news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

From the valley of despair to the slope of enlightenment.

Author | Zhou Yongliang
edit| Zhang Peng

In 2017, He Xiaopeng stood at a crossroads of choice.

Three years ago, his life seemed to have reached a peak. In June 2014, UC Youshi, which he founded, was acquired by Alibaba for a staggering $4.35 billion. As the founder, He Xiaopeng achieved his goal of achieving financial freedom before the age of 40 and became a star entrepreneur in the technology circle.

After UC was incorporated into Alibaba, He Xiaopeng changed from an entrepreneur to a professional manager. He was successively entrusted with important tasks, including serving as the president of the mobile business group of Alibaba Entertainment Group, chairman of Alibaba Games, and president of Tudou.

For He Xiaopeng at that time, the future was full of possibilities: he could continue to be a senior manager within Alibaba, or even strive to become an Alibaba partner; or he could retire after achieving success and enjoy life.

But in the same year, Xiaopeng Motors, which he personally invested in and had just started to make a name for himself, was also eager to have a "leader". Although this emerging car company was named Xiaopeng, for quite a long time, He Xiaopeng did not directly intervene in the daily operations of Xiaopeng Motors, and for several years he played the role of a seed round investor.

The story began in 2014, when He Xiaopeng personally led the investment in Orange Mobility, the parent company of Xpeng Motors. When the company was first established, it was originally planned to name the brand "Orange Auto", but things did not go as planned. Due to the thorny issues of trademarks, this beautiful idea had to be shelved. In the end, the brand was renamed "Xiaopeng Motors".

However, by 2017, the situation had changed dramatically. At that time, more than 300 car manufacturing companies emerged like mushrooms after rain. The era of new car manufacturing had begun to become clear, but it was also filled with enthusiasm and confusion. Striving for financing and launching the first product became the core points at that time.

At that time, Xiaopeng Motors was a small company with only 300 people. In 2017, it not only lacked leaders like Li Bin and Li Xiang, but also seemed more like a guerrilla army, without a marketing team, middle office, back office, and even only one HR in the entire company. If it wanted to break into the mainstream car manufacturing competition arena, Xiaopeng Motors urgently needed a "leader" to end the guerrilla warfare and become a regular army.

He Xiaopeng, who has successful entrepreneurial experience and a large number of connections and resources in the Internet circle, is of course the best choice. However, He Xiaopeng, who loves cars and invests in cars, was not ready to devote himself to this wave of entrepreneurship.

The turning point of fate often comes suddenly. In February 2017, He Xiaopeng's second son was born. Just one or two minutes after He Xiaopeng happily held his son, the phone rang suddenly at an inopportune time. He picked up the phone and heard the voice of Fu Jixun, managing partner of GGV Capital. Fu Jixun said to his old friend anxiously: "The track of automobiles has been opened. If you don't bravely break into it, you will regret it later."

He Xiaopeng once confessed to Zhang Peng, the founder of Geek Park and founding partner of Variable Capital, who participated in the angel round of investment in Xiaopeng Motors: "Many people have actually said this to him." But holding his newborn son, he suddenly had a strong chemical reaction to this sentence. "I was thinking, more than 10 years later, when this child asks me what I did in the past, I can't still tell him the story of my last startup." He Xiaopeng felt that he had to have a new journey that made him proud in front of his children. His determination to devote himself to Xiaopeng Motors was fulfilled at this moment.

Therefore, Fu Jixun, who called at that time by chance, later became the "bad guy" in He Xiaopeng's words who pushed him to embark on another difficult entrepreneurial journey. Fu Jixun became the "MVP" in the hearts of many friends like Zhang Peng who knew He Xiaopeng well and thought he was bound to join the game, because his phone call at that moment became the "accident" that ultimately triggered the inevitable.

