Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1424
Li Xiang has an answer to every question.
At least in the areas he knows well. He can disassemble every question thrown at him by himself, forming one, two, three, four points. If any question is unfamiliar, he will put it into a framework he is familiar with, and then give a thoughtful answer—of course, This answer must be accurate, complete, and unassailable.
This is in line with his requirements for himself. He said that his learning mode is to study major companies-study Ali, Huawei, and Byte. Finally, research yourself too.
He analyzes each of his blind spots, and if a blind spot has a major impact on him, he says he will fix it.
In 2019, the ideal car he founded entered its fourth year, and the company could not raise money. He said that many people in the company were afraid at that time, but he was not afraid, “because I have done all the analysis, emotional, rational, deduction The verification and verification are all done, so that you will not be afraid.” After getting the money, the company was on the verge of life and death, and he turned his head and began to imagine ten years later, by 2030, how much market share could ideally get?
People who have contacted Li Xiang commented that he is pure, sensitive, sensitive to competition, and sensitive to products. A story circulated in Ideal is that he can feel that the seat cushion of the car is three millimeters thicker. Investors commented that he dared to think different, and no one was optimistic about the product design of extended range and six seats, but he dared to do it.
His executives said that Li Xiang was very irritable 1% of the time, smashing and kicking car models; 99% of the time he said “I will teach you”, a qualified and perfect teacher. In the weekly induction training for new recruits, there is a class that he has to teach in person.
His employees said that no one likes to challenge the growth limit, only Li Xiang himself likes it. “A person who wants to change the world forces us to change ourselves.”
Li Xiang was born in 1981 and graduated from high school. He founded two listed companies, Autohome and Ideal Auto, with current market capitalizations of US$3.6 billion and US$18 billion respectively. He used to be the one with the least financing and the least optimistic among the three new forces. The loneliness and marginal feeling of all-or-nothing in the early stage allowed him to exert great creativity and create the ideal ONE, which is supported by one car and one configuration. After three years, squeeze into the first echelon of new energy vehicles.
An entrepreneur said that every time he hesitated, his investors would joke with him, “Can you learn from Li Xiang?” As a student, Li Xiang realized the vague wish in his heart when he was in high school.
The competition in the auto market has become extremely fierce. This may be the cruelest and fastest knockout match in the history of Chinese business. For Li Xiang, self-evolution cannot make him sure of winning, but it can make him not afraid. At least he did it in the past: a person does not want to be changed by the outside world, but can only be changed by himself.
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Late Auto: Ideal is a company that responds very keenly to the market. L8 is your most important model this year. It was originally planned to be released in November, but it was finally brought forward to September. Some people say that this is to fight against Xiaopeng G9, is that true?
Li Xiang: The competitor of the L8 is not the Xpeng G9. Basically, our buyers will not go to see Xpeng. What we think about is how to grab BBA (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi) users, because this is a stable market.
The ideal way of playing is the explosive product strategy, and any means is to ensure that each car has enough competitiveness to become an explosive product. Time is of course also an important factor.
Later Auto: Huawei, which is more powerful, has also entered the field. Q: After the release of M7, the price of Ideal ONE has been reduced. Can this be regarded as a coping strategy?
Li Xiang: The core of ONE’s price reduction is that after the new car L9 enters the store, users who see the L9 will either buy the L9 or wait for the L8. This is our greatest pain.
Later Auto: Your internal evaluation of L8’s product power is far stronger than Wenjie, but why can Wenjie still sell so many? Is Huawei’s strong channel or strong brand?
Li Xiang: Huawei is strong.
Later Auto: In order to improve the success rate of L8, it may be right to actively sacrifice the ideal ONE, but is there a more decent way to sacrifice? The words “Don’t buy Ideal ONE when you are at the L8 stage” and the subsequent rumors of price cuts and discontinued production triggered resistance from old car owners. In September, the sales of ONE fell to more than 1,400 vehicles.
Li Xiang: There is nothing wrong with this sentence. Our decision at the time was very clear. L8 will steal most of ONE’s sales, but ONE is still competitive against competing products at the same price and level, so ONE will continue to sell for a while. At the same time, price reductions are required.
However, when it is transmitted to the end of sales, there is no process specification for how to say and how to do it. This is equivalent to when the infantry rushed up, the artillery started to bombard with explosives, causing self-injury. What I reflect on is that the regular army is about to fight, why is the second half of the team still in the state of guerrillas?
