The selling point functions of the Xiaopeng G9 press conference are not standard.Welcome to the WeChat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina
Text / Qingqiu
Source: BT Finance (ID: btcjv1)
Xiaopeng is finally entering the high-end market.
On September 26, Xiaopeng Motors announced that the company’s controlling shareholder Simplicity Holding purchased a total of 2.2 million American depositary shares of the company on the open market on September 23, at an average price of $13.58 per share.
In this regard, He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xiaopeng Motors, who is the wholly-owned owner of Simplicity Holding, said that the company will take active actions to return shareholders’ support. At present, the stock price is in the darkest moment when it is undervalued. G9 will start a strong new product cycle and become an inflection point.
The market interprets why Xiaopeng is full of confidence in the new model G9, but in light of the reality, whether a product can succeed is not just enough confidence.
On September 21, Xiaopeng Motors officially launched the long-awaited SUV model G9. The price has entered the high-end range of more than 300,000 yuan. It will be officially delivered at the end of October.
Xiaopeng Motors CEO He Xiaopeng said that the G9 will be “the best SUV within 500,000 yuan”, and will directly benchmark it with a variety of traditional luxury brands. It will take over the Porsche Cayenne and become the benchmark of the new era.
However, the market did not pay for this confident rhetoric. The day after the press conference, Xpeng Motors’ stock price continued to decline, with US stocks down 2.48% and Hong Kong stocks down 11.57%. The market value evaporated more than 10 billion yuan in one day. As of September 26, the Hong Kong stock market of Xiaopeng Motors closed at HK$55.75 per share, a 73% drop from the highest value of HK$199.5 during the year, and its total market value fell below HK$100 billion, a decrease of more than HK$250 billion from the highest point of the year. .
The reason is that Xpeng Motors failed to deliver a satisfactory performance answer sheet.
Losses go higher
On August 23, Xiaopeng Motors released its 2022 interim results announcement, and the situation is not optimistic.
In the first half of 2022, Xiaopeng Motors’ total operating income was 14.891 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 121.9%; of which, auto sales revenue was 13.937 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 118%.
Although both revenue and sales are growing, Xiaopeng Motors is still doing a loss-making business of “selling one car and losing one”. In the first quarter of 2022, Xiaopeng Motors had a net loss of 1.7 billion yuan, the largest loss since its listing, and continued to lose money in the second quarter, resulting in a net loss of 4.402 billion yuan for Xiaopeng Motors in the first half of 2022, a year-on-year increase of 122%. At the same time, the sales volume of cars was 68,983, which means that Xiaopeng Motors lost 64,000 yuan for each car sold.
It is worth noting that this data is even higher than in 2021. For the whole year of 2021, Xiaopeng Motors will have a net loss of 4.863 billion yuan, with a total delivery volume of 98,155 vehicles, that is, a loss of about 49,500 yuan for each car sold.
Why is Xiaopeng Motors losing more and more as it sells?
From the perspective of cost expenditure, the various expenses of Xiaopeng Motors have been high and continue to increase.
According to the financial report, in the first half of this year, R&D investment was 2.486 billion yuan, an increase of 77.8% over the same period last year, which was mainly due to the increase in salaries caused by the increase in R&D personnel and the increase in expenses for developing new models; sales, general and administrative expenses were 3.306 billion yuan, An increase of 88.7% over the same period last year, mainly reflected in the increase in marketing and advertising expenses and the expansion of the sales network.
However, the loss in the first half of this year is still disturbed by some uncontrollable external factors. According to the financial report, Xpeng Motors lost as much as 938 million yuan in foreign currency transactions in the second quarter. It also caused profit margins to fall to 9.1% in the second quarter from 11% a year earlier. Excluding this factor, the loss in the second quarter was basically the same as the first quarter, but it was still about 48% larger than the same period last year.
At present, it will take time for the new car-making forces to make profits. The ideal that was once thought to be expected to make the fastest profit has only achieved a single-quarter profit in the fourth quarter of 2020 and 2021, and is still in a loss for the whole year. Weilai has always lost the most, but in terms of its own comparison, the loss has narrowed.
Then, Xiaopeng’s losses are also predictable, but the problem is that in the past four years, Xiaopeng’s losses have not slowed down like the other two, which is probably unacceptable to investors.
You must know that in the ranking of manufacturers’ sales in the new energy market, Xiaopeng Motors has always been the leader of the new domestic car-making brands. According to the data of the China Passenger Transport Association, in July 2022, Xiaopeng Motors was the highest-ranked new force in car manufacturing; from January to July 2022, Xiaopeng Motors ranked seventh, with a market share of 3.2%. Ideal followed closely, and Weilai did not squeeze into the top ten.
Selling a lot but not making money is mainly because the gross profit margin is too low. The gross profit margin of Xiaopeng Motors has been hovering at around 11% for a long time. As of June 30, 2022, the overall gross profit margin was 11.6%, and the gross profit margin of automobiles (that is, the percentage of gross profit from automobile sales to automobile sales revenue) was only 9.7%, which is higher than that of automobile sales. 10.6% in the same period last year also fell by nearly a percentage point.
