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author | li guozheng

editor | ge bangning

as the one-hour interview was coming to an end, he xiaopeng, founder of xpeng motors, suddenly interrupted with a message: "just now, xiaopeng handed me a note and asked me to report to everyone that mona mo3 is gaining momentum very quickly. by the end of the interview, the sales volume will exceed 10,000 units."

applause and cheers rang out at the scene. as he said, within 52 minutes after the launch of mona m03, the number of "big deposits" (i.e. consumers have paid deposits) exceeded 10,000. later, the updated data showed that within 48 hours after the launch of mona m03, the number of "big deposits" reached 30,000, breaking the record of 25,000 units of xpeng g6 within 96 hours of launch.

at around 10 p.m. on august 27, 2024, in a conference room at beijing diamond stadium, the 47-year-old little man was still immersed in great excitement.

he just gave a 2-hour speech here with the theme of "xpeng's ten years of passion night". more than 1,200 invitees flocked from all directions to listen to him talk in his usual fast-paced tone about the ups and downs of the past ten years of car manufacturing, as well as the path choices and future prospects of xiaopeng motors in the new decade.

passion and emotion were the themes of the first half of the speech, but the real protagonist was mona mo3.

a fortress is most easily breached from within. three years ago, he xiaopeng publicly stated that no automaker had yet been able to make a smart electric car that was both cheap and capable of advanced smart driving. it was not that it was impossible to make it, but that it was not cheap and the company had no profit.

but three years later, he did it. mona mo3 is xiaopeng motors' first new car for the next decade. it took xiaopeng motors four years and a total investment of 4 billion yuan to build. the english name of mona comes from made of new ai, and mo3 is a tribute to tesla model 3.

mona mo3 focuses on cost-effectiveness. its three new models - 515 long-range version, 620 ultra-long-range version and 580 ultra-long-range max version, are priced at 119,800, 129,800 and 155,800 yuan respectively.

the key point is that xpeng motors not only makes the configuration of mona m03 the leading one in its class, but also makes the intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit available in the 150,000 yuan price range. in particular, the mona m03 max version equipped with the full-scenario intelligent assisted driving system xngp is described as "the only high-end intelligent driving model in the current market within 200,000 yuan."

xiaopeng motors was not without its internal struggles. he xiaopeng revealed in a group interview after his speech that the price of this combination was "finally determined after internal discussions at a meeting every day until the morning of the 27th." as for the large price difference between the first two versions and the max version, the reason is the high cost of intelligence - high hardware costs and even higher r&d costs.

xpeng motors has made delivery preparations in terms of supply chain, production capacity, channels, etc. among them, the 515 long-range version and 620 ultra-long-range version will be delivered in september, and the max version will be delivered after the spring festival in 2025.

carrying out intelligent driving to the end has been the consistent technical path of xiaopeng motors in the past ten years. he xiaopeng said that the ten years of xiaopeng motors are the ten years of china's intelligent driving. even when the company was in the most difficult time, xiaopeng motors maintained the stability of the intelligent driving team and did not easily lay off anyone.

what xiaopeng motors still talks about is that over the past decade, they have launched several smart technologies that have changed the direction of the industry:

the first to achieve full-scenario smart parking through visual perception and ultrasonic fusion, the first to create the "available, speakable" full-scenario voice function, the first "last mile" parking function that can be mass-produced and does not rely on parking lot reconstruction, the first mass-produced smart car equipped with lidar, the first mass-produced urban ngp smart navigation assisted driving function, the first mass-produced bev+transformer architecture in china, and the first to fully release map-free urban navigation assisted driving capabilities...

but after the celebration, the reality is very cruel. the fact is that xiaopeng motors has had mixed days, especially at the moment, when it desperately needs a hit product to boost team morale and investor confidence.

on the evening of august 20, xpeng motors released its financial report for the first half of 2024, with revenue increasing by 61.2% year-on-year to 14.66 billion yuan. the gross profit margin reached 13.5%, a significant increase from -1.4% in the same period last year. although the loss was narrowed compared with the same period in 2023, it still had a net loss of 2.65 billion yuan. the vehicle delivery volume was 52,000 units, an increase of 35.6% over the same period last year, but it is still far from the annual sales target of 280,000 units.

as representatives of the other two new car-making forces that entered the market shortly after xpeng motors, ideal auto delivered 189,000 vehicles in the first half of the year and nio delivered 87,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 60.2% and 35.87% respectively, completing 38% and 33.75% of the annual sales target respectively.

among these three new car-making forces, ideal auto has performed most steadily in the past two years, achieving a net profit of 11.7 billion yuan in 2023.