Later Auto: The growth of new energy vehicles doubled more than expected, but you lowered your sales forecast twice. The growth of new forces including Ideal failed to outperform the market. What is the reason?
Li Xiang: The second-generation products of the three companies – Weilai’s ET5, Xiaopeng’s G9, and our L8 were all released in the second half of the year and delivered in the fourth quarter, which caused us to miss the market in the first three quarters. And compared with Tesla and BYD, our supply capacity is much worse. Each of the three of us has only one factory that can be effectively used. The work related to capacity expansion needs to be prepared three years in advance, and there is no way to temporarily change it.
And affected by the epidemic, at most 30% of our stores were unable to open. So we lowered our sales target in the third quarter.
Late Auto: Some people think that the competition of smart electric vehicles is the fiercest competition in the history of Chinese business. In 2019, you had a photo with Li Bin and He Xiaopeng. The three of you sat together and talked about who was the worst victim. What is the difference between the tragedy of life and death back then and the tragedy of today?
Li Xiang: At that time, we all just came out of the ICU. It was tragic because everyone’s capital chain was about to be broken, and there was no chance to verify the product and business model.
Today’s tragedy is mainly due to competition. Everyone has cards, and they have all played cards, but the cruel thing is that once the cards are not played well, it is very difficult to play them back.
Later Auto: How did Weilai, Xiaopeng, and Ideal play their cards?
Li Xiang: Weilai adopts a steady and conservative branding method, which does not report too high expectations but ensures stability; Xiaopeng adopts a leap-forward branding method, and each car occupies a new market; we are a big product, suppressing the explosion Based on the original market, we will expand and create more hot products.
Later Auto: The different ways of playing cards are mainly determined by the personality and resources of the founders?
Li Xiang: The understanding of competition will also lead to different ways of playing cards. Some companies believe that this industry will eventually have multiple companies coexisting; some companies believe that the automotive industry will eventually become like a mobile phone, with 4-5 companies taking over 80% of the market share. We are the latter.
Later Auto: The penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China exceeded 30% in September, and the overall growth rate of the market has begun to decline, and all auto companies have very aggressive goals. How to ensure not to fall behind in the knockout round?
Li Xiang: Ideal has two core advantages. One is the ability to make products bigger. We can surpass rather than simply meet the needs of users. We do four-screen, six-seater, three-dimensional space interaction, and everyone thinks that it is unnecessary. After making it, users find that this is what they want; another point, we always insist on a 20% gross profit rate, which allows us to develop, Bold investment in sales and other systems is not restricted by the capital environment.
Late Auto: Shouldn’t unprecedented competition use unprecedented competition methods? Enter the market in the mainstream price band in advance, spread more channels, and reduce the gross profit margin.
Li Xiang: Some people are willing to seize more battlefields at the same time. We prefer to take down this position first, and then go to the next one.
Late Auto: It’s okay to do this when resources are limited. Assuming unlimited resources, would you change your strategy?
Li Xiang: Management resources are always limited.
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Later Auto: There was a thinking on the Internet back then, if a chat software is stuck, then make a non-stuck one. This method is called sending sub-questions. Ideally, in the past seven years, what practices have been completed to send sub-questions? Which are the real innovations?
Li Xiang: Because we want to grab the BBA market, this means that we must do as well as BBA in the three aspects (design, comprehensive product strength, and large space) that BBA wins. The ideal car must have the appearance of a luxury car, including design, proportions, and the same car length and size. We have more space than others; in addition, we are electric cars, and our product strength is naturally crushing on fuel cars. These are sub-questions.
But a car is not a single product but a system, and the sub-questions must be integrated with innovation. We do range-extending programs, creating brand new scenarios such as urban electricity consumption and long-distance oil consumption; we are the first to make a six-seater SUV. In the past, you bought a luxurious seven-seater SUV, and you had to put the second row on the third row. The seat is down, this design is basically punishing the user; we also pioneered the multi-screen multi-microphone full-car space interaction.
I found that when all automobile companies make cars, they only meet the needs of two types of people, one is the driver in the front row, and the other is the boss in the back row. In the past, we were able to beat the sales of competing products of the same level through ONE and become the first. Today, we can also beat BBA cars with the same price through L9 and L8, because their designers did not have these in their heads.
Later Auto: You said that L9 is “the best SUV within 5 million”, how do you define the best? If you compare it with Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Cullinan, you will find that many individual items of L9 are not optimal.
