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Produced by Radar Finance Hongtu | Edited by Meng Shuai | Deep Sea

The friendship between the three founders of "NIO, Xiaopeng and Li Auto", which are regarded by the outside world as the three representative players of China's new car-making forces, has been put to the test recently.

In June 2020, He Xiaopeng posted a photo of himself, Li Bin and Li Xiang on Weibo, with the caption "Three poor guys, recalling the past and thinking about change..." However, more than four years have passed, and the three people who were once hugged by each other are now full of gunpowder.

Recently, many bigwigs, including Li Bin and He Xiaopeng, have expressed their dissatisfaction with the behavior of car companies releasing weekly sales rankings on their own. Although some of them did not name names, it is generally believed that their criticism is directed at Ideal Auto, which insists on releasing sales rankings every week. In the face of the "challenge" of his peers, Li Xiang posted a picture of the story of covering one's ears and stealing the bell on his Moments, which seems to be a response to the joint boycott of Ideal's weekly ranking by car companies.

Looking back, NIO, Xiaoli, and Li Auto were almost rivals at the same starting line. In the process of competing with each other, NIO was long ranked first among the three. However, whether in terms of delivery volume, revenue, profit indicators, or market value, Li Auto now leads the other two by a large margin.

However, after achieving a series of impressive results last year, Ideal Auto lost the title of sales champion for several consecutive months this year. In the first half of the year, Ideal Auto even stopped updating the weekly ranking data. However, after a few weeks, Ideal Auto resumed the release of the ranking. In this regard, some netizens questioned that Ideal Auto would not release the ranking if the delivery performance was not good, and resumed the update if the performance was good.

Some analysts pointed out that for automobile brands, sales volume is important, but it is not the only criterion for measuring the success or overall strength of a brand. Sales volume can indeed directly reflect the popularity and market share of a brand in the market, but it cannot fully reflect all aspects of the brand.

While paying attention to sales, car companies also need to consider multiple aspects comprehensively, such as product quality and technological innovation, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, brand influence and reputation, as well as sustainable development and social responsibility, so as to comprehensively enhance the brand's comprehensive strength and market competitiveness.

The release of the weekly rankings angered the public, and many car companies besieged Ideal Auto

In the new energy vehicle industry, sales volume represents the popularity of brands and products in the market to a certain extent. This is because sales volume is a direct reflection of market feedback, reflecting consumers' cognition, preference and purchase intention of brands and their products.

According to the practice in the automotive industry, many automakers will release their latest delivery data at the beginning of each month. However, Ideal is more aggressive in releasing ranking data, and it releases the sales ranking of new power brands every week, and this move has recently triggered a new round of "war of words" in the automotive industry.

At the Weilai Innovation Technology Day held on July 27, Li Bin seemed to be targeting Ideal. Li Bin, the founder, chairman and CEO of Weilai, said at the event that the monthly sales list is generally public information of all companies, and for listed companies, publishing this data is a practice of financial transparency.

Li Bin believes that for companies, monthly sales statistics are already quite fierce. Normal companies only disclose financial reports on a quarterly basis. He also said bluntly, "If we become the number one, we will definitely never publish a weekly chart."

Qin Lihong, who is regarded by the outside world as the second-in-command of NIO, was even more sharp in his words, "I hope other companies will not include NIO in their weekly rankings." He believes that it is right to manage the company on a daily or weekly basis, but he hopes that the relevant departments will take care of this matter.

Qin Lihong emphasized that NIO never makes sales forecasts and does not release unaudited weekly sales data. No more than 10 people within the company have access to the weekly sales data. Therefore, the weekly sales data circulating in the market is not rigorous. At the same time, NIO has not authorized any third-party organization to release weekly sales rankings in the name of NIO.

Although the two bosses of NIO did not mention names in their speeches, many netizens thought that they almost pronounced the name of Ideal Auto. According to "Electric Home", Ideal Auto began to release weekly sales data as early as April last year. At that time, Ideal Auto fixedly released the sales data of the previous week every Tuesday, which was considered a "first" in the automotive industry.

However, the above remarks by Li Bin and Qin Lihong did not seem to have any impact on Ideal Auto. At around 12 noon on July 30, Ideal Auto released the sales list of new power brands for the 30th week of 2024 (July 22-July 28) on its official Weibo as usual.

