Born of worry, the new forces of car manufacturing are still advancing.

【Cover image source: website name Daily Economic News, owner: Daily Economic News】