For Xpeng, there are more serious challenges.
Not long ago, Xpeng Motors announced the delivery of new energy vehicles in January, a total of 5,218 units, which was nearly 60% lower than in December last year, and more than half of the waist.
In 2021, Xpeng Motors won the annual delivery championship of the new force with 98,155 units. More than a year later, Xpeng Motors quickly fell behind and almost became the crane tail of the new forces.
The study found that Xpeng Motors has more or less problems in product replacement, intelligence, profitability, organizational capabilities, etc., and in the face of more severe competition in the new energy automobile industry in 2023, Xpeng Motors is experiencing life and death speed.
The Relay of the Replacement Model Failed
In 2021, Xpeng Motors reached the top, and the model that made the biggest contribution was the Xpeng P7.
The Xpeng P7 was launched in April 2020. At that time, Xpeng’s main competitor was Tesla’s Model 3. Xpeng P7 has a trendy shape, smooth body, and intelligent design that is also refreshing.
More importantly, compared with Tesla’s Model 3, Xpeng P7 has a price advantage and quickly attracted a group of loyal fans.
Soon, the P7 became Xpeng’s main model, and deliveries increased month by month, reaching a monthly peak of more than 9,000 units in March 2022.
However, because the P7 was launched earlier, it is inevitable that the product life cycle will come to an end as time goes by.
Xiaopeng is not unaware of this problem. In order to reduce its dependence on P7, Xpeng launched P5 in the second half of 2021, focusing on the sinking market below 250,000 yuan, but the market response was cold and did not bring much increment to Xpeng.
Sinking failed, Xpeng Motors turned its attention to the high-end market.
In the first half of 2022, Xpeng Motors began to warm up the latest SUV model, the G9, and promoted it on various occasions. Thousands of calls, on September 21, Xpeng held a new car conference, known as the “best SUV within 500,000” Xpeng G9 officially unveiled.
As the flagship SUV of Xpeng Motors, the G9 is highly expected by Xpeng and called “DreamCar” by He Xiaopeng himself.
But it backfired, at the press conference, G9 launched 6 models in one go, 570G, 570E, 702E, 650E performance version, 650X performance version, 650X commemorative version, complex naming rules will confuse consumers. In addition, consumers also complained that new cars have problems such as confusing pricing systems, car reductions, and inflated prices.
Faced with doubts, Xpeng had to urgently call a meeting and hastily adjusted the configuration and price within 48 hours, while simplifying the naming of the model.
High-profile stage, dismal ending.
As soon as the Xpeng G9 was launched, it encountered word-of-mouth Waterloo, and consumers who placed orders in the blind ordering stage unsubscribed one after another. Although Xiaopeng later took a series of remedial measures, it still did not improve much. In January 2023, Xpeng G9 delivered a total of 2,249 units, far lower than other manufacturers, and the replacement model was not as expected.
ALL IN Intelligent?
As a new force in car manufacturing, the three car companies of “Wei Xiaoli” have their own strategic positioning:
NIO focuses on high-end products and attracts consumers by providing the ultimate user experience;
The selling point of the ideal car is the “daddy car”, which provides users with a comfortable, spacious and long-range family car on a budget;
Xpeng’s label is “intelligent”, so it is also known as the “hardcore” company most like Tesla.
In the past few years, Xpeng has always been obsessed with investing in technology, especially on “intelligence”.
In order to find a strong technical leader, He Xiaopeng has twice rushed to Silicon Valley and invited former Tesla Autopilot senior engineer Gu Junli to join. Among Xpeng’s 15,000 employees, about 6,000 are technical research and development personnel.
At present, Xpeng Motors is in a relatively leading position in autonomous driving, voice interaction and electronic and electrical architecture. Taking autonomous driving technology as an example, Xpeng has always adhered to full-stack self-research, and now autonomous driving has been able to reach L2.5 or even higher L3 level.
He Xiaopeng himself also said that he will be the first to launch fully autonomous driving in 50 cities in China in 2023.
However, success is also Xiaohe, defeat is also Xiaohe, Xiaopeng obviously overestimated consumers’ acceptance of intelligence.
New energy electric vehicles are different from general consumer electronics such as smartphones. In the early stage, Xpeng can quickly harvest consumers with the gimmick of “intelligence + technology”, but as the industry enters a mature period, for consumers, the upgrade experience brought by automatic driving is far less than a large screen, a long battery and a comfortable intelligent cockpit.
In contrast, Ideal and Huawei are more flattering. They have adopted a pragmatic range extender power model, but they have frantically upgraded their configurations in car screens, intelligent cockpits and even car audio, and their sales have led the way.
In addition, China’s road regulations on autonomous driving are not perfect, even Tesla is not willing to go deeper, and Xpeng’s “insistence” does not seem to be a wise move at this stage.
Financial Data is Under Pressure
According to the latest financial report, Xpeng’s financial situation is under increasing pressure.
In the third quarter of 2022, Xpeng Motors’ revenue was 6.8 billion yuan, a decrease of 8% from the previous quarter, and the third consecutive quarter of decline. The net loss was nearly 2.4 billion yuan, which translates to a loss of 80,000 yuan for every car sold; Cash reserves were $40.1 billion, down $1.2 billion from the previous quarter. The gross profit margin was 13.5%, ranking at the bottom of the list of emerging automakers.