Li Xiang: But we are not bad either. We never define whether a product is the best in the industry, what we define is whether it is the best for our user base. I can also achieve the same control as the BMW X7, but the price is that the car will have repeated, small jumps during normal driving. Such jumps are unacceptable to our family user group.
Anyone who compares our products with home users as the center, we will definitely win.
Later Auto: You said that you are not allowed to make a makeshift product, why would you allow immature and unstable technologies such as gesture control to be used in cars?
Li Xiang: When it comes to design, engineering, and mechanical systems, we must do our best, because there is no opportunity for iteration; when it comes to application software, we will ensure the same sense of use and stability as mobile phones; gesture control belongs to the third category— — Artificial Intelligence, which revolves around learning and training. My requirement for this type of technology is to accept that it has a growth process under the premise of ensuring safety.
Later Auto: There are still choices, for example, why not concentrate resources to make the best voice interaction?
Li Xiang: Because this is not a question of resource allocation, but what we believe in. Tesla’s mission is to become a renewable energy company, so they will not do so many functions in the cockpit, nor will they engage in three-dimensional space interaction.
We hope that we are a smart technology company. We believe that the car is a space that can evolve, not a terminal with a screen. In human observation, vision accounts for 83%, and hearing only accounts for 11%. If speech and vision are developed together, many problems will be solved.
Late Auto: There are also safety issues. Some car owners complained that the seat belt of Ideal ONE is relatively thin, and in July this year, a test drive car before the L9 was delivered was reported to have an air suspension fracture accident.
Li Xiang: The L9 seat belt is very thick. In the past, we had no choice but to use what the supplier had.
The L9 test drive car did not break the suspension, but the vehicle rushed through a deep pit of more than 20 cm at a speed of 90 km/h, resulting in damage to the buffer ring inside the empty spring. The air suspension is a supplier management issue, one of the European suppliers did not send enough products because of the epidemic, we had to use some experimental parts.
Later Auto: You have repeatedly emphasized that the ideal size should be larger than other cars, and the ultimate pursuit of space utilization. What did you sacrifice for this?
Li Xiang: There is a certain sense of driving and handling, so we don’t engage in acceleration of more than two seconds or more than three seconds.
Later Auto: Let’s talk about the design. The front faces of the L7, L8, and L9 are almost identical. Is this the best design you can provide to users?
Li Xiang: After electric vehicles go to the grid (air intake grille), it is difficult to realize the significant differentiation of traditional fuel vehicles by changing the shape of the grid, so we simply accept that they are exactly the same. Moreover, the front face of the smart car is full of sensors, and they all have fixed positions and angles.
Moreover, in the L series, we clearly defined our own design language for the first time, and the super star ring running through the head and tail will become the ideal and most prominent design language.
Late Auto: Why can Porsche make every car look good, and they look different?
Li Xiang: You can change to another way of thinking, imagine L9 to L6 as one model, but four different versions, just like providing different types of apartments in a real estate. I think so in my bones, and that’s how I convinced the team.
This design is not to save money, we will design completely different body-in-white for the 5-seater and 6-seater with the same wheelbase, which are the ideal L7 and ideal L8, two medium and large SUVs, because only in this way can we provide users with the best Space experience, instead of arranging 5 and 6 seats under one car body, it becomes two models.
Later Auto: You said that you learn from Apple in making products. If Apple builds cars, do you think their front faces will look exactly the same?
Li Xiang: One hundred percent yes. Apple phones look the same, as do Braun razors and Dyson vacuum cleaners. People always say that there are problems with dolls, but the most successful companies in the world are dolls.
Late Auto: You used to say, “That’s how Bentley does it” in product meetings, do you still say it now?
Li Xiang: Not now, they have their own research system. It turns out that their knowledge is lacking, and perception will affect cognition.
Later Auto: Your colleague said that when you tested a car, you could feel that the seat cushion was 3mm thicker, and later verified that it was true. Is this a true story?
Li Xiang: To be honest, I am particularly sensitive to these. Once a tire pressure was 0.2 less, and I knew which tire had a problem while sitting in the car.
Late Auto: On the product, is there no one who can object and convince you?
Li Xiang: There was once a newly recruited product manager who complained that it was difficult to promote the ideal product. I said, do you know how I promote the product?
When I want to change a detail, I will tell everyone what the product is like, what problems there are, and list all kinds of scenarios to think clearly; the second round is to use data and models to verify; the third round It is verified by actual experience. After the three rounds are completed, the cost and cycle can be started.
