In 2022, Xpeng Motors’ wild run and loss

If you define a highlight moment for Xpeng Automobile, which year will this moment point to?

Perhaps it is not 2020, the year when the company went public despite the cold winter of industry capital, nor is it 2017, when He Xiaopeng finally put on the handsome seal of Xiaopeng Automobile, but 2021.

In 2021, Xpeng Automobile delivered 98,155 vehicles throughout the year, with a delivery volume increase of 275%. Both data exceeded Weilai and Ideal, ranking first among the new domestic car-making forces.

But a year ago, Xpeng was at the bottom of the list of new forces. Within a year, the crown of the number one new car-making force in China was taken away by Xpeng Automobile.

There is no doubt that He Xiaopeng and Xpeng Motors have made a wonderful turnaround. As of the first quarter of this year, Xpeng Motors is still leading the way in terms of delivery volume.

The outside world can clearly feel that Xpeng Motors is very motivated this year. It is not only continuously increasing its model plans, but also launching an overseas 2.0 model. It is bound to consolidate its position as the number one new force in China while also expanding its overseas presence. The market launches a substantial attack.

But a problem that cannot be ignored is that along with the number one position in power comes increasing pressure from internal and external environments.

Many fresh graduates still remember the noisy recruitment battle last year.

At that time, in order to attract the attention of fresh graduates, Xpeng Motors planned a school recruitment press conference with the theme of "Explorer Plan" and cross-border production of this press conference into a micro variety show " "Challenge New Peng Friends", Qi Pa said contestant Chen Ming was invited as a workplace observer, and He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xpeng Motors, gave everyone a demonstration as the No. 1 candidate.

Taking this incident as a starting point, the new domestic car-making forces have launched a war for talents. In order to recruit outstanding talents, car-making companies are not stingy about salary standards. In 2021, the electric vehicle industry will The average monthly salary increased by 21.6 yuan year-on-year to 15,367 yuan.

Xpeng Automobile fired the first shot in this battlefield. At the same time, Xpeng was also the company that stole the most people last year.

According to its official data, Xpeng Motors had a total of 5,084 employees in 2020, and as of the end of last year, its number of employees had exceeded 13,900, which has tripled and surpassed Li Auto.

Last year, "working for a new car-making force" was the dream of almost all fresh college students. But this year, the dream has turned into a nightmare.

The problem first appeared in February. At that time, on various job search software, one after another school recruiters revealed that they had been laid off.

Two months later, under the "Ideal Topic" of Maimai, many users labeled as employees of Xpeng Auto said that Xpeng had begun the second round of layoffs, with the ratio even as high as 30.

Xpeng Motors immediately denied it, and its relevant person in charge told Caijing Tianxia that these were false news, and some departments were still recruiting people.

For a while, the outside world couldn't figure out who was lying.

The incident really broke out on May 19, when a topic "Xpeng Motors ruined about 20 fresh graduates" appeared on Weibo's hot search list, opening up the fact that Xpeng laid off employees. .

These more than 20 fresh graduates said that the reasons why Xiaopeng broke the contract included that the school was not good enough and not suitable for them. Some students even posted text messages to the media.

He Xiaopeng obviously said two years ago that he should be cautious when recruiting graduates, especially when the brand is not strong enough, it is not easy to retain good fresh graduates.

This year, Xpeng Automobile taught fresh graduates a cruel and indifferent lesson. Not only fresh-faced college students, but also seasoned veterans have not escaped the fate of being laid off.

The personnel earthquake among senior executives in Xiaopeng Automobile has actually started in 2021. The departure of Xiong Qingyun and Huang Xin was the beginning of that earthquake.

Xiong Qingyun is a influential figure in the brand marketing industry. She is known as "the number one Chinese executive of P&G". Many well-known P&G brands, such as Olay, Crest, Safeguard, etc., were almost all created by her.

After leaving P&G, Xiong Qingyun turned to the Internet and became a senior vice president at JD.com. In 2017, he was poached by He Xiaopeng into his own army and became the chief marketing officer of Xiaopeng Automobile.

Last year, the female general left Xiaopeng.

