From low price to extended range, Xiaopeng finally compromised to the market.
For a long time this year, Xiaopeng car sales have been in the doldrums, even at the bottom of the New Power sales list.
Seeing that ideal, Lulai and Zero all found their own life-saving straws and quickly recovered their lives, while Xiaopeng’s car still missed the point.
To find a magic weapon to reverse this situation has become Xiaopeng’s top priority.
Until the arrival of MONA 03 The A-class pure electric model, which starts at less than 120000 yuan, quickly picked up Xiaopeng’s sales, creating a record of selling more than 20, 000 vehicles for two consecutive months.
Then Xiaopeng struck while the iron was hot and released the medium and large pure electric sedan P7 +.
With the full range of standard high-end smart cars, the price of less than 190000 yuan, P7 + on the market two hours to get a major order of more than 30, 000 units.
From these two models, it is not difficult to see that Xiaopeng’s low-price strategy has achieved initial results.
In addition to betting on the low-price strategy, Xiaopeng also plans to enter the taxi market to open up more room for growth.
The low-price strategy worked.
In fact, Xiaopeng initially decided on the low-price strategy, and the price subsidy for its first model, G3, when it was launched in 2018, was only 13.
58-165800 yuan.
Later, however, Xiaopeng quickly adjusted its strategy and planned to enter the middle and high-end market of level 200000.
In April 2020, Xiaopeng launched a medium-sized pure electric sedan P7, with a price of about 250000 yuan.
Although the price of the P7 is higher, its sales still surpass that of the G3.
Xiaopeng P7 accounted for more than 65% of the total sales in the fourth quarter of 2020.
This also makes Xiaopeng’s desire to hedge a high strategy come true and satisfied.
In September 2022, Xiaopeng launched a medium and large SUV G9 with a price of more than 300000 yuan.
However, it is such a new car that has been brewing for a whole year.
After the press conference, netizens complained that the price was too high and the product configuration was chaotic.
Subsequently, although Xiaopeng urgently fixed these problems, the G9 sold only more than 600 units in its first month on the market.
The failure of the G9 led to a series of problems in the technology, products, market and other links of Xiaopeng Motor.
At that time, he Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motor, admitted to the outside world that the consistency of values was not well organized, which led to serious organizational problems.
After the renovation, Xiaopeng did not give up its high-end strategy, launching the G6 with a price of more than 200000 yuan and the X9 with a price of more than 350000 yuan in June 2023 and January 2024 respectively.
At first, Xiaopeng used the two mid-and high-end models to temporarily stabilize sales, delivering more than 20,000 vehicles a month in the fourth quarter of last year.
However, due to more than 200000 of the market competition and other reasons, G6, X9 models follow-up growth is weak, although the above models were cut prices, but also failed to recover the decline.
Xiaopeng’s cumulative sales in the first half of this year were only 52028, with an average of less than 10,000 per month.
At that time, the first-half sales of Weilai and Zero were 87426 and 86696 respectively, and the monthly sales of Weilai and Zero had both exceeded 20, 000.
In the face of persistent sluggish sales, Xiaopeng decided to return to the performance-to-price ratio after reflection.
In August and November this year, Xiaopeng launched MONA 03, an A-class pure electric sedan with a price of less than 120000 yuan, and Xiaopeng P7 +, a medium and large electric sedan with a price of less than 190000 yuan.
Photo source: Xiaopeng Automobile, Xiaopeng Automobile Chairman he Xiaopeng once mentioned that Xiaopeng Automobile’s positioning is between 15 yuan and 300000 yuan, saying that Xiaopeng Automobile is not willing to take the low-end route, although it can have a considerable scale, but it will let users determine the brand level from the price.
Once the price is pulled down, it is difficult to form a good gross margin space on a large scale.
So, why did he Xiaopeng break his promise? won’t the gross profit space be affected after the price reduction? It basically comes from the “reducing cost and increasing efficiency” in the past two years.
In the past, Xiaopeng’s main energy was innovation, but in the next year or so, I want to focus on cost.
” He Xiaopeng said at the earnings call for the first quarter of 2023.
After two years of cost reduction, Xiaopeng Motor has achieved an all-round cost reduction.