We do things very systematically. Ideally, there is a formula – product value is equal to product power multiplied by product quality divided by product price. Among them, product power has more than one hundred definitions, and all perceptual and rational things can be quantified and evaluated , This level must be achieved in order to push the product down.
Many people think they can make products, but I think there are very few people in the automotive industry who can make products. The biggest problem for most companies in making products is laziness, laziness in thinking, laziness in system, and laziness in behavior.
Late Auto: I suddenly realized the feelings of your colleagues-“Li Xiang is very irritable 1% of the time, but 99% of the time he says I will teach you.”
Li Xiang: Getting angry is useless, you have to solve the problem.
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Later Auto: Ideal is called a “baby car”. How far can this group of dads support ideals? Judging by the fertility rate, this market is declining year by year.
Li Xiang: China used to focus on new car purchases, but now 60% of them are replacement purchases and additional purchases, and the proportion will continue to increase. The proportion of family purchases is getting higher and higher, and the proportion of expensive cars will be higher and higher. The conclusion is that this market will continue to grow at a high speed, surpassing any other market.
Late Auto: Compared with last year, are you more optimistic or rational in your forecasts for yourself and the entire market?
Li Xiang: More rational. So I am more concerned about whether we have products to accept those who have downgraded their consumption, and give them a good reason to replace the BMW X7 and Mercedes-Benz GLS they drove in the past with the ideal L9.
Late Auto: When will single people become your target users?
Li Xiang: We still focus on home users. When going from 1 to 10, good companies continue the product and organizational advantages accumulated from 0 to 1. Failed companies give up this advantage and start over again.
Even if I sell a car in the early 200,000, it doesn’t mean that I am going to create a brand new user group. I still hope to surround my user group and give him a very convenient city scooter.
Auto later: Ideal ONE was launched in 2019, and it has sold 200,000 units so far. Betting on a single blockbuster product was limited by resources at the time, but it has made you a success. Looking back, was it a kind of luck?
Li Xiang: Winning and winning are very essential for cars. We do not do this because we have no choice. Even with limited resources, companies still face many choices.
In 2016, the resources at that time only supported me to develop a body structure, but we could choose to do pure electric vehicles, or choose to do range-extending and pure electric shared platforms at the same time. Finally, we want to understand that if we can’t launch the best product and can only make do with it, then we won’t do it. If the extended-range and pure electric platforms are shared, it will not be competitive to make a pure electric vehicle with a battery life of 400 kilometers. Then we cut off the others, concentrate all resources, and only do extended range and six seats.
Late Auto: In today’s competitive environment, is the single blockbuster strategy still a good strategy?
Li Xiang: It is not a single hot product, but a hot product strategy. iPhone4 is a single explosive product, and iPhone11 is the explosive product solution of the product portfolio. The former looks at the small price range, while the latter looks at the market share of a larger price range.
Supporting the explosive product strategy is the core strategy we determined at the end of 2019 – the platform strategy. All our cars are made of any combination of three platforms (electric drive, smart cockpit, and smart driving): there are two platforms for extended range; There are SS Max and SS Pro; automatic driving includes AD Max (equipped with Nvidia Orin), and AD Pro (equipped with Horizon J5). All cars are crossover combinations of these, it’s over.
Later Auto: You expect the sales of passenger cars with a price of more than 200,000 yuan to reach 8 million units in 2025, ideally hope to account for 20% of them, that is, sell 1.6 million vehicles. How can this be achieved?
Li Xiang: There are three steps. The first step is to use the L series to get the first market share of 300,000-500,000 SUVs, accounting for 15%-20% of the market share. The second step is to use range-extended SUVs and pure electric models to become the number one in the entire passenger car market worth 300,000 to 500,000 yuan, not just looking at new energy. After this step is achieved, we will mainly attack the 200,000-300,000 market.
Later Auto: You have determined the strategy from high to low, when will you enter the sinking market? Some people say that after you have earned money from your dad’s car, it is difficult to take a fancy to low-margin models.
Li Xiang: From 0 to 1, I survived with one product. The first step in the second phase is to strengthen this market first, rather than immediately expand new markets. In the market of more than 200,000, we will deploy, but will not start a war.
This is our planning and rhythm, not that I look down on low-margin models. The sales volume of L9 is basically the same as that of BYD Tang. With such a good market, why don’t we do it?
Late Auto: Tesla and BYD are fighting fiercely in this market. Ideally, if they enter in a year or two, isn’t it too late?
