Source: Late Auto
Author: Wu Xiaoyu
February 18, the first day of construction in the Year of the Dragon,$XPeng (XPEV.US)$/$XPENG-W (09868.HK)$CEO He Xiaopeng sent a letter of commencement of construction to all employees.
He Xiaopeng said that 2023 was Xiaopeng Motor's “bottom-up year” and “experienced a lot of pain and great gains in organization, planning, business, operation, and efficiency.”
Last year, Xiaopeng received a capital injection of 700 million US dollars from Volkswagen Group and reached a partnership with Didi to release the first model G6 and the modified products P7i, P5, and G9 under the Fuyao architecture, and released the electric MPV X9. Xiaopeng sold about 142,000 units throughout the year, up 17% year over year, falling short of NIO's 160,000 units and the ideal 376,000 units. In terms of operations, Xiaopeng has not escaped the loss situation. As of the third quarter of last year, Xiaopeng had a net loss of about 3.89 billion yuan, and a gross margin of -2.7%.
2024 is the 10th year that Xiaopeng Motor was founded. He Xiaopeng's goal is “to more than double the performance, the organization must complete all shortcomings, and the operation must begin to take the first step towards high quality.”
“Late Auto” previously learned that Xiaopeng Motor's sales target for 2024 is 280,000 units, which is double that of last year. However, compared to other car companies, this goal is not aggressive. The goal for the ideal car in 2024 is 800,000, 600,000 units, and the Zero Run is 300,000 to 400,000 units.
He Xiaopeng believes that 2024 will be the first year for Chinese car brands to enter the “sea of blood” competition, and the first year of the knockout tournament. Xiaopeng Motors initially fought in fierce competition and accumulated a lot of experience. He believes “persistence will definitely win.”
There are also two new cars in 2024, and about 30 products are planned within 3 years
In April of last year, Xiaopeng released the Fuyao architecture, which is compatible with the E, F, and H platforms, as well as the “New Future R&D Platform”. Currently, Xiaopeng P7 and G9 are based on E platform, X9 is based on H platform, and P5 and G3 are first-generation D platform products.
He Xiaopeng previously said that through platformization, Xiaopeng will shorten the development cycle for new models by 20%, and the generalization rate of parts will reach up to 80%.
In 2024, He said that Xiaopeng will “release the first car on each platform” on 300,000 + and 150,000 platforms.
The first car on the 150,000-class platform is the first car in collaboration between Xiaopeng and Didi under the code name “MONA”.
According to Ho Xiaopeng in an interview with “Delayed Auto” and others in August last year, Xiaopeng will transform MONA with a fueling architecture that includes technologies such as XNGP (full-scene intelligent assisted driving) and X-EEA3.0 electronic and electrical architecture. This car is mainly aimed at ordinary consumers, and only then at online car-hailing markets such as Didi. His “conservative expectations” for the MONA brand are over 100,000 units a year.
The first car on the 300,000 class platform, or the sedan codenamed “F57,” will go on sale in the second half of this year.
In the sedan market, Xiaopeng first deployed the P5 and P7 products. Among them, the Xiaopeng P7 sold over 9,000 units in July, but according to Geran Road, in December of last year, the P7 sold only 3,541 units. Xiaopeng needed a new product to relay the P7 to open up a larger sedan market. “Late Auto” learned that Xiaopeng's internal target monthly sales volume for the “F57” is over 5,000 units.
In a media interview in April last year, He Xiaopeng said that 3 million cars will be the life and death line for car companies to survive in the next 10 years. “Xiaopeng's sales target for the next three years is to reach one million units,” said Wang Fengying, president of Xiaopeng Motors, at the dealer conference in September last year.
In order to achieve sales targets, He Xiaopeng revealed that in the next 3 years, Xiaopeng is planning about 30 new products or modifications; will invest more manpower, recruit about 4,000 people; and invest more than 40% of the R&D budget.
Furthermore, Xiaopeng's investment in intelligent driving remains firm, with a total investment of 3.5 billion yuan in research and development of “AI technology with smart driving as the core” in 2024.
Let cadres who can fight bring soldiers to the field
Under the reforms of founder He Xiaopeng and CEO Wang Fengying, Xiaopeng's organization changed frequently last year, and the “number one” sales system, automobile powertrain center, modeling center, autonomous driving center, and procurement department all changed people.
In 2024, He Xiaopeng said that after completing high-level adjustments, Xiaopeng will set up a middle level cadre structure. He put forward three requirements for cadre training:
Seek truth from facts. “Cadres must go through multiple layers to understand the truth, listen closely to the fire on the front line, push the implementation of the company's strategic strategy at the grassroots level, and ensure that they can defeat their opponents in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.”
Global collaboration, “cadres should be guided by internal and external customer experience, take the lead in breaking down departmental walls and knocking out high chimneys, not sacrifice upstream and downstream for a single point of interest, and not pursue a superficial sense of harmony”;
Grow into an “operator” and “drive business growth with management thinking”.
In 2023, the ideal is to fully learn from Huawei and implement the IPD product development system in the product team. He Xiaopeng said that starting in February of this year, Xiaopeng will improve organization and improve efficiency based on the new Xiaopeng Product Development System (XPD), a full-life cycle product development management system for models with Xiaopeng characteristics.
At the end of 2022, He Xiaopeng began directly managing the styling and design team. Meanwhile, Xiaopeng's vice president of styling design, Derta Emanoel left last year, and Wang Tan, vice president and chief designer of Xiaopeng Huitian, also managed the design work.
In the commencement letter, He Xiaopeng said that 2024 is Xiaopeng Motor's first year of strategic upgrades in the field of design. Xiaopeng has multiple modeling centers in parallel to make the shape Xiaopeng's longboard.
In addition, He Xiaopeng also mentioned that the brand and marketing should be strategically upgraded. He said, “No matter how many challenges and investments there are, we must make Xiaopeng's brand and marketing the undisputed number one camp in the industry in the shortest possible time.”
In terms of internationalization, in 2024, Xiaopeng will lay out core markets in Europe, ASEAN, the Middle East, Latin America, Oceania, etc., to deepen the intelligent advantages of products and strengthen the localized adaptation of products (including left rudders and right rudders).
“Faced with macroeconomic optimism, many friends and businesses are shrinking and are afraid to invest. I think this is instead an opportunity for our development.” He Xiaopeng said that he advocates broader and deeper business implementation, saving money that should not be spent, spending more valuable money on people, R&D, and strategy, and making better commercial profits.
He believes that in 2024, Xiaopeng will “reverse the market” and enter a “high-speed positive cycle” in the fourth quarter of this year or a little earlier.
Editor/jayden