2024-08-28
한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina
A while ago, He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xpeng Motors, revealed a piece of news in a live broadcast - the starting price of the Xpeng MONA M03 will not exceed 135,900 yuan. This news quickly increased the attention of the model. At an internal meeting, He Xiaopeng affirmed the booking performance of the M03, saying that the order volume "far exceeded that of the G6 during the same period."
Tonight, Xiaopeng officially announced the price of MONA
On the tenth anniversary of Xpeng Motors, He Xiaopeng launched his trump card.
MONA, the beginning of Xpeng's next decade
A very nice car for a young person.
At the Xiaopeng MONA M03 debut conference held earlier, Xiaopeng M03 was not the only protagonist. JuanMa Lopez, a designer with a high reputation in the field of automotive design, also made his first public appearance after joining Xiaopeng Motors.
Who would have thought that this legendary designer who once worked for Ferrari and Lamborghini would now come to Xiaopeng.
"We hope that every functional area and every detail of the car will be precisely and quantitatively calculated to meet consumers' specific usage needs in addition to its high appearance," Juanma elaborated on the aesthetic elements of car design and the aesthetic genes of Xiaopeng MONA M03 at the event. "Xiaopeng MONA M03 is the combination of aesthetics and functionality."
Unlike the supercars designed by Juanma that cost millions or tens of millions of yuan, the Xiaopeng MONA, which is priced below 200,000 yuan, pursues "beauty" while also ensuring the user's daily practicality. For example, the costly wind tunnel test of the Xiaopeng M03 was carried out 10 times for a total of more than 100 hours, in exchange for the world's lowest drag coefficient of 0.194.
Low wind resistance is the guarantee of low energy consumption, but in addition to this, Xiaopeng MONA M03 has conducted more than 1,000 program analyses, reducing energy consumption per 100 kilometers by 15%, with the final result being 11.5kWh/100km. The CLTC range can reach a maximum of 620km and a minimum of 515km.
On the other hand, the elegant fastback shape also gives the MONA M03 a trunk volume of 621 liters, which is almost the same as the Tesla Model Y. The foldable rear seats further enhance its loading capacity.
In terms of intelligence, MONA M03 is equipped with a 15.6-inch central control screen and an optional instrument panel (599 yuan). It uses a combination of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8155 chip and 16GB of memory, supports 360° panoramic images and 3D perception rendering maps, whether it is road information, surrounding buildings, or even roadside plants, there are corresponding exquisite models.
At the same time, M03 starts with the three core functions most frequently used by users. The intelligent voice is equipped with 4 sound zones as standard. The front and rear seats can independently control the voice interaction, support 20S continuous dialogue, and execute multiple commands at the same time. In terms of audio, it uses 18 PSS advanced customized speakers to form a 7.1.4 panoramic sound field and support a variety of sound effect adjustments.
In terms of intelligent driving, which is Xiaopeng's forte, the M03 comes standard with 20+ intelligent sensing hardware, including 2 millimeter-wave radars + 12 ultrasonic radars + 7 cameras, and has the strongest perception capabilities in its class.
In terms of functionality, the two versions priced at 119,800 yuan and 129,800 yuan support assisted driving on highways and expressways, and the Max version priced at 155,800 yuan is the only model under 200,000 yuan that supports intelligent driving in urban areas.
If you want to know more about the driving experience of MONA M03, click on the video below.
Turing chip debuts, accelerating autonomous driving
As competition for end-to-end large-scale autonomous driving models intensifies, automakers are also accelerating their self-developed chip research and development.
According to 36Kr, Xpeng Motors' self-developed smart driving chip has been successfully taped out. An insider revealed that Xpeng's smart driving chip is specially designed for AI needs and end-to-end large models. It is a central computing architecture chip that supports cabin-driver integration, and "its AI computing power is close to the level of three mainstream smart driving chips."
Tonight, He Xiaopeng brought this chip onto the stage. Its name is "Turing chip".
He Xiaopeng said that the Turing chip is the world's first chip customized for large AI models. It has a 40-core processor and 2 independent image ISPs, one for driving perception and the other for user-perceivable images. It can display clear images at night, in the rain, and against the light.
At the same time, it also has 2 NPUs for processing neural network data, and can run large model parameters of up to 30B. In May this year, Xiaopeng launched an end-to-end intelligent driving model that can be mass-produced on AI Day. It consists of three parts: neural network XNet, regulation and control model XPlanner, and large language model XBrain. The emergence of Turing chips has laid the foundation for the technology of this intelligent driving model.
This is not only a chip for L4 autonomous driving, but will also appear in Xiaopeng's robots and flying cars in the future. He Xiaopeng said that Xiaopeng Motors' large model not only takes into account the vehicle regulation system, but also includes fields such as robots, so the versatility of Turing chips must be taken into account.
On the other hand, this also brings challenges to cost control. He Xiaopeng is quite confident about this, saying that the Turing chip is "very efficient and has excellent cost control." He believes that this will be of great help to He Xiaopeng's next-generation autonomous driving. According to Xiaopeng's current plan, the Turing chip will debut on the Xiaopeng P7+ to be released in the second half of the year.