Li Xiang: I will not make a product just because of the sales volume. It is necessary to launch the best product at the same price. I cannot accept that the ideal product is just enough. I will fight hard with anyone in the company who makes a make-up product.
We have no way to change the rhythm. If we have to change, then we should build cars two years earlier, but everyone is playing cards in 2014 and 2015.
Late Auto: Compared with “Crossing the Chasm”, the market has entered the early mass stage from early users, and the penetration rate has risen rapidly. What a bad car, users can sell it as soon as they touch it. This is essentially the experience of electric vehicles over gasoline vehicles. pressure. Ideal at this stage, why didn’t you deploy channels earlier?
Li Xiang: I think it’s okay. We want to obtain the same market share as BBA. The effective coverage of BBA is about 500 stores and 200 cities. We can achieve the same coverage as BBA as soon as the end of next year.
At this stage, the first step is to upgrade the stores. In the past, a large number of stores were designed for a single car, and they need to be upgraded to medium-sized stores; the second step is to expand the number.
Late Auto: Why not do store upgrades and quantity expansion at the same time? The competition for channels is very important. The fact that Wenjie sells so well has a lot to do with its placement in Huawei’s stores.
Li Xiang: Huawei is an agency system, and our store is a direct operation system. Ideally, the employees of each store should be fully trained. I don’t want this system to change.
Auto later: But Xiaomi made core mistakes in supply chain and channel construction in 2013 and 2014, and lost to Huawei and OV.
Li Xiang: From the beginning, we believed that offline is very effective. In the automotive industry, sales are determined by shortcomings. We will always look at what is our most serious shortcoming. Looking at it today, the shortcoming is still a supply issue rather than a channel.
Late Auto: Why must you not make a car under 200,000? When do ideas change?
Li Xiang: After the cost is reduced to that level, the product we want cannot be realized. Even if we make more than 200,000 cars, four screens, HUD, and NOA navigation assisted driving are all standard configurations.
We don’t want to change because of others, this is probably my biggest characteristic. I will stick to what I do and not change because of the outside world.
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Late Auto: Is there anything that should have been done earlier but not done in the past few years?
Li Xiang: Wang Xing told me in 2019 that we should lay out the supply chain in advance. Although we took action, we were still a year late.
He said that the loss of expanding production scale is nothing more than a waste of one or two billion yuan due to the construction of factories in advance, but if the market grows and you do not have supply, the loss is billions and tens of billions.
Late Auto: Why didn’t you make up your mind at the time?
Li Xiang: To put it bluntly, people are poor and short-sighted. We got the C-round investment at that time, and we just came back to life. If it was after the IPO, we would definitely do it.
Later Auto: You once said that any issue you discuss is based on ten years. What have you seen? Looking at the entire industry from a ten-year perspective, what will change and what will not?
Li Xiang: At the beginning, we directly discussed what technology will be like in ten years. Later, Wang Xing and Wang Huiwen suggested that we should first discuss the scale, because the scale means that we have to fight many battles, and then look at the changes in technology. Look at the changes in user needs, business changes, and competition changes in the past ten years.
Going forward to 2030, we can see two major problems from the perspective of scale. The first is that enterprises must become platform-based, otherwise they will die. Both hardware and software are developed on a platform basis, just like Apple and Huawei. This means that each car delivered in the end is not independently developed, but can be crossed on the hardware platform and software platform, just like building blocks. . So we started platformization in 2020.
The second problem is the supply problem. One of the cores is production capacity, that is, the factory; the other core is the supply chain, and the order of the supply chain is battery, IGBT and silicon carbide, and car-standard supply chips.
We believe that supply is the most important in the stage of market explosion, and supply capacity determines market share. If this is an industry with increasing scale effects, in the middle and later stages, whether a company has a combination of soft and hard ecology will become a decisive factor in market share.
Later Auto: In the past year, most electric car companies have experienced supply chain crises (chip supply cutoffs, Shanghai epidemic, battery price increases). In a complex environment, how to ensure the stability of the supply chain as much as possible?
Li Xiang: The three issues you mentioned have affected us. The Shanghai epidemic has affected the logistics in Jiangsu (note: the ideal factory is located in Changzhou, Jiangsu). In April this year, we only produced one week and stopped production for three weeks. The rise of lithium carbonate raw materials has increased the cost of battery packs by up to nearly 50%, and we had to increase the price of Li ONE by more than 10,000. In the face of this crisis, we can do the same as others, and there is no panacea.
