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Author | Wang Xiaojuan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

"When I went on a business trip to the United States this year, I found that American companies were all rolling up end-to-end and rolling up large models, while we were rolling up the weekly sales charts."

He Xiaopeng, the chairman of Xpeng Motors, who has been quite low-key in the past, has also joined the recent "condemnation" of domestic auto companies for their dominance in the weekly rankings.

At the "AI Intelligent Driving Technology Release Conference" on July 30, He Xiaopeng bluntly stated that this year alone, Xiaopeng has invested 3.5 billion yuan in intelligent driving and has recruited 4,000 people.

In the past three years, Xpeng's R&D expenditures were 4.114 billion yuan, 5.215 billion yuan, and 5.277 billion yuan, respectively, accounting for more than 17% of Xpeng Motors' total revenue. In the first quarter, Xpeng's R&D investment was only 1.35 billion yuan, which shows that Xpeng is accelerating its investment in intelligent driving.

Behind the big bet on smart driving is Xpeng Motors' desire to make its smart driving label clearer.

At the press conference, Xiaopeng Motors revealed that Xiaopeng's intelligent driving will be available all over the world in the future, and in specific scenarios, it will not be limited to cities, routes, or road conditions.

Since the opening of the Shanghai Auto Show last year, the field of intelligent driving has been in full swing. Later, some car companies took the lead in achieving "everyone can drive"

But in Xiaopeng's view, if it is not fully pushed, the qualifier "can be driven nationwide" does not count. This time, Xiaopeng's upgraded XNGP has achieved full push.

In addition to being able to be driven throughout the country without restrictions, other updated features include camera sensing for leaving the vehicle and parking, 100m tracking reverse, etc.

Among them, the "100-meter tracking reverse" can automatically return along the original driving trajectory in extreme scenarios such as dead ends and narrow roads where U-turns are impossible, achieving "one-click return to the original position."

In addition, Xiaopeng found that 60% of its users are Apple users. Therefore, in this OTA, the system is also connected to the Apple ecosystem, adding new functions such as remote voice control, gesture control, and versatile NFC touch control.

The realization of these capabilities is due to Xiaopeng's pioneering end-to-end large-scale model mass production on vehicles. Currently, Xiaopeng is one of only two OEMs in the world and the first in the country to achieve end-to-end large-scale model mass production on vehicles.

After the end-to-end implementation, Xpeng Motors' OTA update speed has also become faster. Currently, it can achieve "a version iteration every 2 days and an experience upgrade every 2 weeks".

At a sharing session at the beginning of the year, Xiaopeng set KPIs for this year in advance. At that time, Xiaopeng said that it would implement intelligent driving in more long-tail scenarios. This time, Xiaopeng has covered ETC and other scenarios, and will directly complete "door-to-door" within the year.

In the eyes of the outside world, Xiaopeng's top priority is to increase sales. However, He Xiaopeng said he is not anxious about sales.

He believes that the automotive industry is a marathon-style long-distance race. Since this year, he has felt the internal changes. Sharpening the knife does not delay the chopping of wood. In recent months, Xiaopeng has been sharpening the knife, and it will not take too long for sales to increase.

In addition, Xiaopeng is also planning new sales growth points. After so many years of experience in the field of intelligent driving, He Xiaopeng must have some plans. He clearly stated that Xiaopeng will also enter the Robaxi field in the future.

In He Xiaopeng's view, following computer networks, the Internet, mobile Internet, new energy vehicles and cloud services, AI will begin to lead the new trend of the times and technological wave after 2023, and will bring four new directions: chips, large models, unmanned driving, and robots.

What Xiaopeng wants to seize is the autonomous driving, and will enter the industry in the future by cooperating with operators. He Xiaopeng revealed in the interview that he recently met with the CEOs of Didi and Uber.

However, even in the autonomous driving industry, competition is still fierce, and Xiaopeng's gamble on intelligent driving also needs market verification.