Huang Xin was originally the product director of Xiaopeng Automobile’s autonomous driving, and the scarcity of autonomous driving talents is a common knowledge in the car manufacturing industry. While working under He Xiaopeng, Huang Xin promoted the implementation of Xiaopeng Automobile's NGP and memory parking projects, which can be said to be a project that cannot be ignored.

But last year, he also left Xpeng Motors and turned to NIO’s Li Bin, becoming NIO’s third executive in its domestic autonomous driving layout.

By the first half of this year, the shock of the Xpeng Automobile personnel earthquake has become more obvious.

In January, Chen Yonghai, He Xiaopeng’s former UC general, switched jobs from Amap to Xiaopeng Auto to take up the banner of the Internet Center.

This is a first-level department of Xiaopeng, with nearly 1,000 employees. After Chen Yonghai took office, the first thing he burned was organizational adjustment and surgery on the department.

Zhao Hengyi, the head of the voice department, resigned, Tan Weihua, the head of the Internet of Things department, was transferred to the User Development Center, Liu Yilin, the head of production and design, was adjusted to the autonomous driving center, and Huang Ronghai, another vice president of the Internet Center , was first transferred to the User Development Center to be responsible for marketing, and then established the Data Intelligence Center as the person in charge.

In addition to job changes, the overtime pressure on department employees has also begun to increase, and working hours have become an important assessment indicator.

In addition to the Internet center, other businesses are also changing. He Liyang, who was in charge of Xpeng's overseas markets, has resigned, and his subordinates are not immune, including Zhang Yibo, deputy general manager of marketing in charge of overseas business, and Zhang Chuanjin, former general manager of the North District and senior director of sales, are no longer with Xpeng Motors.

He Xiaopeng said this year that Xiaopeng Automobile’s current operating efficiency is low and it needs to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Obviously, layoffs and internal adjustments in personnel have become an ax to reduce costs and increase efficiency, hitting its own people.

Not long ago, He Xiaopeng participated in the fourth episode of NetEase News's "For Forerunners" program. In the show, he said that if he had the opportunity to go back to when he started his business, he would not name the product after himself.

In his view, naming a product after oneself is a responsibility and a pressure. Responsibility will make people do things better, but as the scale grows, there will also be Huge pressure.

But three months ago, He Xiaopeng didn't think so.

At that time, when he talked about the beginning of building a car, he felt that the name "Xpeng Motors" was very vulgar and tied to him personally. If the company did not do well, it would ruin him. If you don't do it well, your brand will be ruined.

Now he believes that using his own name to build a car brand is a sense of responsibility and confidence.

In less than three months, confidence turned into pressure, and this change stemmed from the uncontrollable supply chain of electric vehicles and the difficulty of going overseas.

After delving into the automotive industry, He Xiaopeng discovered that the automotive supply chain is difficult to build. There are tens of thousands of parts in the automobile supply chain. The delivery of a certain part may be delayed due to weather conditions. The delay of one part will cause the entire factory to be unable to operate. Because a part is missing, a certain link of the factory cannot proceed.

The complexity of the supply chain has taught He Xiaopeng a lot. In the early stages of his Internet entrepreneurship, he was forthright and expressed his likes and dislikes directly. Now it has become what he calls making new friends everywhere and being kind to others. In order to support each other.

At the beginning of this year, there was a global shortage of chips, which directly strangled the lifeblood of the automobile industry. What’s even more terrible is that the price of lithium battery raw materials was also rising at the same time. Coupled with the recurrence of the epidemic in Shanghai, Xiaopeng Motors was greatly affected.

From the delayed delivery of the P5 model in February to the point where car owners launched a collective complaint on the Black Cat platform, in mid-April He Xiaopeng called on WeChat Moments that Shanghai needs to find a way to resume work and production as soon as possible otherwise the entire vehicle Businesses may face shutdowns.

In the past, Xpeng Automobile has made many arrangements for its supply chain, including acquiring land to build factories in Guangdong and Wuhan, as well as establishing new energy investment companies.

Since last year, He Xiaopeng has also begun to connect with a number of battery manufacturers. He wants to expand Xpeng Motors’ partners and does not put all his eggs in one basket. During the implementation of this diversified plan, There are even rumors that He Xiaopeng had a fierce quarrel with Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL, in order to allow Xpeng Motors to introduce AVIC lithium batteries.