In contrast, the ideal gross profit margin is more than 20%, and Weilai’s gross profit margin is above 13%, both higher than Xiaopeng. And this is determined by the product positioning. Xiaopeng Motors mainly focuses on the mid-end market of around 200,000 yuan. Ideal and Weilai focus on the high-end market of more than 300,000 yuan. As the unit price increases, profits will naturally go up.
What’s even more difficult is that Xiaopeng Motors’ title of “new car-making power sales champion” may also be handed over to others.
Xiaopeng Motors’ expectations for the delivery volume in the third quarter are not ideal. It is expected to deliver 29,000 to 31,000 vehicles in the third quarter, which is a drop from the 34,000 vehicles in the second quarter.
In this regard, David Moadel, chief analyst at Portfolio Wealth Global, said that the delivery guidance is far lower than Wall Street’s previous consensus of 45,000 units, which reflects Xiaopeng’s lack of confidence in the third-quarter sales prospects. Investors Caution should be exercised.
In fact, the sales volume of Xiaopeng Motors has been fluctuating this year. It has experienced a month-on-month decline in five months. The month-on-month drop in July was 24.7%, and the month-on-month drop in August was still 16.9%.
It can be seen that the sales growth of Xiaopeng Motors has entered a bottleneck period, and new products are urgently needed to lead the company out of this dilemma.
G9 rescue
The pursuit of high-end is the inevitable choice of Xiaopeng Motors.
Sun Shaojun, an auto media person, said: “The focus of all brands is to grab the core market of 400,000. Because the economic situation is getting worse and worse, the new demand of 100,000 to 250,000 is close to a halt, and the trend of polarization is irreversible. You can take volume but not profit, and there are differences in the scale of the wealthy class, only about 400,000 with an increment and profit at the same time.”
Xiaopeng urgently needs such a product to show off its muscles, and the G9, priced between 300,000 and 400,000, came into being, which may become a powerful tool for Xiaopeng Motors to raise its position and open up the luxury market.
From a technical point of view, Xiaopeng has coupled a new intelligent platform, electrification platform and vehicle platform to the G9 model. The biggest highlights are two:
One is “ultra-fast charging”. The G9 is equipped with the first mass-produced vehicle-end 800V high-voltage SiC platform in China, and the charging efficiency is significantly better than that of models with a 400V platform.
It is reported that Porsche, Audi, Volvo, BYD, Ideal and other car companies are all deploying 800V high-voltage charging, and Xiaopeng G9 has grabbed the first-mover advantage of the market.
The 4C version of the G9 can be charged from 10% to 80% in as little as 15 minutes. With the Xpeng S4 ultra-fast charging pile, it can achieve “5 minutes of charging and 200km of battery life”. It is reported that the G9 is also backward compatible with third-party charging piles. In terms of battery life, according to official data, the percentage of G9 battery life under actual operating conditions (actual battery life/announced battery life) is 5-10% higher than the industry mainstream level.
At the same time, Xiaopeng is also increasing the national layout of ultra-fast charging stations. At present, Xpeng has more than 1,000 self-operated charging stations. It is expected that more than 50 S4 ultra-fast charging stations will be put into operation in core cities across the country by the end of 2022. It is planned to complete at least 500 of them in key cities across the country by the end of 2023. By 2025 2000 buildings are built every year.
The second is the “full-scene intelligent assisted driving system”. The X version of the G9 will be equipped with the XNGP lidar urban automatic driving assistance system, with 31 sensing elements, including 5 millimeter-wave radars, 12 sensing cameras, and 1 8-megapixel sensor. Binocular cameras, 12 ultrasonic radars, 2 lidars, and dual NVIDIA DRIVE Orin supercomputing platforms, with a total computing power of 508 TOPS.
It is reported that the XNGP system will for the first time achieve full coverage of various daily driving scenarios such as expressways, urban expressways/arterial roads/secondary roads, internal roads in the park, parking lots, etc. The first high-level intelligent assisted driving system that can serve daily commuting. Xiaopeng expects to cover most of China’s cities in 2023, and to open up the whole scene point-to-point in 2024.
In addition, the Xiaopeng G9 is also equipped with the dual-chamber suspension used by luxury fuel vehicles such as the Porsche Cayenne, Porsche 2022 Macan series, and 2020 BMW X5, making it the only model within 500,000 yuan that uses dual-chamber suspension. Move closer to luxury.
In this regard, He Xiaopeng described the G9 as “the most intelligent among luxury cars, the most luxurious among smart cars, and the fastest charging among mass-produced cars”, and believed that G9 would help Xiaopeng Motors achieve rapid sales growth, thereby increasing the company’s gross profit. interest rate.
So, can G9 save the field?