The following is the transcript of the conversation between Wall Street Journal and other media and He Xiaopeng, Chairman of Xpeng Motors, and Li Liyun, Head of Xpeng Intelligent Driving (edited):

Q: Everyone expects Xiaopeng to have intelligent driving that meets expectations, but sales do not. What do you think of sales? Why has it not met expectations?

He Xiaopeng: I think there are several points: First, our AI is not good enough; second, the pure electric market has been under great pressure in the past two years; third, the competition in the track we are in is the most intense, with two or three companies selling cars above 300,000 yuan, and only two or three selling cars above 200,000 yuan. We have the most cars in the 200,000-300,000 range, so new entrants will want to compete with us.

Since the year before last, our changes have become more and more obvious, and I am more and more confident in the victory of the long-term marathon. You don't have to wait long, and you will see that Xiaopeng sharpening the knife does not delay the chopping of wood. Assuming that sales are chopping wood, our recent actions are sharpening the knife. If you ask me this time next year, you may ask: "Xiaopeng, why did the first stage of your sharpening the knife work?"

When running a business, you need to take a long-term view.

Q: Will Xiaopeng enter the self-driving taxi industry? Or will it provide some technical support to related companies?

He Xiaopeng: We will get involved in Robotaxi, but we are not willing to take over the operation. We hope that in the future Robotaxi will not only serve China, but also the world.

In the past month or so, I have met with the CEO of Didi and the CEO of Uber. They have done a good job in the field of autonomous driving. I believe there will be many such operators in the world in the future, and I hope to cooperate with them.

Building cars is difficult, and operating them is even more difficult. It’s not just “extra difficult” but “extremely difficult”. There should be more partners working together to get this done.

Q: How much support does Zhijia have on Xiaopeng's sales? Can Zhijia really become a moat for a car company?

He Xiaopeng: The doubts about intelligent driving now are very similar to the attitudes towards new energy five years ago. In 2019, many people dare not say what the future of new energy will be.

I think the real lane change must be AI. In the past 12 months, the proportion of high-end cars with intelligent driving functions in Xiaopeng's sales has increased. We believe that AI is an important moat and very valuable data. If it is a 200,000-level car, or even a cheaper car, this data can be done well. There is a huge difference between having 100,000, 1 million, and 100 million data.

I believe that in just 3 or 4 years, rather than 5 years, everyone will agree that intelligent driving will be a huge change. I am very confident of this.

Q: After XNGP can be operated nationwide, what is Xiaopeng’s next plan?

He Xiaopeng: The next step is to make it easy to drive all over the country. It will take 18 months to make it similar to Waymo. We will do "door-to-door" in the fourth quarter. Now it is only for some people. Our goal is to make it available to all Xiaopeng car owners. I think this is quite difficult because there are too many intermediate scenarios. Not only do we need to do each scenario, but we also need to make it more reliable, stable, and accurate. This is very difficult.

Q: What difference does the end-to-end big model bring to users after it is installed in the car?

He Xiaopeng: The goal I set for Liyun is to be able to use the current car (Max version) to upgrade to the level of Waymo overseas through OTA by the second half of next year.

This means that a person who drives an average of 70 kilometers a day only needs to take over once or twice a week. This experience will be subversive and completely different from the current driving experience.

I think this is not far away, it can be achieved in 18 months or even shorter. Although it will be stressful, you can imagine that when we were young, the cars we saw were all driven by people, but after three, four or five years, there will be fewer and fewer people driving and holding the steering wheel, and people can do other things in the car.

Now after turning on smart driving, others don’t know that you are using it, but they will know in the future. We will add this function to all models at some stage this year. Because I am using smart driving, I am different from others.

Question: Why did you persuade Lei Jun to build a car?

He Xiaopeng: I told him one thing at the time: the ultimate goal of automobiles is to rely on intelligent driving. From another perspective, we are happier to have more friendly competitors.