He Xiaopeng’s Weibo post when he left Alibaba and joined the car manufacturing industry | Image source: He Xiaopeng’s Weibo

On August 22, 2017, He Xiaopeng posted a message on WeChat Moments, officially announcing his resignation from Alibaba: "Entrepreneurship is a cycle, with all its ups and downs, and when I return I am still a young man... A new cycle, the end is also the beginning. Subvert yourself and enjoy the journey." A week later, on August 29, He Xiaopeng joined Xpeng Motors as chairman, starting his long journey of second entrepreneurship.

He Xiaopeng's car-making story has its ups and downs, but it also confirms an inevitable rule - if entrepreneurship is like climbing a mountain, every time you need to reach the bottom before reaching the top.

01

From Super Product ManagerTo the New Autobots

When He Xiaopeng really entered the car manufacturing industry in 2017, he chose the classic idea of ​​"keeping to the right path and creating something surprising". In his eyes, the automobile industry is like a huge, mysterious and complex maze, and its complexity is far beyond the imagination of ordinary people. What he has to do is to give full play to his strengths in the areas where he has advantages, and do his best to catch up with others in those areas where he is at a disadvantage. In addition, he strives to explore his own path of differentiation.

However, in the early days of the new car manufacturing industry, more than 300 new car manufacturing forces poured in, but only a few were able to stand out in the end. One of the most critical reasons is the unique "odd" strategy. See who can make their own strengths more prominent and then find their own competitive advantages.

Xpeng's strategy is to benchmark Tesla and focus on intelligence. In contrast, NIO focuses on high-end product positioning and establishes brand differentiation by providing high-quality services; Ideal targets fuel vehicles, highlights the advantages of electric energy, and focuses on mileage anxiety.

The starting point of all this is that He Xiaopeng's dream of making cars was deeply influenced by Tesla. In 2014, Tesla made some of its patents public in order to promote the wave of electrification. At this time, He Xiaopeng was lucky enough to become one of the first Tesla owners in China. This series of opportunities was like a pusher of fate, making him almost unhesitatingly identify the future trend of intelligent cars.

Therefore, Xiaopeng positioned itself as an intelligent enterprise and devoted more energy to the field of intelligence without hesitation. If intelligent electric vehicles are compared to ten points, in 2017, intelligence only accounted for one point, electric vehicles accounted for three points, and automobiles accounted for six points. However, He Xiaopeng, with extraordinary courage, greatly increased the investment in intelligence of Xiaopeng models to three to four points, while the investment in electric vehicles and automobiles was adjusted to about three points accordingly.

At the same time, in order to do a good job in intelligence, Xiaopeng followed Tesla and chose a full-stack self-developed strategy. It is not only self-developed algorithms for visual perception, sensor fusion, positioning, planning, decision-making, control, etc. on the vehicle side, but also a series of tools and processes required for cloud data operations. He Xiaopeng feels that the industry is developing too fast and user needs are changing too fast. If a large number of core technologies are handed over to suppliers, they will not keep up with the pace of change. Therefore, Xiaopeng Motors has always insisted on self-developing the core technology stack so that technology iteration can keep up with user needs.

Even during the most difficult period in 2019, Xiaopeng Motors had to lay off employees to cope with market pressure, but they never touched the intelligent driving team.

2019 was the first "dark moment" that He Xiaopeng encountered since he started making cars. At that time, the money in the accounts of Xiaopeng and Weilai was only enough to last for 6 months. But the financing market deteriorated sharply. He Xiaopeng ran around seeking meetings, but encountered setbacks everywhere. Everyone knew that they were seeking financing, but no one believed that they could succeed. They only regarded this as a last desperate struggle.

On June 6, 2020, He Xiaopeng posted a Weibo: Three miserable people, recalling their hardships and thinking about change... | Image source: He Xiaopeng's Weibo

Li Bin said that NIO was already in the ICU and was about to die, and He Xiaopeng felt that he was just wandering at the door of the ICU, waiting for the doom that might be about to come.

Luck finally favored these entrepreneurs who fought to the last drop of blood. In the first half of 2020, Tesla's Shanghai factory officially went into production. Initially, many people interpreted this as "the wolf is coming", and they all felt that the new domestic forces could not bear this heavy pressure.