He Xiaopeng knows that the challenges posed by Xpeng Motors' supply chain will last longer than imagined. Now this impact has directly spread to Xiaopeng Motors' overseas layout.

In March, Xpeng P5 officially opened reservations in four European countries: Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, allowing customers to configure P5 and pay a deposit for reservation.

However, it is precisely because of supply chain problems that Xpeng P5 was born and died before it was born. Now it has suspended reservations for its P5 electric car in four European countries, and previous orders cannot be delivered on time.

Going to sea can be said to be difficult for He Xiaopeng.

As early as 2020, Xpeng Motors embarked on the road to going overseas. In September of that year, 100 Xpeng G3s departed from Xinsha Port in Guangzhou and were sent to Norway on the Navia Peninsula. This is the first batch of orders for Xpeng Motors in the European market, and it is also regarded as the starting point for its official overseas expansion.

But later, Xpeng’s overseas market did not stir up any waves. After all, with the domestic market competing for the top players, it was difficult for Xpeng to spare its hands to expand overseas.

This year, what Xiaopeng calls overseas model 2.0, compared with the first time, the pace has been significantly accelerated, and the model has also changed. A new retail model of direct sales authorization has been introduced in the European market and will be launched soon. The online platform and offline experience are integrated to expand overseas markets.

Xpeng’s overseas strategy is equivalent to a strategy of surrounding the cities with rural areas. Instead of going to countries with automobile industry foundations such as France or Germany, it will focus on Northern Europe as the first step.

From a policy perspective, this is a good move. Because countries represented by Europe have increased their support for new energy vehicles in order to fulfill their carbon reduction goals, the market demand for electric vehicles is still rising.

He Xiaopeng even proposed a plan to put half of his future car sales in overseas markets.

But from the perspective of competitive environment, Xpeng’s road to overseas is not easy. Not only are the costs of direct-operated stores too high, but because the EU and China have different traffic regulations and road conditions, their autonomous driving data cannot be directly applied to the European market.

In addition, the supply chain of Xpeng Automobile in overseas markets is not perfect. Without a complete and responsive supply chain, Xpeng Automobile cannot better understand the needs of local consumers and respond in a timely manner.

Not long ago, people familiar with the matter revealed to Jiemian News that Xpeng’s overseas business is very difficult. The departure of relevant core personnel of the overseas business team is a good side explanation.

A fact that cannot be ignored is that, whether at home or abroad, Xpeng Motors needs to compete with new car-making forces including NIO and Ideal, as well as traditional car companies such as Geely and BYD.

Inside and out, if you want to win and continue to build your reputation, you need money, but the problem is that Xpeng Auto is currently not making money.

According to Xpeng Motors' financial report data, from 2018 to 2020, Xpeng Motors' total losses reached 12.7 billion yuan. In Q1 this year alone, Xpeng's losses further expanded, with losses increasing by 11.62 to 1.7 billion yuan year-on-year. .

The more you sell, the more you lose, which has become a major feature of Xiaopeng Motors. It has become the one with the highest net loss in 2021 among the three "Wei Xiaoli" car-making fools, with almost an average If you sell a car, you will lose about 60,000 yuan.

In order to win the electric vehicle market, He Xiaopeng is willing to spend money. For example, with the establishment of Xpeng Automobile sales network, there were only 8 Xiaopeng Automobile sales stores in 2018. By 2021, this number has become 357, a year-on-year increase of 123.1.

Under the huge expenses, Xpeng Auto's cash flow mainly comes from equity financing, and the premise for most people to invest in and be optimistic about Xpeng is that its boss is called He Xiaopeng.

In the Internet era, he founded UC, and later sold it to Alibaba for a high price of US$4 billion, setting the highest merger and acquisition deal in China’s Internet industry at that time. After achieving financial freedom, he invested in building cars, and finally ended up building cars himself.

This story that is still circulating today has become He Xiaopeng’s business card. From the moment he crossed over to build cars, everyone in the Internet and automotive circles was watching him.

Lei Jun persuaded He Xiaopeng not to build a car, but Lei Jun was persuaded by him. Later, Lei Jun not only gave He Xiaopeng a gold brick when Xiaopeng Auto was launched, Xiaomi also said that it would build a car.

