Picture source @Visual China
text | Lan Mediahui, author | Black Sheep, editor | Wei Xiao
At the end of January this year, He Xiaopeng ran to his own factory, and in front of everyone watching, he screwed up the upcoming x9 A few screws.
photos were posted online, and the scene seemed familiar. In July 2023, he also tightened screws for the new car G6, but the G6 became a hit.
Throughout 2023, tightening the screw is like a metaphor for He Xiaopeng - constantly ending up, constantly tightening a screw that can never be tightened.
html At the beginning of 2000, he set an annual sales target of 200,000 vehicles in an internal letter. After that, He Xiaopeng hired Wang Fengying to join the senior management; went to Germany to have dinner with the CEO of Volkswagen Group; acquired Didi’s smart electric vehicle project; and participated in supply chain anti-corruption; speaking from beginning to end in person (even for the first time) on the stage of the new G9 launch conference, it seems that He Xiaopeng has truly established himself as the center of power of Xiaopeng Motors.But by the end of the year, Xpeng Motors had delivered only 141,600 new cars. Looking at the new car-making forces, Li Auto delivered 376,000 units; NIO delivered 160,000 units; and the newly squeezed-in Leap Motors HT12 delivered 144,100 units throughout the year.
Compared with He Xiaopeng, who is famous on social media, Xiaopeng Motors lags behind, ranking fourth. It's been a year since I sold this screw, but it's still not tightened. The sales of
were not good, and the xngp upgrade of the car also caused a storm. Many old p5 owners were unable to upgrade the new system due to the "horizontal screen" and became "electric leeks". Everyone gathered together and went to He Xiaopeng's Weibo to write Xiaopeng Composition, in this farce, the voice of "old users are not as good as dogs" is heard endlessly. The voice of the old users of
was amplified. At this juncture, He Xiaopeng should have stopped playing and returned to his honest persona, but he had a quarrel with Yu Chengdong over the AEB issue. In fact, the two of them did not have a few words. He Xiaopeng hurriedly settled the matter and settled the matter with Mr. Yu. Be good friends again.
is just a real-car comparison experiment between AEB and that fiasco, and there is really nothing to follow.
Just like in December, after Xpeng Motors was suddenly reduced by its second shareholder Alibaba, its stock price dropped all the way to HK$50. When will Xpeng, which is currently trading at HK$36, rise back up and keep up with NIO's ideal pace? , when will old car owners be reassured, and when will they no longer be left behind...
2023 is just the beginning, and the follow-up is all unknown.
Return to the Center of Power
He Xiaopeng probably did not have a good time during the 2023 Spring Festival holiday.
html On January 25, he posted a video of "Snow turns into ice" on Weibo, with the caption: Snow turns into ice, gradually covering it from the roof layer by layer downwards, forming a strange snow curtain in the ice. . Someone underreplied: "That's too subtle." "When can I overtake on a curve?" Everyone in the car circle knows that in 2022, Xpeng Motors will not go smoothly.
Three days later, on the first day of work after the Spring Festival holiday, a letter from all employees of Xpeng Motors signed by He Xiaopeng was released. He said in the letter that 2023 will be a difficult year, a year full of challenges, and a link between the past and the future. Obviously, the completely failed g9 launch in 2022 and chaotic management issues made He Xiaopeng determined to break the deadlock.
He set a goal: 2 new cars will be launched throughout the year, 3 old models will be replaced, and 200,000 vehicles will be delivered. Full-scenario assisted driving (xngp) will be delivered in the third quarter of this year. Autonomous driving will be the core of Xpeng Motors. Label.
It seems now that although some of the goals were too optimistic when they were originally formulated, the changes are still obvious.
On January 30, Xpeng Motors announced that Wang Fengying would join and serve as president. The "Power Plant" report mentioned that "He Xiaopeng attaches great importance to her, and she has received power that previous executives have not received."
Another change is that starting in February 2023, all design, research and development, and The production, supply chain, organizational management, and process system teams all report directly to He Xiaopeng, and he is firmly grasping everything.
He Xiaopeng and the newly arrived Wang Fengying reached a gentleman's agreement in the workplace - "She is in charge of the inside and I am the outsider." He also plans to chat with 100 p6-p8 level employees in 2023 and listen to their opinions to screen out more suitable executives.
html In May, He Xiaopeng introduced Wang Fengying to nearly 500 suppliers at the company's first supplier conference since its establishment, "This is our new president. She will coordinate product planning, production, supply and marketing balance, and large product matrix. We must ensure that the management of the entire supply chain of our industry partners is more stable, sustainable and long-term."After that, He Xiaopeng focused more on "outreach".
html In June, he led a team to Germany, where he had a meal with the CEO of the Volkswagen Group. During the meal, the people from Volkswagen showed a strong interest in the G9, but they asked He Xiaopeng, "Why are the parts from the supply chain like this?" Expensive?
He Xiaopeng said that this meal was "very awkward to eat." Although he later reached a strategic investment of US$700 million with the Volkswagen Group, after returning to China, He Xiaopeng teamed up with Wang Fengying to launch a massive anti-corruption in the supply chain within Xiaopeng Motors. .