Industry insiders commented that this is a financial report “full of red flags”.
Xpeng’s R&D investment has remained high, with R&D spending reaching 1.5 billion yuan in the third quarter of last year alone.
According to reports, Xpeng Motors’ supply chain management also has problems. In Xpeng’s early P5, P7 and other models, a car usually has six to seven battery pack types, up to a dozen at most, which seriously affects the intensive procurement of automotive batteries and other parts.
On the other hand, the ideal car, from the initial agent ONE to the upgraded model, and then to the latest or upcoming L8, L9 and other models, all use the same size and specification of the battery pack, which virtually saves a lot of resources for the ideal.
In addition to battery packs, Xpeng Motors has also adopted a number of suppliers in motor units, ultrasonic radar and other parts.
Sales have plummeted and costs have remained high, which can also explain why Xpeng’s gross profit margin has hovered at a low level of 10% all year round.
Xpeng’s performance dissatisfied investors and caused a chain reaction in the capital market.In July 2021, Xpeng Motors was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the second time, and since then its stock price has fallen all the way, and the current stock price is around 37 yuan, which has fallen by nearly 80% compared with 165 yuan at the time of listing.
Personnel Earthquake
On January 30, Xpeng Motors announced that Wang Fengying, former vice chairman and general manager of Great Wall Motor, officially joined as president and was fully responsible for Xpeng Motors’ product planning and sales system.
Wang Fengying comes from a traditional automobile manufacturer and has worked in Great Wall Motor for more than 30 years, and is the “second-in-command” after Chairman Wei Jianjun, and is known as the “Iron Lady” in the automotive industry.
Wang Fengying’s joining of Xpeng marks a new stage in the adjustment of Xpeng’s organizational structure.
Previously, a former employee of Xpeng told the media that some bad phenomena began to spread after Xpeng Motors went public: formalism and bureaucracy began to breed, and the organizational power and execution power of Xpeng were gradually diluted.
The failure of Xpeng G9 last year is a clear example, and the contradictions of various problems are vividly reflected in the G9.
Xiaopeng took this as an opportunity to start a drastic reform of the organizational structure.
In October 2022, Xpeng established five major committees, including strategy, product planning, technology planning, production and marketing, and OTA, and established three virtual product matrix organizations, with He Xiaopeng personally serving as the director of the product and strategy committee, and the heads of the three major platforms reporting directly to He Xiaopeng.
On November 30, Xpeng Motors announced that Xia Heng, co-founder and president of Xpeng Motors, has resigned as executive director, followed by Xpeng’s assistant CEOLiCheng announced his official departure in early December.
Analysts believe that Xia HengheLiDuring Cheng’s tenure, he pushed for the listing of G9, and the collective departure of the two seemed to be “back” for the G9 failure.
After a series of changes, only He Xiaopeng was left on the board of directors of Xpeng Motors, and He Xiaopeng’s decision-making power and voice in Xpeng Motors were unprecedentedly improved, becoming a veritable final decision-maker.
At last year’s year-end wrap-up meeting, He Xiaopeng criticized internal problems, pointing out that Xiaopeng’s organizational ability led to inefficiency in the department, and was born for the leader’s data and for reporting.
Inviting Wang Fengying to join this time has time to prove whether Xpeng Motors can take Xpeng out of the predicament.
More Tragic Red Sea
In 2023, the competition in the field of new energy vehicles will be even more fierce.
Traditional car companies, such as Great Wall Motor, GAC Group, and Geely Automobile, have also launched their own new energy brands and continue to make efforts.
In terms of new forces in car manufacturing, in addition to the three “Wei Xiaoli”, Nezha Automobile and Leap Auto are also catching up strongly and have achieved good results.
In terms of Internet companies, Huawei’s monthly sales of the Qianjie series of cars cooperated with Cialis exceeded 10,000 units, and Xiaomi Auto is also recruiting and running, announcing that it will soon launch its own new energy vehicles.
In 2023, with the decline of new energy subsidy policies, the growth rate of new energy vehicles in the country will slow down, which also means that the market is shrinking, but competition is gradually increasing.
For Xpeng, there are more serious challenges.
Tesla took the lead in announcing price reductions for its models in January, seizing the market across the board. As soon as the news came out, orders exploded, and deliveries reached an all-time high of 66,000 units in January.
In order to cope with the challenge, Xpeng Motors also had to reduce the price of the entire series by 20,000 to 30,000 yuan, and give an insurance subsidy of 7,000 yuan and a final payment subsidy of 10,000 yuan for specific models, with a maximum reduction of 50,000 yuan per bike.
However, in January, Xpeng Motors’ sales did not increase but fell, making the already difficult situation of Xpeng more critical, and the market left less and less time for Xpeng Motors.
You may want to know:
- Xpeng P7i Officially Announced That the New Car is About to Go on the Market These Three Details You Have to Know
- Worship the Electric Daddy Before Driving? XPeng Motors Urgently Apologized
Source: 界面新闻