However, later facts showed that Tesla was more like a "catalyst", successfully changing the overall environment and market confidence of China's new energy vehicle industry.

With the localization of Model 3, Tesla's market value has skyrocketed from a few billion US dollars to 600 billion US dollars, making it the world's most valuable automaker. This not only saved Tesla itself, but also redefined the value of new forces such as Wei, Xiao, and Li Auto by the capital market, winning the impetus to continue moving forward.

Whether it was luck or persistence, the change in the capital environment and Tesla's "breakthrough" in the market have suddenly made this track brighter. And Xpeng's huge investment in technological innovation has also earned its products the labels of "technology" and "intelligence".

Xpeng's first product on the market - Xpeng G3 | Image source: Xpeng Motors Weibo

In fact, the G3, which was launched in December 2018, was the first generation of Xiaopeng's products. At that time, the most outstanding highlight of the G3 was its outstanding intelligent performance. When it was launched, it took "intelligent driving" as its killer feature, among which the automatic parking function was particularly outstanding. In addition, the voice assistant Xiao P on the Xiaopeng G3 basically realized the control of all vehicle functions, and the recognition rate was very high. This is a world of difference compared to the difficult experience of slow typing on the car computer in the past.

This also gave Xiaopeng an initial victory in the field of intelligence. In the whole year of 2019, the cumulative sales of Xiaopeng G3 reached an impressive 16,600 units. It is particularly worth mentioning that the proportion of mid-to-high-end models (equipped with automatic driving assistance) exceeded 90%.

As the clock points to 2020, Xiaopeng P7 will fully expand people's imagination of Xiaopeng's intelligence.

In fact, the Xpeng P7 is positioned as a coupe, which has always been a niche model in the Chinese market, but it finally became a hit of the year. In 2021, when the chip panic hit, Xpeng sold 98,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of more than 360%, far ahead of the new forces in car manufacturing; among them, the Xpeng P7 was fully fired and became the well-deserved main force, with annual sales reaching 60,000 units.

Xpeng P7 | Image source: Xpeng Motors Weibo

Among them, in addition to the low-lying shape of the P7, which not only reduces wind resistance and energy consumption, but also creates a strong sports atmosphere, deeply capturing the hearts of young consumers, the final user purchase decision is still made by intelligence. Xiaopeng P7 is the first in China to achieve high-speed navigation assisted driving. Automatic cruising, lane changing, overtaking and other operations are amazing, which relieves the fatigue of long-distance high-speed driving for drivers. Its intelligent voice Xiao P has a voice close to human voice, has 14 strong emotional transformation capabilities, and can accurately execute commands such as "Please open the window 83%".

But just when Xiaopeng was full of confidence and was invincible with his unique intelligence advantage, his "magic" that had been invincible seemed to be suddenly sealed by an invisible force.

The Xpeng P5, released in 2021, was once highly anticipated and was once the "vanguard" of Xpeng's intelligence. It was the first to be equipped with laser radar and completed the first generation of urban NGP. However, this car did not show Xpeng's advantages in intelligence, nor did it achieve the ultimate in cost-effectiveness.

At first, the P5 was able to occupy a place in the market in the early days of its launch, with sales of nearly 6,000 units in June 2022. However, the good times did not last long. After entering 2023, it seemed to have encountered an invisible storm, and its monthly sales fell sharply, hovering around 1,000 to 2,000 units.

Now, the reason behind this is that with the rapid increase in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles, the mainstream market has gradually opened up. According to data released by the China Automobile Association, at the end of 2020, the penetration rate of new energy was only 5.4%, and it rose to 14.8% at the end of 2021. Now it has reached about 50%. This also means that consumers of new energy vehicles have expanded from the early geek group to early users and mass users.

However, Xiaopeng Motors' once proud strength, intelligence, is declining in potential users' purchasing decisions. It is understood that among the user decision-making factors counted by Xiaopeng internally, intelligence ranks in the top three. But looking at the entire market, intelligence may only be able to enter the top ten.