With the help of the end-to-end big model, Xiaopeng has also accelerated the implementation of autonomous driving.
At present, Xiaopeng Motors has achieved L2-level assisted driving with light maps on mass-produced models. By the fourth quarter of this year, Xiaopeng will achieve light radar, light maps, and support door-to-door intelligent driving experience. In addition, He Xiaopeng also said that Xiaopeng will achieve L3-like intelligent assisted driving in the second half of 2025, with an average takeover frequency of less than 1 per 100 kilometers; 99% of extreme problems will be solved in 2026, and even in some low-speed scenarios, the driver does not need to stay in the driving seat.
The realization of these goals depends on the new generation of Xiaopeng AI Eagle Eye vision solution launched by Xiaopeng tonight. With the help of AI, the perception distance of this system has been increased by 125%, the recognition speed has been increased by 40%, the effective visual perception information has been increased by 8 times, and the time and space understanding ability has also been enhanced, which means that the intelligent driving system's ability to predict traffic participants has been enhanced.
Xiaopeng AI Eagle Eye Vision Solution is the industry's first single-pixel LOFIC architecture. The full name of the LOFIC architecture is Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor, which is the lateral overflow integral capacitor technology. This technology is now mostly used in the main camera sensors of smartphones to achieve a high dynamic range comparable to full-frame cameras such as Sony Alpha 7S III. Simply put, it allows the camera to see more accurately, clearly, and farther.
Similarly, this system will first be installed on the Xiaopeng P7+ and will officially meet us in the fourth quarter.
Ten years of passion for Xiaopeng
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the birth of Xiaopeng Motors. He Xiaopeng used three words to sum up his ten-year career in car manufacturing: courage, persistence, and originality.
The first is courage. Everyone should have the courage to challenge themselves and have the courage to take that step. It is very important for life and career.
In 2017, the situation of new car manufacturing in China has undergone earth-shaking changes. More than 300 new car manufacturing companies have sprung up. Of course, Xiaopeng Motors is one of them. There are more than 100 traditional car manufacturing companies, including commercial vehicles.
This is the best of times, but also the worst of times. In the past seven years alone, there are only 40 foreign-funded, joint venture, and independent brands with large-scale sales in the Chinese market. As you can imagine, for He Xiaopeng, the past decade of car manufacturing has been a brutal decade.
Ten years ago, UC Youshi, founded by He Xiaopeng, was acquired by Alibaba for a staggering $4.35 billion, and He Xiaopeng thus achieved his goal of achieving financial freedom before the age of 40. Subsequently, He Xiaopeng changed from an entrepreneur to a professional manager. He was successively entrusted with important tasks, including President of the Mobile Business Group of Alibaba Entertainment Group, Chairman of Alibaba Games, and President of Tudou.
At that time, He Xiaopeng could have continued to be a senior executive at Alibaba, or even strived for a partner position and retired, but he ultimately chose to work in an office in Huangpu, Guangzhou, without even air conditioning, with four big characters written on the door: Orange Mobility. This was the predecessor of Xiaopeng Motors.
In 2017, the first batch of Xpeng PT cars rolled off the assembly line. The car had a very Internet-like name at the time: 1.0 Geek Edition. Xpeng spent 428 million yuan and produced a total of 753 cars.
However, an employee of Xiaopeng revealed that He Xiaopeng was extremely dissatisfied with the car at the time and decided not to bring it to the market and only deliver it to internal employees. Today, you still have the opportunity to see this 1/753 on the streets of Guangzhou.
▲Xiaopeng 1.0 Geek Edition
At the delivery ceremony of the 1.0 Geek Edition, He Xiaopeng said: "Next year, Xiaopeng Motors will launch an upgraded version of the 2.0 car with completely different appearance, safety, interior, autonomous driving, and Internet capabilities. This is the iteration of the Internet." Soon, just one month later, the Xiaopeng G3 equipped with Xmart OS was on the CES booth.
▲In 2017, Dong Chehui photographed the Xiaopeng G3 at CES
Even in the face of a possible comfortable life, even though he was nicknamed one of the "three idiots in new car manufacturing", He Xiaopeng still launched his first car. This is his courage.
The second thing is persistence. We all know that there is a logic called 20,000 hours: when you really do something for 20,000 hours, even if you didn’t understand it before, you can definitely become an expert.
Like many bosses of new car companies, He Xiaopeng encountered a lot of doubts in the early days of his business: It sounds like a fantasy for an Internet person to start a car company. Does he understand cars?
In fact, He Xiaopeng had a good understanding of the "car" part in the early days of his business. I still remember that he brought out the wooden barrel theory in an interview: "(I) used to be in the technology industry, and I had to focus on the long board theory, but the wooden barrel in the automotive field must not have any short boards." He believes that no matter how the automotive industry develops, the nature of cars is unlikely to change in a short period of time. The reason is that cars are not only a large-value consumer product, but also strongly related to the life safety of consumers. When talking about innovation in the automotive field, we must first do a good job in the "car" part.
But as an automobile company, Xiaopeng needs to scale and commercialize its differentiated inventions and ideas. In this regard, He Xiaopeng once had some misconceptions.