Later Auto: In an interview last year, you also mentioned that the insufficient supply of Bosch’s radars caused Lixiang to fail to deliver more than 20,000 orders. How did you solve the problem?
Li Xiang: Bosch took care of it by itself. The production capacity of its Malaysian factory has resumed.
Late Auto: What have you learned from these crises?
Li Xiang: If you want to control the supply chain, you must have real money and in-depth research and development. BYD has a very strong understanding of the supply chain. Before making cars, it was a supply chain company and an OEM company, and from the very beginning, it made all auto parts by itself. Therefore, it was also affected by the epidemic, and its delivery was almost unaffected.
Later Auto: The PC industry has been horizontally integrated for many years, but Apple and Tesla are vertically integrated companies. Will only vertically integrated companies win in the future? And where are the boundaries of vertical integration?
Li Xiang: Whether to do vertical integration, we will comprehensively and comparatively consider four points – performance, quality, supply and cost.
Corresponding to the four classifications we give to the automotive supply chain, namely, traditional auto parts; three electrics; smart sensors; innovative. Different categories have different strategies. Traditional auto parts are capable of production, cost-effective, and only need to cooperate with suppliers; for the three electrics, we will deeply intervene, electric motor control, and independent research and development with range extenders, because the more closed these parts are, the higher the efficiency , I can directly affect every detail of its transformation, but we don’t touch the battery, the battery and the panel are more general, the higher the efficiency, the lower the cost; the smart sensor, the supply is relatively stable, we have several fixed suppliers, but our own It can greatly reduce the cost, so we will look at it flexibly; innovation, including super-large screen HUD, air suspension, and some domestic core chips, we have to develop this part ourselves, because it can bring differentiation and greatly Improve product strength.
But we will control the proportion of self-made parts in the whole vehicle cost within 30%. Too many self-made parts means that more parts factories are needed, and higher capital leverage is needed, which will lead to the problem of insufficient market competitiveness in the long run.
Late Auto: Is there a sequence for vertical integration of different links? Weilai and Xiaopeng both directly develop self-driving chips, but you choose to produce and develop power semiconductors first.
Li Xiang: Because power semiconductors account for a higher cost and a larger total consumption in automobiles. Moreover, compared to making chips, our priority is the operating system. We will launch the car control operating system in 2024 at the earliest, which means that chip development will not be earlier than 2024.
Now the challenges for all car companies come from three aspects. One is how to reduce the cost of hardware such as sensors. The cost of Tesla is just over 1,000 US dollars, and several of us are 3,000-4,000 US dollars. The important reason is that Tesla does it by itself; the second is whether there are enough learning samples in the competition, such as the number of cars, Tesla needs It takes millions of vehicles to complete 10 billion miles of training; the third is the cost of the training platform.
The last thing is to look at the development of autonomous driving and artificial intelligence by comparing these three parts. Everyone will soon find that only auto companies can do it. This thing is too expensive.
Late Auto: It seems that you are always looking for the optimal solution.
Li Xiang: On the contrary, I always look for the suboptimal solution, I never look for the optimal solution. Because the optimal solution is too risky and often brings huge pitfalls, Apple will develop the latest technology, but it will use the second-level mature technology.
Late Auto: How to define the optimal solution?
Li Xiang: From the perspective of productivity, the absolute leadership of technology is the optimal solution. I rarely see an industry that needs to use the optimal solution to win. There is no optimal solution in this world, and perhaps no optimal solution is the greatest fairness in this world.
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Later Auto: Ideal has nearly 20,000 people, and is changing from a start-up company to a large company. How to avoid the trap of 20,000 people?
Li Xiang: This is the largest management scale since I started my business, and I have definitely seen the scale of 100,000 people. I didn’t understand why a super large enterprise had to establish such a complicated process before, but now I understand that organizational upgrading must match the scale.
The success of ideal ONE is accidental, and I want to think about how to make accidental become inevitable. The company is transitioning from a single product to a multi-product and multi-platform stage. The original functional organization can easily lead to ten steps forward for one product, but eight steps back for the next product. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a matrix management method-let each new product stand on the roof of the previous product to advance.
This year’s annual revenue is expected to be between 40 billion and 50 billion yuan, and next year there is a chance to hit an annual income of 100 billion yuan. If we cannot upgrade to a matrix organization, we can achieve 100 billion, but this 100 billion is our roof. If we can successfully upgrade, then this 100 billion will be our starting point.