In fact, when He Xiaopeng crossed over from the mobile Internet field to the automotive industry, he was indeed in awe and had been devoted to studying the differences between the two. Zhang Peng, the founder of Geek Park, recalled that in the early discussions with He Xiaopeng, he clearly realized that unlike the Internet, which follows the long-board model and long-tail theory, car manufacturing relies on the short-board theory and resource model. Car manufacturing is like being built with 500 boards. Any short board may affect safety, quality, sales, brand and many other aspects. Only long boards cannot achieve excellent results. Short boards determine the overall systemic advantages.

However, starting a business is not like writing a paper. It requires you to flexibly adjust the main direction and resource investment in a dynamic trend according to external changes and the evolution of your own development stage.

If we turn the clock back to 10 years ago, startups like Xiaopeng faced extremely fierce competition and limited resources, and building their strengths to be long enough might have been a truly effective logic.

In contrast, the idea of ​​WM Motor, one of the competitors that was once the focus of the industry, was actually more in line with the idea of ​​adding electrification and intelligent modules to traditional cars. It was generally stable, but it did not have obvious strengths. At the same time, after WM Motor received a large amount of financing, it invested in factory construction plans instead of technology or products. In the end, WM Motor gradually fell behind in the fierce competition and did not get the opportunity to take off in the subsequent capital and market dividends.

But by the end of 2020, with the changing times, the long board of intelligence has gradually declined in the user's decision-making factors. He Xiaopeng must make changes and begin to truly return to the basic logic of the industry - not allowing his products to have obvious weaknesses in the spectrum of user purchase decisions.

Thus, adjustments quietly began. In addition to continuing to strengthen its advantages in intelligence, Xiaopeng Motors also began to vigorously strengthen the basic skills of car manufacturing - fast charging, platform, architecture, etc., to make up for its shortcomings.

The 2022 Xiaopeng G9 will lead Xiaopeng to the second-generation platform, and has since started a new journey of platformization, scale and replicability. Many previous shortcomings have been quickly made up under its impetus. In addition to the smart driving and smart cockpit that Xiaopeng has always been proud of, fast charging technology has become the most dazzling highlight of the G9. Its full-range 800V silicon carbide platform, which is standard across the board, can increase the power from 10% to 80% in just 20 minutes, and then kicked off the domestic fast charging competition.

Xpeng G6 | Image source: Xpeng Motors official website

The wheel of time quickly turns to 2023, and Xiaopeng G6 is coming. Its appearance makes Xiaopeng the first new force to realize "architectural" car manufacturing. The Fuyao architecture encompasses Xiaopeng's latest technologies in power replenishment, intelligent system and vehicle manufacturing, and can be called the epitome of Xiaopeng's "black technology". Based on it, Xiaopeng's new cars will have simpler SKUs, richer intelligent configurations, faster R&D speed and lower prices.

In addition, another ability that He Xiaopeng particularly wanted to improve was cost control. Before working with Volkswagen, there was a special moment. When Volkswagen CEO and He Xiaopeng were having dinner together, they conducted an in-depth analysis of Xiaopeng's G9. Volkswagen CEO bluntly stated that after they disassembled Xiaopeng's G9, they came to the conclusion that the car was excellent, but the price was high.

Later, when Volkswagen CEO explained, "This component is 25% more expensive, and that part is more than 10% more expensive," that moment was undoubtedly a critical turning point for He Xiaopeng. He must face this challenge and find a breakthrough in cost control. For example, Xiaopeng's goal is to reduce the BOM cost (Bill of Material) of autonomous driving by more than 50% by 2024, and reduce the power and hardware system cost of the whole vehicle by 25%.

The true process of Xpeng Motors' transformation from "being surprising and keeping to the right path" to "keeping to the right path and being surprising" can be seen as the common evolutionary path of this group of new car-making forces. The principle is the same, but in different environments and development stages, the focus changes and resources are adjusted. This is a classic example of the necessary path for the rise of a group of new forces.