Subsequently, Ma Lin, assistant vice president of brand and communications of NIO, posted on Weibo, "The top management has set the tone: don't engage in low-level involution. The weekly rollout list is more or less a bit like low-level involution."

Unlike Li Bin and Qin Lihong, who did not specifically name anyone, Ma Lin directly called out to Li Xiang in this Weibo post, "Brother Xiang, stop it. The current mission of Chinese automakers is to achieve technological breakthroughs through research and development, isn't it? Let's power up together!" Ma Lin's Weibo post was also agreed by Yang Xueliang, senior vice president of Geely Holding Group, "I am also against the weekly ranking."

As more and more people in the automotive industry join the game, He Xiaopeng, the chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, also joins the game. At the Xiaopeng Motors AI Intelligent Driving Technology Conference on July 30, He Xiaopeng said that the smart driving environment in the United States is significantly different from that in China, and the American industry is more focused on how to improve end-to-end smart driving solutions. However, when he returned to China, he saw that his competitors were still busy making sales charts, thinking only about how to make money, rather than technological innovation and breakthroughs. This is not what technological competition should look like.

Radar Finance noted that as early as July 2023, Xpeng Motors executives had questioned the weekly ranking data released by Ideal Auto. At that time, Huang Honglin, general manager of product marketing at Xpeng Motors, posted two ranking charts on WeChat Moments and wrote, "Please pay attention to official information, Lubianshe is indeed not very reliable", and one of the ranking charts was the weekly sales data list released by Ideal Auto.

Huang Honglin also said, "The above information about Xiaopeng Motors is all false. Good things come late. Thank you for your attention! We don't need to bluff and show off our strengths. The automobile industry is a long-term industry where long-termism wins and opportunism dies. We love to do a good job in product quality and supply, and deliver high-quality products to users."

After several bigwigs left the scene one after another, Ideal Auto, which was under siege, finally stopped keeping silent. On the evening of July 30, Li Xiang posted a picture about the story of covering one's ears and stealing the bell on his WeChat Moments, and added a "hush" emoticon, which seemed to be a response to the joint boycott of Ideal Weekly by automakers.

We were at the same starting line in the past, but now our positions have changed

With the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry in recent years, many Chinese automakers have gradually come under the spotlight. When talking about the development of China's new energy vehicles, it is hard not to mention the three representative players among the new forces, namely the "NIO, Xiaopeng and Li Auto" mentioned above.

Back in the millennium, Li Bin, then only 26 years old, founded Bitauto.com, filling a market gap and gaining popularity in the auto industry. Five years later, Li Xiang, who had created Pcpop.com, founded Autohome and began competing with Li Bin.

In 2010, 36-year-old Li Bin rang the bell for listing at the New York Stock Exchange, and Bitauto became China's first automotive Internet company to be listed overseas. In 2013, as Autohome officially entered the capital market, Li Xiang, who was in his 30s, also rang the bell for listing at the New York Stock Exchange.

In 2014, 40-year-old Li Bin resolutely joined the ranks of car manufacturing, and NIO came into being. Tianyancha shows that as one of the earliest new car-making forces, NIO has been favored by capital and has received financing from well-known investment institutions such as Temasek, Baidu Capital, Tencent, and JD.com. In 2018, NIO successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the first Chinese new energy vehicle company to be listed in the United States.

In 2015, 34-year-old Li Xiang founded Ideal Auto, thus entering the car manufacturing industry. In October 2018, Ideal Auto's first product, the intelligent electric medium-to-large SUV Ideal ONE, was officially released and launched in April 2019. In July 2020, Ideal Auto was listed on the Nasdaq in the United States, becoming the second new force to be listed in the United States after NIO.

As for He Xiaopeng, the helmsman of another emerging car company, Xiaopeng Motors, his most notable achievement before entering the car manufacturing industry was the founding of UC Youshi, and UC Browser was the star product created by his team. In June 2014, Alibaba spent more than $4 billion to acquire UC.

With the financial independence, He Xiaopeng joined the Alibaba family as UC Youshi was integrated into Alibaba, and successively served as the president of Alibaba Mobile Business Group, chairman of Alibaba Games, and president of Tudou. During this period, He Xiaopeng proposed the idea of ​​building a car within the Alibaba system, but it was ruthlessly rejected.