On the one hand, thanks to cooperation with Volkswagen, Xiaopeng will share Volkswagen’s global supply chain system, thus further reducing the cost of the car-building platform.
On the other hand, Xiaopeng Automobile integrates intelligence, powertrain and vehicle platform into a large intelligent platform, realizing maximum common use among various models.
Platform R & D and scale effect help Xiaopeng to effectively reduce supply chain costs and manufacturing costs.
For example, in terms of electronic and electrical architecture, Xiaopeng has released an on-board computing center with cockpit integration, and XCCP has achieved 40% cost savings compared with the previous generation of central computing architecture.
at the same time, Xiaopeng is also studying the integrated floor die-casting technology in CIB+, which will reduce vehicle manufacturing costs by 10% and 30%.
As a result of this change, by the end of 2024, Xiaopeng will be able to achieve a 40% reduction in vehicle PACK costs by 50%, and a 30% increase in integrated R & D efficiency of smart cars.
He Xiaopeng said that he is confident that the overall cost will be reduced by 25% by the end of 2024, and that the reduction will significantly improve Xiaopeng’s gross profit margin in 2024 and break even by 2025.
Thanks to this, Xiaopeng was finally able to launch low-cost models at a time when life was at stake in order to compete with the increasingly competitive market.
Smart driving is an important role, in addition to the promotional effect of low prices, the blessing of smart driving is also very important.
Xiaopeng car has been taking smart driving as the core selling point.
Start the business at the beginning of the standard Tesla, trying to become the leader of the domestic smart driver.
In the past few years, Xiaopeng has also occupied a place in the automobile industry by virtue of smart driving.
However, as Huawei and many other companies have launched smart driving and smart driving route change and other reasons, Xiaopeng’s smart driving lead is no longer prominent.
At present, it is generally believed in the industry that Huawei and Xiaopeng are the first echelon of smart drivers.
At present, both of them have achieved the goal of “the whole country can open it”.
In February this year, Qijie brand official announced OTA that the optimized urban smart driving navigation assistance function does not rely on high-precision maps, and supports all urban roads, national highways, county roads, rural roads and other open roads, with up to 99% of available roads.
In July this year, Xiaopeng XNGP upgraded from “all over the country” to “easy to use all over the country” and put forward three major standards of “easy to use all over the country”: no restrictions on cities, routes, and road conditions.
It can be said that the two are neck and neck in the ability of intelligent driving.
In addition, new power car companies such as ideal and Lulai and traditional car companies such as SAIC and Chang’an are all through self-research.
Or cooperate with Huawei, DJI and other suppliers to develop high-level smart cars.
In the face of the fierce pursuit of competitors, Xiaopeng’s long-term advantage of smart driving is no longer prominent.
So, how to enable the smart car to own models, and then into sales, has become a difficult problem for Xiaopeng cars.
He Xiaopeng’s judgment is that price is the key variable to pry the positive cycle between the two.
“I think one of the important reasons why smart driving has not formed the top three car purchase decisions of customers in the past is that it is too expensive.
We can see that the high-level intelligent driving assistance is about 50, 000 yuan more expensive than the intelligent driving assistance which only provides ACC.
If the price is only 10,000 or less than 20,000, we believe that high-level intelligent assisted driving or even self-driving will quickly occupy the market.
” As mentioned above, thanks to Xiaopeng’s continuous cost reduction and efficiency, Xiaopeng’s comprehensive R & D efficiency has been significantly improved, and the hardware cost of XNGP is expected to be reduced to 50%.
And the reduction in the cost of smart driving also provides the basic conditions for Xiaopeng MONA 03 and Xiaopeng P7 + to carry high-level smart driving.
Based on the above considerations, Xiaopeng MONA M03 is equipped with XPILOT-assisted driving system, which supports L2-level auxiliary driving such as automatic parking and lane maintenance.
The Xiaopeng MONA M03 Max version of XNGP, a full-scene smart driving system, is expected to be delivered next year.
, picture source: Xiaopeng car, Xiaopeng P7 + is first launched with a new generation of Xiaopeng AI Eagle Eagle Vision solution.
According to reports, Xiaopeng P7 + first launch is equipped with AI Hawkeye Smart driving program, 8 million pixel camera + HDR technology, so that it can achieve high-speed plus urban intelligent driving without relying on high-precision maps or lidar.