Today, He Xiaopeng, who "kicked the door" with the methodology of a super product manager, has become more and more like a real "new car maker". The "new" comes from the past technological innovation gene, and the "car maker" comes from 10 years of industry practice. The idea of ​​"keeping to the right path and being surprising" finally returns to the essence of car manufacturing: only when the shortcomings are made up one by one, the value of the long board can be truly and fully demonstrated.

02

Organization is the enterprise

The only certainty is “compound interest”

Many people don’t know that Xpeng Motors, which has been in operation for 10 years, actually went through a difficult process of “re-starting” in its 8th year.

The story begins in 2022. After Xiaopeng finally passed the market verification period of its first-generation products such as G3 and P7, an unexpected crisis began to hit.

Xpeng G9 | Image source: Xpeng Motors official website

The 2022 G9 is a strategic model for Xiaopeng Motors to enter the 300,000 yuan high-end market. It is equipped with a new intelligent vehicle platform. In the past, most of Xiaopeng's models hovered in the market range of 150,000 to 250,000 yuan. Therefore, everyone in Xiaopeng has always had strong confidence and eager expectations for it.

When the Xiaopeng G9, which had gone through many rounds of preheating, was finally officially launched, the outside feedback was very negative, because the versions of the G9 were numerous and confusing, and the eight configurations combined with the price lacked sufficient competitiveness.

After the press conference, He Xiaopeng received many inquiries from friends, and he immediately realized the danger of the situation. In just a few hours, the number of orders and returns in the background also confirmed his inner anxiety. He Xiaopeng has always been a "smart guy". In the past years of entrepreneurship, no matter what situation he encountered, he could sleep peacefully. However, on the night of the G9 press conference, He Xiaopeng, who had experienced countless storms, was rarely troubled by insomnia.

He lost sleep not because of the negative feedback from outside the G9, but because the core team inside did not realize the seriousness of the problem and did not reflect on the problem. For example, facing the overwhelming criticism online, many people in the core team of Xiaopeng thought that it was probably the Internet trolls making trouble, and even felt aggrieved. No one felt that they had done anything wrong, and even felt that the G9 comprehensively improved the upper limit of Xiaopeng's technical strength, and was much stronger than the once popular model P7.

Although He Xiaopeng acted decisively, only 48 hours later, Xiaopeng launched a new configuration table with major changes, making two key functions related to "intelligence" standard for all models. Moreover, without changing the price, it gave users a profit. Such a move may be unprecedented in the history of automobiles at home and abroad, and Xiaopeng paid a huge price for it.

He Xiaopeng finally realized that all problems were ultimately organizational problems. Although Xiaopeng was already a listed company with huge annual deliveries and revenue, a closer look at its internal organization revealed serious problems.

For example, the G9 crisis essentially reflects the disconnection between R&D, product, marketing and other systems. Different departments lack coordination and consensus on a common goal. Ultimately, whether pursuing technological breakthroughs, cost control or profit margins in their own fields, each department works on its own and lacks coordination. As a result, the launch of such an important product ultimately failed to truly establish competitiveness in the market and meet user needs.

If we review the root cause of this situation now, it is most likely that it comes from the fact that He Xiaopeng, as the earliest investor and later as the helmsman of strategic direction and products, can indeed be said to have founded Xiaopeng's brand and products, but he has clearly not paid enough attention to the Xiaopeng Motors organization itself.

He Xiaopeng devoted himself to Xpeng Motors in 2017. Although he transformed the original organizational formation from a guerrilla force into a regular army, his main role was in strategy and product, controlling the general direction of progress and setting goals, while the energy he devoted to the details of organizational management was quite limited.

In fact, after He Xiaopeng officially entered the car manufacturing industry in 2017, he still hoped to find a CEO to help Xiaopeng establish an advanced organizational and management system, but he never found a suitable candidate. The survival crisis that began in 2019 and the rapid development after 2021 made this matter a question of "important or not urgent".

It can be said that in the early stages of the development of Xiaopeng's organization, everyone was in a hurry to get ahead, and lacked a process of unifying the worldview of integrating the ideas of the Internet and automobile industries. The people, ideas and cultures of these two worlds have never been truly integrated, but have been squeezed together by external forces amid the ups and downs of life and death pressures or opportunities of the times.