In the end, He Xiaopeng decided to build cars himself. The car brand he participated in investing in was Xiaopeng Motors, which was founded in 2014 by Xia Heng, He Tao, and Yang Chunlei. In August 2017, He Xiaopeng, who resigned from Alibaba, unlocked his new identity in Xiaopeng Motors, and his role in Xiaopeng Motors was upgraded from the previous investor to the chairman. In August 2020, Xiaopeng Motors officially landed on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the third new force to be listed in the United States after Weilai and Ideal.

At its peak, NIO's market value once surpassed traditional giants Volkswagen and BYD, and ranked third in the world after Tesla and Toyota. For a long time, when people mentioned NIO, they always put it first among "NIO, Xiaoli and Li Auto".

However, times have changed, and the three new forces that were once basically at the same starting line are no longer at the same level. In 2023, Ideal Auto delivered a total of 376,030 new cars throughout the year, becoming the first Chinese new power car company to exceed the 300,000 annual delivery mark. In the same year, NIO and Xpeng Motors delivered 160,038 and 141,601 vehicles respectively throughout the year. Compared with the former two, Ideal Auto's delivery performance last year can be said to be "far ahead."

In terms of finance, Ideal Auto is also far ahead. Last year, NIO and Xpeng Motors recorded revenues of 55.618 billion yuan and 30.676 billion yuan respectively, but during the same period, Ideal Auto's revenue exceeded 100 billion yuan, reaching 123.851 billion yuan.

While other new forces are still mired in losses, Ideal Auto has become the first player to achieve profitability. Last year, NIO and Xpeng Motors had net losses of 20.72 billion yuan and 10.376 billion yuan respectively, while Ideal Auto's full-year net profit was as high as 11.809 billion yuan, making it the third profitable new energy vehicle company in the world after Tesla and BYD.

In terms of market value, as of the close of trading on July 30, Eastern Time, NIO's market value was $9.225 billion, Xpeng's market value was $7.513 billion, and Li Auto's market value was as high as $19.926 billion. Based on this calculation, Li Auto's latest market value is more than twice that of NIO and 2.65 times that of Xpeng.

Recently, Li Bin and He Xiaopeng have been interacting frequently. They have been connected during live broadcasts and have taken the same high-speed train when on business trips. He Xiaopeng even fulfilled his promise to sell the car at a "discounted price" and personally handed the Xiaopeng X9 to Li Bin. In contrast, Li Xiang seems to be a lot more "unfamiliar" with the two.

An automotive industry practitioner told Radar Finance that the reason why the three companies, Weilai, Xiaopeng and Li Auto, were able to maintain a relatively "peaceful and friendly" relationship was mainly because they each chose different market segments and positioning, forming differentiated competitive strategies. For example, Weilai focuses on the high-end field, Ideal focuses on the extended-range hybrid travel field, and Xiaopeng focuses on the 100,000-200,000 yuan range. This differentiated positioning makes them relatively independent in their respective fields and reduces direct competitive conflicts.

With the rapid development of the new energy vehicle market and increasingly fierce competition, companies including these three automakers have realized that relying solely on a single product line is difficult to meet the diversified needs of the market, and it is also impossible to maintain a leading position in the fierce market competition. In this context, automakers have begun to adjust their strategies and continuously enrich their product matrix in an attempt to cover a wider range of market segments and consumer groups.

Although this expansion of product lines and diversification of price systems help to improve the overall competitiveness and market share of brands, it also brings about more intense competition. Because with the overlap of product lines and the closeness of price ranges, brands that originally competed in different fields began to face off and compete for the same group of potential consumers. This competition is not only reflected in product performance, price, service, etc., but also involves multiple levels such as brand image and marketing strategy.

Ideal once stopped updating the weekly chart data, and was questioned for not releasing it because of poor sales

Since Ideal Auto is a player in the new car-making race, the outside world has always complained about the authenticity and reliability of its weekly ranking data. In this regard, Zhang Xiao, head of Ideal Auto's product line, once explained, "The sales ranking we release every Tuesday, every time I see people saying that the numbers are inflated, these friends really don't understand the operating mechanism of the automotive industry."

Zhang Xiao pointed out that the statistics of the automobile industry are probably the most standardized and complete. From capacity planning to capacity utilization, from wholesale volume reporting to dealer inventory statistics, from retail volume reporting to compulsory traffic insurance volume, as well as import and export and second-hand car circulation, every link in this industry has official statistics endorsed by the government. "These data cannot be faked. We can tell which of these numbers discussed every day are true and which are false in a few minutes."

