On many public occasions, He Xiaopeng used to call Wang Fengying "Fengying". For him, this "Iron Lady" who has been in the car circle for more than 30 years is not only the president of Xpeng Motors, but also his mentor and friend.
He Xiaopeng once said that Wang Fengying pointed out many problems in the company's products and marketing within a month and a half of arriving at the company. He admitted that in some aspects, Wang Fengying outperformed himself.
And within Xiaopeng, Wang Fengying asked everyone to call her "crested". This is a name she has inherited from her "former owner" Great Wall Motors.
Wang Fengying, President of Xpeng Motors).
Although the company has not yet held a grand induction ceremony for the president who was appointed in danger, and even many employees of Xiaopeng Motors even learned of Wang Fengying's arrival from news reports, but a year has passed, and the company has undergone many rounds of adjustments, allowing everyone to see the thunderous means of this "Iron Lady".
January 30, 2024 is the first anniversary of Wang Fengying's joining Xpeng Motors, in which the company's top management has undergone a major change, and under the leadership of Wang Fengying, the direct sales and distribution systems have been merged, the war zone has been re-divided, and the "Jupiter Plan" has been proposed to accelerate the market coverage of Xpeng Motors. In terms of marketing, Wang Fengying proposed to focus on "intelligence", so that Xiaopeng's "intelligent" label will continue to penetrate into the minds of users.
In the eyes of many Xiaopeng employees, Wang Fengying is a savior. Under its drastic renovations, the company has temporarily weathered the crisis and won some respite for 2024.
In January 2024, Xpeng's adjustments continued. This time, it was the turn of multiple departments such as marketing, human resources, manufacturing, and product planning.
What is somewhat surprising is that two of Wang's old colleagues have appeared in the new management: one is Jiang Ziyang, the new head of product planning, who was a senior consultant at Reese Strategy Consulting.
The intersection between him and Wang Fengying can be traced back to 2009. At that time, Rees formulated a "SUV-focused" strategy for Great Wall Motors, which helped Great Wall Motors achieve a leap in revenue from 8 billion yuan to 100 billion yuan in the following 12 years.
The other is named Zhang Li, Wang Fengying's husband, who joined Great Wall Motors in 1992 and served as the legal person of Great Wall Motors Xushui Company from 2012 to 2020.
The Xushui production base can be said to support half of Great Wall Motors, with an annual production capacity of 1 million units, which is the largest SUV production base in the country, and the Haval H6, which has won the annual sales championship of SUV models for 9 consecutive years, is produced here.
Now, with the retirement of Jiang Ping, vice president of manufacturing of Xiaopeng Motors, Zhang Li was "dug up" by Wang Fengying and took over as the person in charge of manufacturing.
Baoding, Hebei, aerial photography of Great Wall Motors Xushui Base).
In addition, Huang Ronghai, the former head of the data intelligence center, has been transferred to be in charge of the human resources department, and Chen Dan, the former head of the center, has resigned. Yi Han, a Geely "veteran" who joined Xpeng Motors with Wang Fengying, also resigned from the position of vice president of marketing and returned to Geely as the deputy CMO of the smart brand global company and the CEO of the China marketing company, responsible for the brand's marketing, sales and service related businesses in Chinese mainland.
According to the city boundary, after Yi Han left, the marketing team of Xiaopeng Motors was temporarily led by Wang Fengying himself.
In the past year, a number of senior executives have left, such as Liu Minghui, head of the original powertrain center, Lu Xueqing, former vice president of finance, and Derta Emanoeel, vice president of original styling design. In August 2023, Wu Xinzhou, the soul of Xpeng Motors' intelligent driving team, resigned and joined NVIDIA; In October of the same year, Li Feng, the head of the company's purchasing department, was suspended for investigation due to internal anti-corruption. The co-founders of Xpeng Motors, He Tao and Xia Heng, also faded out of the center of power.
Now, this listed company has finally broken away from the plot of Xiaopeng's version of "Chinese Partner" and began to enter the era of "He Xiaopeng is outside and Wang Fengying is inside".
In 2022, there will be only two of the 12 executives in Xpeng's financial report in September 2023. He Xiaopeng has regrets, but the company's problems are also thorny. And these problems come from people.
Xpeng Motors started its business with three people and reached the scale of 20,000 people in 2022, and everyone focused on running speed, but neglected the correct running posture.
Entering 2024, Wang Fengying simply did not shy away from her relatives, and invited "old comrades-in-arms" who have cooperated with her tacitly for many years, hoping that their experience and resources can be used by Xiaopeng Motors.
The internal changes during this period have also affected Xpeng's North American intelligent driving team to a certain extent. Recently, it was revealed that Wang Tao, the former head of visual perception of the North American team of Xpeng Motors, has resigned.
The arrival of Wang Fengying and the changes in the organization and personnel of Xiaopeng Motors all point to one thing: the old G9 "overturned" case.
In 2021, Xpeng Motors narrowly surpassed NIO and Li with 98,155 deliveries, becoming the new power car company with the highest delivery volume that year. And this year, Xpeng Motors had a year-on-year growth rate of 260%, far exceeding NIO's 109% and Ideal's 177%.