Later Auto: There are very few successful matrix organizations in China. How to upgrade the organization? What are your methods and steps?
Li Xiang: The first step is to use OKR to achieve information alignment across the company, but when the entire system becomes complex, information alignment is not enough, and all departments must be locked together in key links (perception, decision-making, and execution). We call it “interlocking”, and interlocking is realized through IPD (Integrated Product Development, integrated product development).
One of my core OKRs this year is to learn Huawei’s IPD process and promote its implementation. Integrated product development is the main process, but sub-processes such as integrated marketing management, supply chain management, and financial management all need to be implemented according to the rhythm.
According to Wang Huiwen, special teams can play in the league, but it is impossible to have special teams in the World Cup finals. You must be very strong in all aspects.
Late Auto: How do you tell if your organization is on the right track to upgrade, and what are the criteria?
Li Xiang: The core needs to complete four tasks: how to effectively perceive and obtain comprehensive and true information; how to make good judgments and decisions; how to ensure the execution process; how to effectively review.
But the real standard is quality. We often say that large companies tend to fall into inefficiency, but I have a new understanding recently: quality is efficiency. Whether it is a product or an organization, high quality is high efficiency.
Later Auto: You just announced the resignation of President Shen Yanan. Was his departure sudden to you? How to make up for the loss caused by the sudden departure of the founding team members?
Li Xiang: We don’t have much time left for his decision. I think that raising organizational capabilities to a higher level is the best way to make up for this loss.
Later Auto: You finally decided that the heads of each group will assign Shen Yanan’s work, why don’t you consider introducing a new executive to directly replace him?
Li Xiang: Kevin (Shen Yanan) is a top partner who can’t be met. It is not easy to find a direct replacement for him.
We have a more important goal – a revenue scale of 100 billion next year and a team of 30,000 people by the end of the year, so we think the most appropriate way is for several group leaders to assign Kevin’s work according to their own expertise to ensure that the team is upgraded in the organization remain stable during the process. This is something that the core team has repeatedly discussed and considered, not a simple transition period.
Late Auto: Shen Yanan’s responsibility for manufacturing, supply chain and quality has been handed over to the new president Ma Donghui. Ma Donghui is also responsible for software and hardware research and development related to mass production projects. The workload is heavy and cross-disciplinary. Is this a transitional phase or a long-term pattern?
Li Xiang: Long-term form. R&D and supply itself should work closely together.
Late Auto: Before this adjustment, you were in charge of product, organization and brand. Now taking over sales, charging network and service, is this your interest and specialty? How to allocate energy?
Li Xiang: I mainly focus on three aspects, in no particular order. First, I will focus on the biggest things, not what to do, but what not to do, what to focus on; second, I will focus on collaborative things, the interlocking and collaboration between different teams; third, I will focus on The smallest thing, that is, how the cultivation of professional processes and capabilities is implemented, is the real basic skill.
Strategy, product, business, brand, sales, delivery, service, charging network, most of these businesses I manage are consumer-oriented, which is what I am better at during the 20-plus years of entrepreneurship.
From the perspective of energy allocation, 20% of my time is for myself, and I take the lead in solving problems; 80% of my time is for the team, and the team solves the problem. This is a clearer way of allocating time.
Late Auto: How to attract and retain key talent?
Li Xiang: Upgrade to a more professional organization that supports a larger scale, while continuing to achieve product and business success.
Later Auto: You once said that in the early days, ideals can only choose “people who believe in us but are not very strong”. Now that ideals have entered the stage from 1 to N, how to improve the talent structure?
Li Xiang: We want to select the top and most professional talents and provide them with a growth environment that combines training and combat. In addition, 55% of our newcomers this year come from school recruitment, and Ideal has established its own talent training system.