Many Alibaba executives were not optimistic about building cars. Later, when He Xiaopeng resigned from Alibaba in 2017 and said goodbye to Cai Chongxin, Xiaoyaozi and others, the other parties showed interest in investing.

Tsai Chongxin once publicly stated: "I have chased Xpeng for ten years, and we invested in UC in 2008. I believe that through this investment, I will continue to chase Xpeng, for 10 more years, and for 20 more years. It’s all what we have to do.”

Wan Haoji, a partner at Matrix Partners, also said that He Xiaopeng is the CEO who gives investors the best sleep in the high-risk track of new energy vehicles. .

To this day, the CEO of Xpeng Automobile is still He Xiaopeng and has not changed. However, under the haze of losses year after year and gradually increasing losses, some investment institutions began to show their intention to quit.

On June 22, Xpeng Automobile was held by JP Morgan Chase to insist on 3.0208 million shares. After the reduction, JP Morgan Chase’s long position ratio in Xpeng Automobile dropped from 5.195 to 4.96.

Earlier in the first quarter of this year, Hillhouse cleared 666,500 shares of Xpeng Motors. Originally, Jinglin Asset held 218,000 shares of Xpeng Motors last year. These stocks have disappeared this year.

However, He Xiaopeng has already written another beautiful story worthy of investment for the capital market.

If the current chapter of Xiaopeng’s business map is still focused on smart electric cars, then the next chapter will be on flying cars. Xiaopeng Motors has been researching flying cars for 8 years.

He Xiaopeng likes science fiction movies and novels. He wants flying cars to become a reality in the future. At last year's Technology Day, he set a flag: to achieve mass production of flying cars by 2024, and control the price within 1 million.

Many people thought he was crazy, but He Xiaopeng was very serious. On June 9, he personally demonstrated a flying car with a sailing speed of 5m/s and a flying height of 20m. He knows that many people don’t believe that flying cars can be built, but he wants everyone to give Xiaopeng a few more years.

Is there a market for flying cars? Maybe there is.

Financial company Morgan Stanley predicted as early as 2018 that the global urban air traffic market will reach US$1.5 trillion by 2040.

But Musk often pours cold water on flying cars: "I have no prejudice against flying objects, but there is a problem with the concept of flying cars, that is, it will definitely be noisy, and it will never help you. To reduce traffic anxiety, just imagine, although we are anxious about traffic jams now, if there are many cars flying over your head, you will definitely wonder, are these wheels tightened, will they fall and smash my head? This is definitely not a way to reduce your anxiety. ”

Dreams are always beautiful, but there is often a long way between dreams and reality. Compared with others’ disbelief, perhaps the biggest question is when will Xpeng Motors stop losing money and achieve profitability.

The investment in flying cars is huge. Without a stable and healthy cash cow, everything will be empty talk.

When He Xiaopeng first entered the automobile industry, someone told him that making cars is a regretful philosophy. At that time, he didn't take it seriously, but now that he thinks about it, he feels that what this person said makes sense.

After building cars, He Xiaopeng lost some hobbies. This does not mean that his interests have changed, but it is due to the time compression caused by high work pressure.

For example, he used to like gourmet food. In order to relieve stress, he would drive to a place for a long time just to have a meal. But basically not now, because he can't afford the time cost of traveling back and forth.

Perhaps He Xiaopeng does not regret it now, but Xiaopeng Motors still faces a lot of competitive pressure.

In particular, competition in the industry is further intensifying. Many competitors such as Weilai, Xiaopeng, Leapao, Nezha, Lantu, Zhiji, Tianji, and Xingtu are all competing for this market.

Faced with the fact that NIO and Ideal have already released new products ES7 and L9 for the second quarter, He Xiaopeng directly reassured people on social platforms, announcing that the Xpeng G9 is coming soon.

Today, Li Auto is almost close to breaking even in terms of profit from single vehicles and single stores, while Xpeng is still far away. He Xiaopeng directly boasted that the Xpeng G9 "will be the best SUV under 500,000 yuan" "The awesomeness.

But whether this awesomeness can be realized depends on the true appearance of Xpeng G9 after it is actually launched.