In 2022, He Xiaopeng once reflected to his friends: Although Xiaopeng has achieved brilliant results in the past, in terms of organization, management and core team, we are "unworthy of the position".

This may be the case. After surviving the life-and-death crisis in 2019, Xpeng Motors' valuation reached US$42.292 billion in November 2020, making it the seventh largest automaker in the U.S. stock market. At the same time, Xpeng had only more than 1,000 employees in 2018, but by 2020, it had rapidly expanded to more than 5,000 employees, and in 2021 it reached about 15,000 employees.

Driven by this surging wave, Xiaopeng Motors had too smooth a time at that time. It seemed to lack some reasonable hard work and success, which became a poison within the team. After 2019, it quickly rose in extremely smooth circumstances and became an outstanding company in the eyes of everyone. This also made many old Xiaopeng employees fall into the maze of self-indulgence, believing that it was the result of their own immense strength. At this time, they had missed the best period for organizational construction.

By 2022, He Xiaopeng had realized that the organizational problem had become an urgent issue that needed to be resolved, otherwise the G9 crisis would happen again and again.

If the choice to join the new car manufacturing industry in 2017 was a seemingly accidental necessity that suited He Xiaopeng's personality, then the choice He Xiaopeng faced in 2022 was a "crossroads" that seriously challenged his personality and comfort zone.

To change Xiaopeng's current situation is by no means as easy as replacing a few people on the surface. What is needed is that He Xiaopeng devotes his energy to the dimensions of organization and management, rethinks the organizational structure, lays off people, recruits people, establishes systems, and builds culture. This not only requires He Xiaopeng, who is recognized by the technology circle as simple and pure and a righteous person, to directly face the complexity of human nature, but also requires him to "re-start" Xiaopeng Motors.

In fact, when He Xiaopeng started his business of UC Browser, he had already made it clear that his strengths and interests lay in products and technologies. He was very resolute in entrusting the heavy responsibility of management and organization, as well as the role of CEO, to his partner Yu Yongfu who joined later.

His cooperation with Yu Yongfu was a model in the industry at that time. He Xiaopeng was happy during that experience because he was more willing to display his talents in product and technology. He used to feel that he was neither good at nor interested in such matters as organization and management. But in the entrepreneurial journey of Xiaopeng Motors, he no longer had a partner like Yu Yongfu by his side, and now he had to become Yu Yongfu himself.

He Xiaopeng once revealed to several friends that he fell into despair after seeing this problem clearly. Facts have proved that even for a successful entrepreneur, it is difficult to go straight from the top of a mountain to the next peak in his second venture. Even if you want to start from the middle of the mountain, you can't really achieve it. You now need to go back to the foot of the mountain and start climbing again from the beginning.

He was hesitating and struggling in his heart, as if he was in a whirlpool. "Do I need to fight with myself like this at this age?" This made He Xiaopeng fall into serious psychological friction and entanglement.

Helping He Xiaopeng get out of this psychological dilemma were two old friends who were both teachers and friends, Lei Jun and Yu Yongfu. He Xiaopeng had many in-depth conversations with them. Although what they talked about is currently unknown, the final result was that He Xiaopeng let go of his psychological friction. If He Xiaopeng writes his autobiography in the future, October 2022 will definitely be a key node. Because after a period of time, He Xiaopeng finally decided to launch a thorough reform and began to "re-create" the Xiaopeng Motors organization.

He Xiaopeng at the Xpeng G9 launch event in Dunhuang in 2023 | Image source: Xpeng Motors

What the outside world can see intuitively is that since the internal organizational changes of Xiaopeng Motors at the end of 2022, many early founding team members and senior personnel have left. At the same time, He Xiaopeng spent a lot of time digging out new backbone forces in the team, and also introduced a group of new core teams to reconstruct the backbone system of the entire organization. He also said at the launch of the 2023 new G9 that only 2 of the 12 core executives in the original financial report remained.