Xiaopeng has gained a lot from the combination of low price and smart driving.
Among them, the delivery volume of Xiaopeng MONA M03 exceeded 10000 for two consecutive months.
With this, Xiaopeng’s overall monthly delivery volume exceeded 20, 000 in September and October, reaching 21352 and 23917 respectively, showing a double growth trend compared with the same month.
The official announcement of Xiaopeng Automobile, as of 24:00 on November 7, Xiaopeng P7 + Dading reached 31528.
To enter the extended range market, in order to seek the incremental market and stimulate sales growth, Xiaopeng also targeted extended range models.
At the Xiaopeng AI Technology Day on November 6, Xiaopeng announced that it would launch an extended-range model and launched the carrier of the extended-range car-Xiaopeng Kunpeng super electric system.
Among them, “Qing” represents the super extended range system, and “Peng” represents Xiaopeng’s pure electricity system.
Source: Xiaopeng Automobile, it is understood that the Kunpeng superelectric system is based on the global 800V high voltage silicon carbide platform, equipped with 5C overcharged AI battery, hybrid silicon carbide coaxial electric drive, mute augmenter and so on.
Based on the above technical basis, Xiaopeng Kunpeng super electric system can enable the pure electric range of the extended range model to reach 430km, and the comprehensive mileage exceeds 1400km.
As to why it is necessary to release extended-range models, he Xiaopeng explained: “if enterprises want to enter the global market, they also need a new way to replenish energy, including hybrid programming.
” In addition, the range of a car to achieve more than 1000 kilometers, need to change the form of power other than pure electricity to achieve.
” “extended range products will be launched at home first, followed by overseas markets.
” According to he Xiaopeng, “it is easier for pure electricity to do super electric, because from pure electricity to super electric, those things can be done by traditional partners, but both have high technical barriers and difficulties.
” Haitong International Research News also pointed out that compared with series-parallel plug-in hybrid, the structure of extended-range models is simpler, the development cycle is shorter, the cost is lower, and can effectively reduce the manufacturing cost of the whole vehicle.
This is in line with Xiaopeng’s realistic demand of rapidly increasing sales and reducing development expenditure, making it more competitive in the market.
From the point of view of the industry, the growth potential of the extended range market is fully in line with Xiaopeng’s pursuit of sales volume.
According to the China Automobile Association, sales of new energy vehicles increased by 32.
5% from January to September compared with the same period last year, with an increase of 84.
2% for mixed extended-range models.
Federation statistics also show that the growth rate of incremental models in the first nine months is four times that of pure electric models.
Analysts at the Global Automotive Research Institute pointed out that no matter the current high-voltage charging technology, charging infrastructure construction, or solid-state batteries, which are regarded as the ultimate solution for power batteries, are difficult to be popularized in the short term.
At this stage, most of the added program products are medium-sized and medium-sized SUV products, which have a strong competitive advantage over pure electric battery life and cost.
With the expansion and development of the new energy market in second-and third-tier cities, it can meet the demand of urban electricity consumption and long-distance mixed use of oil and electricity to the greatest extent, and promote the rapid growth of the added program market.
Prior to the news, it was reported that Xiaopeng’s first extended car will be a large SUV, developed with the G9 as the prototype car, mainly aimed at the price belt of more than 200000 yuan, and is expected to be mass produced in the second half of 2025.
However, Xiaopeng officials did not disclose further information about the model.
The Global Automotive Research Institute predicts that China’s incremental passenger car market may exceed one million vehicles this year, and this scale is expected to further expand to nearly 2 million by 2026.
Based on this background, Xiaopeng launched an extended range model, which undoubtedly boosted Xiaopeng’s sales.
However, it is precisely to see the development trend of the extended range market, it has been exposed that more and more car companies will join the extended range camp, among which, in addition to Xiaopeng, extreme krypton, Zhiji, GAC Ean and other car companies have disclosed that they will release extended range models.
In overseas markets, Hyundai, Ford, Stellantis and so on are also planning to launch add-on electric vehicles.
This means that with the increase in the number of competitors, Xiaopeng’s desire to use extended range models to stimulate sales may not be so easy to achieve.
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