At that time, the whole company was immersed in joy. The most direct feeling of employees is that "the company suddenly has money, and project opportunities, promotions, and salary increases are all very good".
But at the end of 2022, everything came to an abrupt end, leaving only many project opportunities, and there was no room for promotion or salary increases. "We're treated like cheap and easy old scalpers. A departing employee sighed.
The old G9 has become the recognized "culprit". In the second half of 2022, the car's sales suffered a waterloo, and until the launch of the **G9 in September 2023, the average monthly sales of the old G9 fluctuated in the triple digits. So much so that the advantages of light maps and heavy perception NGP, which was the first to be installed on the G9 MAX model and led the industry for half a year, were completely blind.
In the first half of 2023, Xpeng Motors will deliver only 4140,000 units, about 40% less than the same period last year, surpassed by Leap and Deep Blue. In the fiercely competitive new energy vehicle market, the lost half a year is to be made up for by doubling the hard work behind.
What the outside world sees is G9's unreasonable pricing and complicated SKUs (stock keeping units), and based on these appearances, there are many wrong actions in many links. A former Xpeng employee recalled to City Boundary.
In September 2023, at the launch conference of the Xpeng G9, talking about the "overturning" of the old G9, He Xiaopeng also admitted that there are problems in almost every link from product configuration, marketing to marketing, channels and delivery. And these wrong actions were finally presented in dismal sales, which made Xpeng almost out of breath.
Old patients can only be removed by taking new medicines.
Before Wang Fengying, He Xiaopeng also served as CEO for a period of time. But he admits that he is not a qualified CEO. "The most important thing for a CEO is to build a team, lead the team, solve operational matters, and lead everyone to win the battle. But he himself just doesn't like to do operations and operations, he only likes to study products and strategies.
But it's not easy to find someone who he agrees with, who the other management also agrees, who understands cars, and who has new ideas. After Wang Fengying joined Xiaopeng Motors, He Xiaopeng gave her enough support and power, and Wang Fengying's office was also arranged next door to him.
After working in Great Wall Motors for more than 30 years, Wang Fengying still maintains her previous work habits when she comes to a new car-making company, often working overtime on weekends. Many important things that were not dealt with during the week were picked up with the team on the weekend.
In the eyes of middle-level cadres, although Wang Fengying came out of a traditional car company, it is not a "tradition" as rumored. Two months after she took office, she merged the originally independent direct sales and distribution systems, and split the original 4 regions into 24 war zones; In September last year, the number of sales theaters was reduced to 12.
Chongqing Halo Shopping Park, new energy vehicle brand - Xiaopeng Motors store).
Subsequently, Xpeng Motors proposed the "Jupiter Plan" to gradually replace the direct sales model with the dealer model to reduce operating costs and quickly improve market coverage.
In terms of marketing strategy, Wang Fengying believes that it is necessary to "focus" on intelligence, because this is the longboard of Xiaopeng Motors, and it is also the most prominent label. In order to boost sales of the MAX model with the full-scene XNGP function, Xpeng Motors has combined the MAX version with Nappa leather seats** to guide customers.
In the whole process of test driving, the intelligent ability of the brand is emphasized, and the functional experience such as automatic parking, XNGP, and voice interaction has almost become a set of standardized processes. At the same time, on the mini program of Xpeng Motors, the "smart" entrance is also placed in the most conspicuous homepage.
In addition, after experiencing the lessons of the old G9, when the new model G6 was launched in June 2023, the configuration table was extremely refreshing, with only 5 configurations, intelligent assisted driving functions and ultra-fast charging technology of the 800V platform as standard, and no longer needed to be optional. After the launch of **G9 in September 2023, the starting price is directly reduced by 40,000 yuan compared with the old model. Xpeng Motors officially defines the 2024 Xpeng G9 as "Nirvana rebirth after addition, subtraction, multiplication and division".
In the fourth quarter of 2023, Xpeng Motors delivered more than 20,000 vehicles in a single month, and the sales ratio of the G6 and 2024 G9 MAX versions reached 70% and 80%, respectively. For comparison, the proportion of the old G9 MAX version is only 30%.
As for whether the company's changes in the past year have met expectations, He Xiaopeng once told the city: "I think it is more than a little bit. Then he added: "I want to thank the team, thank Feng Ying." β
January 30 is the first anniversary of Wang Fengying's arrival at Xiaopeng Motors. Also on this day, Xpeng Motors held a smart driving press conference at its headquarters in Guangzhou. He Xiaopeng announced that the total number of cities covered by XNGP has reached 243 cities, achieving the annual target of opening the city in 2024 one year ahead of schedule.
Following the counterattack in the sales proportion of the MAX version of the Xpeng G6 and the 2024 G9, in 2023, the user penetration rate of Xpeng users for high-speed intelligent driving will be 947%, and the user penetration rate of urban intelligent driving has reached 832%γ
He Xiaopeng said that in 2024, Xpeng Motors aims to achieve full coverage of the road network of XNGP in major cities across the country within the year, and at the same time start to develop high-speed NGP research and development for the world, and start developing global XNGP in 2025.