In fact, the biggest change after many adjustments is that Xiaopeng Motors began to organize its organizational structure into BUs (business units) to improve the impact of the previous overly centralized organizational structure on operational efficiency.

Among them, the most important organizational structure adjustment was in October 2022. At that time, Xiaopeng established five virtual committee organizations and three product matrix organizations. This was done to integrate the entire process of a car from product development to service operation so that information can be pulled through.

After Wang Fengying joined, power within Xiaopeng began to flow and concentrate, gradually converging on He Xiaopeng and Wang Fengying. Among them, He Xiaopeng was mainly responsible for manufacturing, supply chain and technology research and development, while Wang Fengying took on the responsibilities of market, marketing and product positioning, and reported to He Xiaopeng. In this way, a clear division of labor was formed between the two.

The current core management team of Xpeng Motors | Image source: Xpeng official website

When He Xiaopeng really started to fight against his comfort zone and began to spend time seriously looking at organizations and management, he found that it was a very meaningful thing to study and analyze the organization like a product, and then define and solve problems.

He Xiaopeng once talked about a problem he found in an organization after paying in-depth attention to organization and management. Before that, Xiaopeng Motors invited an external executive to serve as the VP of a department. He Xiaopeng set him three goals that needed to be balanced. However, with two months left at the end of the year, none of the three goals were achieved. As a result, the executive recruited 150 people in a rush, claiming that a goal must be achieved. But the problem is that these three KPIs are interrelated and need to be balanced. It is meaningless to simply complete one of them mechanically. This incident made He Xiaopeng very angry, and also made him see more specifically where the root causes of many previous problems were.

At the end of 2023, several of He Xiaopeng's entrepreneur friends talked about organizational and management issues at a party. They all felt that He Xiaopeng had become more confident and had sharper insights in management, and even exuded a "murderous aura", which was very different from their previous impression of He Xiaopeng.

Xpeng Motors’ current product matrix | Image source: Xpeng Motors official website

As Xiaopeng Motors actively promotes a series of organizational adjustments, the results are gradually emerging. The new energy vehicle market in 2023 is highly competitive, and price wars are surging. The Xiaopeng G6, which was launched in June of that year, became a "small hit" in the market with its product strength, precise marketing and greatly reduced SKUs. The car was in short supply at one time, and He Xiaopeng even personally helped with production and went to the factory to tighten screws. Less than half a year after the car was launched, sales of this car reached 44,500 units.

These are also reflected in the financial performance. In the first quarter of 2024, Xpeng Motors' gross profit margin for automobiles was 5.5%. In the same period of 2023, the gross profit margin was -2.5%, and compared with 4.1% in the fourth quarter of 2023, there was also a certain increase. This is mainly due to cost reduction and the optimization and improvement of the vehicle model product portfolio.

At the end of 2023, Zhang Peng, the founder of GeekPark, once asked He Xiaopeng at a party again, "What is your biggest cognitive progress this year?" He Xiaopeng thought for a while and replied: "Organization is the only certain compound interest for car companies."

Perhaps the value of Xpeng Motors over the past decade cannot be measured simply by the number of deliveries or the company's valuation. For an industry like the automobile, ten years is more like a prologue.

Its greatest value may be to allow He Xiaopeng and Xiaopeng Motors to return from the "inexplicable peak" to the valley of despair, and then walk onto the slope of enlightenment, so that they can finally continue to climb on their own path with more vitality towards the next era.

If He Xiaopeng told this entrepreneurial story to the children today who inspired him to start a second business seven years ago, it might not be as perfect a fairy tale as imagined, but it would undoubtedly be a more real and wonderful legend.

*Head image source: He Xiaopeng's Weibo

This article is an original article from Geek Park. For reprinting, please contact Geek Jun on WeChat: geekparkGO

Geek Question

At different stages of business development,how

Effectively balance the advantages of longboardsWhat is the relationship with filling in the gaps?

JK Rowling and Musk sued: involved in gender controversy over Olympic gold medal boxer.

Like and followGeek Park Video Account，