It is worth noting that Ideal Auto has been insisting on publishing sales rankings every week, but it has stopped updating them before. In May last year, Li Xiang wrote on Weibo, "We have been complained and reported by many peers, so we are temporarily unable to publish the real insurance volume data from last week (May 8th to May 14th), which is very regrettable. I see that some peers can't stand it and have started to falsify the insurance volume data (which every car company will buy), so we took the initiative to publish the real insurance volume data for the first week to quickly correct the deviation."

Afterwards, the weekly sales list released by Ideal Auto stopped updating for a while, but not long after, Ideal Auto resumed the updating of the weekly sales list.

Until March this year, the weekly sales chart released by Ideal Auto stopped updating again. Although this move may be related to Li Xiang's proposal to "lower sales expectations and desires and return to healthy growth", some people still believe that the real reason behind this change is that Ideal Auto's delivery performance has been overshadowed by the industry.

In the first quarter of this year, Ideal Auto was questioned for several months in a row for the honor of taking away the delivery champion of new forces. The Ideal MEGA, which the company had high hopes for in the first half of the year, also had a bad start. This new model not only caused controversy due to its appearance design, but also failed to achieve outstanding sales performance in the market.

In response to the aforementioned problems faced by the company, Li Xiang issued an internal letter to all employees on March 21 to review the situation. In this letter, Li Xiang pointed out the rhythm problem of Ideal MEGA. The team mistakenly operated Ideal MEGA from stage 0 to 1 (commercial verification period) as stage 1 to 10 (high-speed development period).

At the same time, Li Xiang also bluntly stated that the team was too focused on sales. "From top to bottom, we were too focused on sales and competition, allowing desire to surpass value, which significantly reduced our user value and operating efficiency, which we were originally best at. The pursuit of desire has turned us into the people we hate."

However, on May 7, Ideal Auto resumed updating its weekly sales list data, several weeks after it last released the list.

In the last published new power brand sales rankings for the 11th week (March 11-17), Wenjie won the championship with sales of 8,600 units, beating Ideal Auto's 7,000 units. In the 18th week (April 29-May 5), Ideal Auto regained the title of weekly sales champion with sales of 5,300 units, from Wenjie (4,800 units).

Based on this situation, some netizens questioned why Ideal Auto would not release new products if its delivery performance was not good, but resumed updating if its performance was good. One netizen left a comment on the Weibo post of Ideal Auto announcing its 18th week sales ranking, "If it is not No. 1 next week, will it stop again?" Another netizen left a comment, "Why release new products again? Isn't it better to keep a low profile and make a fortune?"

Although there are various interpretations and speculations about Ideal Auto's move to resume updating the weekly sales rankings, Ideal Auto gave its own reasons: "After stopping the rankings, many users who come to the store to buy cars will ask about the sales of Ideal Auto from first-line partners. Product sales are an important basis for many users to make purchasing decisions. First-line partners need real data to explain to users."

Ideal Auto also stated, "During the period when we stopped publishing the list, various sales information appeared in the market, causing us to deal with many related inquiries. For the sake of consistency in external communication, we decided to resume publishing the sales list."

What’s interesting is that when it comes to releasing sales figures, many car companies actually have their own “little tricks”. For example, when many car companies release the sales ranking of one of their products, they always add a lot of qualifiers in front of it. This has also attracted many netizens to joke that “as long as enough qualifiers are added, anyone can be number one.”

Wenjie, which had been competing fiercely with Ideal Auto for the sales champion in the first half of the year, also made some adjustments when announcing its sales results. When announcing its April delivery results, Wenjie changed its caliber and classified itself under the Hongmeng Zhixing system. In terms of Hongmeng Zhixing's overall delivery volume, its 29,632 vehicles delivered are still the new power delivery champion in April, but in fact, Hongmeng Zhixing's 29,632 vehicles delivered include 4,546 Zhijie S7s in addition to Wenjie.

Some market insiders believe that the automotive industry is also a world of fame and fortune. Behind various voices, there are respective interests. It is basically unrealistic to expect harmony in the industry. The entire industry will continue to move forward amid the clamor of all beings.