"When I first entered the automotive industry, I was tricked by a sentence. At that time, many people asked, "If Xiaopeng were to build cars, when would you produce 100,000 cars?" I naturally thought that an automobile company would be able to achieve a certain scale effect if it produced 100,000 cars a year. In the end, I found that 100,000 was just one of the hurdles, and there were many more to come."
2019 was the worst year for NIO, Xiaopeng, and Li Auto. They had no money, no reputation, and no sales. Fortunately, Xiaopeng Motors, which managed to survive until the end of the year, received a $400 million financing, and Xiaomi Group also became a shareholder of Xiaopeng Motors at that time. The market applauded: "Xiaopeng Motors is finally going to succeed."
But what people didn’t know at the time was that more than 200 million of the $400 million was invested by He Xiaopeng himself, even though this amount was only enough to sustain Xiaopeng Motors for 6 months. The good news is that the P7 released the following year gave Xiaopeng another label: the sales champion of new forces. In August of the same year, Xiaopeng Motors successfully landed on the New York Stock Exchange, setting a record for the largest IPO in the history of new energy vehicles in the world at that time.
He Xiaopeng insisted on establishing a deeper bond with Xpeng Motors in the face of adversity. "We have been swimming in a sea of blood until the water turns blue."
The third is the original intention. In the past, I believe that including me and our company, we have adhered to our original intention, such as taking technological innovation as the core and going global. In the end, you will be able to make yourself happy and do something different.
Last Thursday, He Xiaopeng was interviewed by Bloomberg.
He revealed in the interview that building a factory in Europe is part of the future localized production plan. The company expects to establish production capacity in regions with "relatively low labor risks." At the same time, Xiaopeng Motors also plans to build a large data center in Europe. "Xiaopeng Motors' overall plan for global expansion will not be affected by increased tariffs," He Xiaopeng added.
Four years ago, a ro-ro ship named "Silver Thunder" slowly left the Xinsha Port Area of Guangzhou Port, carrying 100 Xiaopeng G3i vehicles and heading for the final destination of this voyage - Norway.
This is the first time that China's new car-making forces have entered Europe.
After exporting the G3i, Xiaopeng also sold its main models such as P7 and G9 to Europe. However, looking back now, these long-distance cargo ships did not cause much trouble. By 2023, Xiaopeng Motors' cumulative exports for the whole year were only 3,261 vehicles, accounting for only 2.3% of the company's annual sales. Xiaopeng Motors is determined to turn the situation around. He Xiaopeng revealed in the earnings call at the beginning of the year that this year Xiaopeng will accelerate the expansion of its overseas business and launch the Xiaopeng Overseas 2.0 strategy.
By focusing on Europe and potential Middle East and Africa, including Western Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the Commonwealth, we will work with more high-quality dealers to efficiently enter more global key markets. Germany, the birthplace of automobiles, is the first stop this year. Gu Hongdi, president of Xpeng Motors, said earlier that in terms of market size and the standards set by automakers, success in Germany will determine Xpeng's success in continental Europe.
"In the next ten years, half of Xiaopeng's sales will come from overseas," He Xiaopeng said confidently at tonight's press conference.
▲Xpeng Motors German official website
Xpeng was able to enter the German market so quickly not only because of the "right time" under the wave of electrification, but also relied on the "harmony of people".
After the U.S. stock market opened on July 26, 2023, Xpeng Motors' stock price rose sharply, with an increase of more than 42% at one point, reaching $21.83, which is the highest stock price of Xpeng Motors in nearly a year. Behind the soaring stock price is the "big hand in small hand" of Xpeng and Volkswagen. The two parties reached a technical framework agreement to jointly develop two Volkswagen brand electric models.
In China, Volkswagen also brought huge profits to Xiaopeng.
In the second quarter of this year, Xpeng Motors sold more than 30,000 vehicles. Although sales were average, its gross profit margin has recovered to 14%, a significant increase year-on-year. Volkswagen is the key to Xpeng's recovery of its gross profit margin. After Volkswagen and Xpeng jointly purchased, Xpeng's single vehicle cost dropped directly from 240,000 yuan in the first quarter to 211,000 yuan in the second quarter.
Volkswagen also contributed a significant amount to Xpeng's nearly 1.3 billion yuan in service revenue. If the revenue increases by about 500 million yuan per quarter, Xpeng's gross profit margin can be effectively increased.
Back to the sales of cars, the newly launched Xiaopeng MONA tonight has become the key to Xiaopeng's sales leap. As of press time, the number of orders for MONA M03 has exceeded 10,000 units.
References:
"Xpeng's self-developed chip is taped out, with computing power three times that of its peers, and is custom designed for AI", 36Kr Auto
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6m1khG3qM1xyFVUn9G2pbw
"Seven Peng Friends 8,000 Words, Talking About Xiaopeng Motors' Ten Years of Memories", Electric Planet
"Xpeng Motors' Ten Years: An "Account" and Two Transformations", Zeekr Park
China’s Xpeng Aims to Manufacture EVs in Europe to Blunt Tariffs, Bloomberg
Collect and organize the latest news information and make it available for free for everyone to read