The combat effectiveness of the company is directly proportional to the number of adult employees. We require employees to practice three basic skills—first, do well in philosophy questions, second, do well in math questions, and third, do well in Chinese questions.哲学题是通过不停问为什么来确定方向；数学题是通过建立一个理性、可衡量的数字化系统来保证成长；语文题是学会和他人沟通。
晚点Auto：这些也是你对公司新员工培训的内容？
李想：是的，很多人因此而受益了。
很多员工会说不知道怎么做选择，为什么别人不理解我。我说都是因为你基本功没做到位，别人为什么要理解你？这是你自己没能力造成的。而基本功没做到位还是因为太懒。
晚点Auto：理想的人才理念是：掌控自己的命运，挑战成长的极限。但你的员工说，没有人想挑战成长极限，是你一个人想改变世界，结果逼着大家都在改变自己。
李想：是。
晚点Auto：你倒是很诚实。
李想：我觉得对我而言，要做的不仅是找到问题，我是要真的找到解决方案，并把在这方面专业的程度训练到强大如呼吸一样容易，这个问题就能真正被解决。
而且我越来越发现，我们觉得像呼吸一样正常的某些能力，在大部分企业那都是奢侈品。
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晚点Auto：王兴是理想的股东、董事会成员，他在2019 年理想最困难的时候投资了你们，当时你是如何说服他相信你的？
李想：那是公司最难的时期之一，如果没有那笔投资，可能这个公司就结束了。当时我列了个名单，上面有几家可能对我们感兴趣的公司，我把理想对他们的价值是什么，手画了一张A4 纸，带在身上。
我跟他说的是，我觉得美团未来一定要发展交通的自动化，这方面和我们有巨大的协同，而且美团不但能实现交通自动化，还能实现空间的自动化，运人运物运空间美团都需要。
晚点Auto：你给每个公司都手写了一张纸？
李想：不是，还有人没见到。
晚点Auto：最难的时候想过要把公司卖掉吗？
李想：没想过。我之前卖过公司，不想再经历一次了。
晚点Auto：你和王兴沟通很多，他给你有什么启发？
李想：一是关于战略的必要性。我们现在做战略的时候还是有惯性，走哪算哪。而他讲的是必要性，先算市场规模到底多大，你应该占到多少，再决定你要做什么事；第二是2020 年后整个世界变化很大，他帮我建立了一套比较闭环的哲学体系。
除此之外，罗素的智慧对我的体系构建也有很大影响。
晚点Auto：什么时候开始看罗素的？
李想：我没时间专业地去读哲学原著，看的是大家总结出来的他的核心理念。
晚点Auto：哪里看？得到吗？
李想：哪都看。我的底线哲学认知是罗素的智慧，用最朴实的话讲就是：必须实事求是，理性的去寻求真相；必须包容协作，这个世界才会良性的运转。
晚点Auto：在拥有这套体系之前，你是靠什么走到今天的？
李想：就是单纯靠心智。
晚点Auto：每个人都有思维盲区，你认为自己的思维盲区是什么？
李想： （想了一会儿）我的每一个盲区我都会去分析，如果盲区会给我带来重大影响我就一定会解决它。如果这个盲区存在但别人能补上，或者它存在但并不影响结果，我就不会去处理它。
晚点Auto：对你来说，最好的学习路径是什么？
李想：我基本上都是研究各大公司，就这么一件事，我对阿里研究很深，我对华为研究非常深，我对自己研究也非常深。
晚点Auto：你深入学习过字节，如何看待“大力出奇迹” 这一方法论，它是否适用于汽车行业？
李想：不适用，汽车行业的特性是长周期、全链条，不像互联网产品，你的优点就是你的全部，汽车企业不是。
很多时候大力出奇迹是公司对外的宣传方式，大家都觉得字节的算法好，但仔细看，字节商业也做得好，最后你发现它的组织比商业还好。字节的组织能力超强，高过了字节对自己的认知。
晚点Auto：和对一些企业家的担心相反，你的投资人会担心你不敢花钱。
李想：我在汽车之家就经历过从资源有限到资源富裕的阶段，进入第二阶段，当时我们干的第一件事情把中国所有的网址站全部买下来，我在扩张的时候是非常敢花钱的。
从去年到今年，我们每个季度的研发投入都在上升，上半年研发投入29 亿，比去年同期增长了150%。明年我们的纯电动车上市，我们要建设十分钟充400 公里的充电网络，覆盖主流的高速公路，这些都是巨大的投入。
晚点Auto：如何保持和增加自己的开放性，你觉得自己在哪些方面应该更开放？
李想：通过建立机制来保证开放性。对大决策进行充分讨论和博弈，但最后一定是我来拍板，这样既能防止出现一言堂，又能保证决策效率。
这种决策方式非常适合第一代创始人还在并扮演CEO 角色的公司，这也是我研究很多公司后得出的结论。
晚点Auto：一些接触过你的人会评价你太过自信，在什么时候这会是个问题?
李想：我确实隔三差五得就有点太过自信，经常因此吃各种亏。但作为一个创业者不自信又肯定是不成的，大多数有能力的人宁愿和一个自大狂工作，也不愿和一个怂包工作。
本文转自： https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1424
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