The news that Volkswagen has brought in an investment of US$700 million has made people look at the somewhat dull He Xiaopeng with admiration. The subsequent cooperation with Didi will push Xiaopeng's "good news" in 2023 to the top - Xiaopeng is alive. .
html In August, Xiaopeng Motors announced the acquisition of Didi’s smart car development business with equity. Didi’s chairman Cheng Wei was He Xiaopeng’s classmate in Tsinghua’s economics and management class. Didi’s original models were improved by Xiaopeng and sold on the Didi platform. , sales volume constitutes the main content of the bet between the two parties.Following the trend, on September 19, 2023, Xiaopeng Motors launched the g9 facelift model. At that time, the 46-year-old He Xiaopeng stood in the spotlight and talked from beginning to end by himself. And one year When the former old model G9 was released, almost all the company's executives appeared. He Xiaopeng took the initiative to mention the changes that had taken place in the past year: only 2 people remained from the 12-person executive team when the company went public.
On the way to the center of power, He Xiaopeng Stable.
Laggard Wei Xiaoli
Having stable rights does not mean that Xpeng Motors' performance is safe.
This ideal car is full of momentum. After entering the monthly delivery club of 30,000 yuan starting from June 2023, it will be the best It has never failed; Weilai has also taken advantage of both sides, taking money from the Middle East and doing battery swap business with Geely.
Xiaopeng in this segment only delivered 5,218 vehicles in January, and in the first and second quarters The monthly delivery volume was below 10,000 units. In July, it returned to the "10,000-unit club", and the monthly sales volume in the fourth quarter was stable at more than 20,000 units.
has not made any further breakthroughs. What is even more embarrassing for
is that its losses and gross profit margins continue to be low. To become a full-time official, this will attack Xpeng Motors all the time in 2023.
The third quarter financial report of 2023 shows that Xpeng Motors has accumulated a loss of 9.028 billion yuan, nearly the loss for the whole year of 2022. Under the predicament, it has been unable to raise its head. Gross profit margin - Since the fourth quarter of 2022, Xpeng Motors' gross profit margin has declined for four consecutive quarters, and since the second quarter of 2023, the gross profit margin has been negative.
In the third quarter of 2023, Xpeng Motors The overall gross profit margin was -2.7%, a decrease of 16.2 percentage points compared to the same period in 2022. The gross profit margin of automobiles was -6.1%, a decrease of 17.7 percentage points year-on-year. In other words, Xiaopeng has been "losing money selling cars."
Although "losing money", He Xiaopeng's decision of "autonomous driving as the core label of Xpeng Motors" set at the beginning of the year must not be missed.
On October 24, 2023, He Xiaopeng stood on the stage of "1024 Xpeng Automobile Technology Day" and released the pure electric MPV model Xpeng x9, Xpeng intelligent driving xngp, Xpeng Huitian flying car, Xiaopeng’s new generation of intelligent robots and other products.
It seems that the label of technology has been deeply ingrained in the bones of Xpeng Motors, but the system upgrade after this conference also triggered a storm of "old car owners are not as good as dogs".
Simply put, the new vehicle system and xngp service released on the 1024 Xpeng Motors Technology Day are not supported by all Xpeng p5 models. The angry car owner called Xpeng customer service to ask for a solution, but was told that "because the system is specially customized for vertical screen, all Xpeng cars with horizontal screen central control cannot be upgraded."
This rather strange reason first made all P5 car owners feel abandoned. Thousands of car owners later gathered in dozens of WeChat groups and wrote a joint letter to He Xiaopeng, demanding that "no discrimination against the elderly be done" during the upgrade. "Car owners", after several rounds of dealings between car owners and manufacturers, each p5 car owner received a 20,000 yuan coupon for new car purchase, which can only be used to purchase new Xiaopeng cars.
This incident lasted from the end of October to December 2023. This time, He Xiaopeng did not stand up. From October 2023, after Xpeng Motors' monthly delivery reached the 20,000 mark, he had a lot to deal with -
Entering the end of the year, first statistics show that the company is far away from the annual delivery target of 200,000 vehicles, and then another A Q3 financial report with continuous losses should have used sales volume to dilute the gross profit and loss data. In the news, in December, Xiaopeng Motors suffered from the news that its second shareholder Alibaba reduced its holdings...
From November 2023, He Xiaopeng stood up The biggest voicing was when he and Yu Chengdong competed against the car AEB system. After a row, the two became like two kindergarten children and became "best partners" again. But behind the scenes, Huawei's various actions on the car are enough to frighten China's new energy car circle, which is already crazy.
The same goes for He Xiaopeng.
But what is he busy with the rest of the time? In December 2023, Xpeng Motors' delivery volume was stuck at around 20,000. However, the total delivery volume for the whole year has been surpassed by Leapmotor, and the new car-making force Wei Xiaoli has become Wei Lingli.
It is said that since Wang Fengying took office as the president of Xiaopeng Motors, He Xiaopeng's working hours have been changed to seven days a week starting in March 2023. This is quite consistent with the facts, because Xiaopeng Motors, which has fallen behind, wants to return to the team. Now it seems that time is very tight and the task is relatively heavy.