According to media reports, the 2022 sales target announced by Xiaopeng Motors is to “ensure 250,000 vehicles and impact 300,000 vehicles”, of which G9 sales account for about 14% and are expected to be 35,000 vehicles. If the delivery is successful at the end of October, it means that Xpeng will have to sell 11,600 G9s every month.
This challenge is not small. At present, the total monthly delivery volume of Xiaopeng Motors is only in the early 10,000s. It is difficult to carry this amount with a single model.
Moreover, Xiaopeng also has some problems with the G9’s market strategy.
As early as last November, the G9 made its debut at the Guangzhou Auto Show, but it was officially launched after about a year. During this period, NIO ES7 and Ideal L9, which are also positioned as medium and large SUVs, have been listed first, and G9 starts early in the morning and catches up late.
Now listed, under the banner of “luxury”, but the lowest equipped 570G model has no 4C fast charging, no dual lidar, no XNGP assisted driving, no dual NVIDIA DRIVE Orin supercomputing platform, no 5D music cockpit, no dual cavity Hanging in the air… That is to say, the selling point functions of the big talk at the press conference are not standard, and I spent 300,000 to enjoy nothing.
This aroused strong dissatisfaction among riders, and some netizens even fiercely criticized Xiaopeng G9 for “wielding a knife from the palace”.
It is reported that within 24 hours of opening the reservation, the order volume of Xiaopeng G9 has exceeded 20,000. However, according to the data of Che Fans, there were a lot of returned orders after the press conference.
The market reaction was so overwhelming that the press conference almost became a “PR crisis”. Xiaopeng Motors had to revise the SKU overnight, and the adjustment announcement was issued on September 23.
Among them, the minimum version of 309,900 yuan adds the perception of surround vision CMOS + a single OrinX. Digital blogger Blood Jingqi said that the assisted driving capability of this configuration exceeds that of Xiaopeng P7. It’s the biggest anger of car owners.” In addition, except for the minimum version, all other versions are equipped with a 5D music cockpit, and the optional package only has 4C charging and some personalized configurations.
Blood Flag said that although Xiaopeng Motors listened to opinions within 48 hours and made adjustments in a timely manner, it is worthy of recognition, “that is, new forces can do this, and traditional brands would rather their products die directly than dare to move”, but “the next time Don’t play like this, the user’s patience is only 1 time.”
After such a turmoil, whether the G9 can live up to its mission and help Xiaopeng successfully put the “luxury” label on it may be a question mark.
Competition intensifies
Today, China’s new energy market is entering an unprecedented white-hot competition. In just one year, the market landscape has changed dramatically.
The leader Wei Xiaoli has his own strengths in battery swapping, fast charging, and range extension. He has established a firm foothold in his main market and formed the first echelon of the new force. But new players are still entering the game, and it brings a huge impact.
Nezha and Leapran are aggressive. According to the data disclosed by various car companies, from January to August 2022, the cumulative delivery of Nezha cars was 93,185 units, surpassing Xiaopeng to win the sales champion of the new car-making force, and it is expected to become the first new car with annual sales of 100,000 units. Power; Leapmotor delivered a total of 76,563 vehicles, ranking third, while Ideal and Weilai delivered a total of 75,396 and 71,556 vehicles respectively. However, the delivery volume of Nezha and Leipao has not yet entered the statistical list of the Passenger Federation.
According to the data of the China Passenger Transport Association, for the new forces of car manufacturing, the traditional car companies that have entered the new energy industry are rolling existences. In July this year, BYD sold 139,000 vehicles, an increase of 234.7% year-on-year, and accounted for 31.6% of the market. Due to its core technologies such as batteries, the market performance was outstanding; SAIC, GAC, Changan, Geely, Chery and other traditional car companies The “trumpets” who practiced also firmly occupied the front of the TOP 10 list.
At the same time, the pace of product introduction has become faster.
In 2021, only Xiaopeng P7 and BYD Han will be in the list of competing products of Tesla Model 3. This year, NIO ET7, Seal, Dark Blue sl03 and other models have all joined the competition. Xiaopeng launched the G9, followed by Ideal, which officially started the delivery of the new flagship model L9, and the cumulative number of pre-orders has exceeded 50,000. Leapmotor C01 will also be delivered to users in the third quarter of this year, and the order has now exceeded 100,000 units.
In the sub-category of high-end SUVs with a price of more than 300,000 yuan, the competition is particularly fierce.
According to the data of the China Passenger Transport Association, in the high-end SUV sales rankings from January to August 2022, Mercedes-Benz GLC, Audi Q5, BMW X3 have dominated the list for many years, Tesla Model Y, Weilai ES6, Ideal ONE (L8), Wenjie New power brands such as M5 also gathered together.
G9 joined the battle at this time and faced a more intense competitive environment than when P7 and P5 were launched. However, people in the industry generally believe that the current new energy industry is still in the incremental stage, and car companies and brands still have the opportunity to create explosive models and hit king bombs.
Since Xiaopeng cannot avoid the replacement of models, it is better to let this pain come earlier.
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