At present, Xpeng Motors has more than 3,000 software and hardware teams for R&D data operations, accounting for nearly 40% of the company's R&D personnel. In the next step, Xpeng Motors will realize the full on-board of the end-to-end large model, and the travel experience in the core area will be benchmarked against Waymo. To this end, Xpeng Motors will expand its recruitment by another 4,000 people this year, most of which are AI-related.
Although in 2023, under the strategy of "focusing" intelligence proposed by Wang Fengying, the sales of Xpeng Motors have improved significantly, but the advantages brought by the pricing strategy cannot be ignored.
In 2022, the price of the G6 before it was launched was between 280,000 and 350,000 yuan, and finally Wang Fengying advocated lowering the starting price to 20990,000 yuan. A similar situation happened with the 2024 G9.
However, on the market side, the war is still ongoing, and the 200,000 yuan band where Xiaopeng Motors is located is ushering in more competitors.
The 2024 Feifan R7, which was launched in November last year, dropped by 90,000 yuan compared with the old model, making the previous model with a monthly sales of no more than 600 units suddenly rise to more than 3,000 units in December.
The sales volume of the Zhiji LS6, also from SAIC, reached 8,158 units in the second month of its launch (November 2023), with a month-on-month increase of 21 percent in December1% to 9,878 units.
On the contrary, Xpeng G6 sales fell by 12. month-on-month in December 20233% to 7,673 units. After the pre-sale press conference, Song L, who was once not too hopeful within BYD, sold more than 10,000 units in the first month of its launch in December last year.
I remember that at the financial report communication meeting in the second quarter of 2023, He Xiaopeng said with confidence that the monthly delivery of a single G6 model in the fourth quarter of that year will exceed 10,000. However, after the peak of deliveries in November, sales of the G6 fell back and fell further from the small target of 10,000 units. Xpeng G9, also after the delivery volume exceeded 5,000 units in November, there was a month-on-month decline in December.
Changzhou, Jiangsu, Xpeng Motors G6 pure electric SUV car sales store).
Previously, He Xiaopeng had revealed that in October last year, the production of Xiaopeng G6 had reached 10,000 units, and the slowdown in its sales could basically rule out the reason for the lack of production capacity. It can be seen that the fierce market competition at the end of the year has indeed brought an impact to Xiaopeng Motors.
He Xiaopeng once judged that in the next ten years, after mergers and acquisitions, only 8 car companies may be able to survive, the scale of high-end model manufacturers is 3 million, and the manufacturers of low-end models even need to reach 5 million.
Guided by scale, Xpeng Motors chose to follow in the footsteps of its competitors. In mid-December last year, Xpeng Motors launched a limited-time discount of 10,000 yuan for the whole Xpeng G6 series. At the beginning of the year, the offer continued.
A Beijing-based Xiaopeng Motors salesperson told the city that superimposed last month's preferential policy, the G6 new car can be discounted by 20,000 yuan, the new purchase of Beijing indicators can also be an additional 3,000 yuan, and if the old car is replaced, an additional subsidy of 7,000 yuan. There is no announcement as to when the event will end. Not only that, a week ago, the Xpeng P7i Pengyi Performance Edition also launched a limited-time direct drop of 50,000 yuan.
Xpeng Motors is using low prices to gain market advantages, and intensified competition will divide Xpeng's potential users, and at the same time increase financial pressure. Li Yanwei, an expert member of the China Automobile Dealers Association, said.
In the third quarter of 2023, Xpeng's gross margin was -27%, and the gross profit margin (i.e., the percentage of gross profit or loss from car sales as a percentage of car sales revenue) is -61%γIn 2022, Xpeng's gross profit margin will be 115%, and the gross profit margin of automobile sales was 94%γ
However, He Xiaopeng said that from the beginning of the quarter, the company will enter an initial positive cycle. Xpeng hopes to reduce overall costs by 25% by 2024.
According to interface news, He Xiaopeng has handed over the company's cost management to Wang Fengying, and she will reduce costs at the source of technology, and choose technical solutions with low cost but little difference. At the same time, Wang Fengying hopes to increase the order scale to reduce costs and improve product stability by screening high-quality core suppliers.
On the other hand, in July last year, Volkswagen took out a strategic investment of 700 million US dollars to renew the life of Xpeng. In 2024, Xpeng will also reduce procurement costs by up to 10% through joint procurement with Volkswagen.
Since its establishment, Xpeng Motors has experienced two major crises, one in 2019, when the company could not raise money, and the remaining funds were only enough for the company to operate for half a year; Once after the turmoil of the old G9.
Although these two crises have been resolved without danger, as He Xiaopeng said, no start-up car company has been confirmed to appear at the next table.
Reference: The Past of Xpeng G6 Products", Late Auto;
Star President Wang Fengying has been in office for 200 days: changing Xiaopeng, and being changed by Xiaopeng", later auto;
Wang Fengying's 360 days |Business headlines no11, interface news;
Wang Fengying "moved the knife" again: pulled her husband Zhang Li and her old partner to join in to promote the change of Xiaopeng's management", and traveled online.
Author |Liu Dongxue.
Edit |Tian Yanlin.
Operations |Liu Shan.