huawei and xiaomi are also eyeing the "nio, xiaopeng and li-li" trio. they are catching up or even surpassing them. in the first half of 2024, the sales of wenjie reached 181,000 vehicles; xiaomi's car sales in the first three months after its launch were nearly 26,000 vehicles, and the annual target has been raised from 100,000 to 120,000 vehicles. moreover, the models of huawei and xiaomi, as well as the moats they have built, are so impressive that even the "nio, xiaopeng and li-li" that once brought a wave of new trends to the automotive industry can only sigh in admiration.

where to go? at the juncture when the new automobile industry has been around for ten years, wei, xiaopeng and li auto have chosen different paths.

nio, which is good at manipulating the minds of users, suddenly changed its direction, and its founder li bin began to talk about "technology nio" on different occasions. on july 27, at the 2024 nio innovation technology day, li bin announced that the world's first 5-nanometer smart driving chip shenji nx9031 was successfully taped out, and the full release of skyos tianshu, a vehicle-wide operating system that took four years to develop, was released.

li bin said that nio has achieved full self-developed core technologies for smart electric vehicles, including chips and on-board smart hardware, battery systems, electric drive and high-voltage systems, vehicle engineering, vehicle-wide operating system, panoramic connectivity, smart driving, smart cockpit, smart energy, smart manufacturing, artificial intelligence, global digital operations and other 12 key technology areas.

launching a second brand with a better cost-effectiveness is also one of the transformation paths. just two months ago, nio took the lead in launching its second brand, ledao. ledao's first product, the l60, is positioned as an intelligent pure electric family suv, adopts a 900v high-voltage architecture, and the entry-level single-motor model is pre-sold at 219,900 yuan, which is far ahead of other nio models.

during this period, ideal auto's pure electric mpv product mega suffered a waterloo. li xiang, the founder of ideal auto who has always been "unyielding", became uncharacteristically low-key and focused on filling the gaps in pure electric products and shortcomings in intelligent driving technology.

in july this year, ideal auto pushed the map-free noa (navigation on autopilot, automatic navigation assisted driving) to all 240,000 ad max users, regardless of cities and roads, and released the industry's first dual-system intelligent driving technology architecture based on end-to-end and visual language models, and completed the push to thousands of test users that month.

so far, the intelligent driving penetration rate of ideal auto users has exceeded 99%, and the total mileage of all-scenario noa has exceeded 1.11 billion kilometers. ideal auto hopes to make a comeback in the field of intelligent driving.

can xiaopeng motors also make a comeback? how will it face the new decade? he xiaopeng's strategy is to become a global ai car company.

ai is redefining the technical architecture and business model of smart electric vehicles. he xiaopeng believes that in the next ten years, there will be only seven mainstream chinese auto brands left; only those who sell 1 million ai cars a year can get a ticket to the finals; and half of xiaopeng motors' sales will come from overseas markets.

"in the next decade, i hope to make ai cars better." he xiaopeng sees the ai ​​trend as unmanned driving in cities, low-altitude flights between cities, and robots for short-distance transportation and service tools. "it may take more than ten years to realize these three visions, maybe the next decade." to this end, xiaopeng motors took the lead in layout, investing 3.5 billion yuan annually in ai training costs, and has an ai computing power reserve of 2.51 eflops.

specifically, xpeng motors' ai system will cover three major areas: ai cars, flying cars, and ai robots. the xpeng turing chip is the world's first chip that is used in ai cars, flying cars, and robots at the same time.

the chip was successfully taped out on august 23 this year. it has a 40-core processor, integrates two self-developed neural network processing brains (npus), and a domain-specific architecture (dsa) for neural networks. it is specially developed for l4 autonomous driving systems and has a computing power three times that of existing chips.

xpeng motors has fully launched end-to-end large-scale model mass production. this means that it can push 5 full updates and 35 iterative versions every 70 days, a version iteration every 2 days, and an experience upgrade every 2 weeks. it is expected that by the fourth quarter of this year, door-to-door autonomous driving and smooth human-like driving will be achieved, and the participation of large models will be increased by 2 times.

without lidar, the same high-level intelligent driving experience can be achieved. xiaopeng ai eagle eye vision solution is undoubtedly an important support. it is based on the bev+transformer architecture and uses neural networks to achieve end-to-end data-driven algorithm iteration. the first xiaopeng p7+ equipped with this vision solution will be launched in the fourth quarter. however, the pure vision solution does not replace lidar, but runs in parallel with lidar.

xiaopeng motors has already drawn up a timetable for flying cars and robots. he xiaopeng revealed that the flying car land carrier is scheduled to start pre-sale in the fourth quarter, and the second-generation humanoid robot will be unveiled on this year's "1024" (october 24) science and technology day.

overseas markets have become a booster for xpeng motors' sales and profit growth. in the second quarter of this year, its overseas sales contribution exceeded 10% for the first time. xpeng g9 became the top-selling medium-to-large pure electric suv in norway, denmark and israel. xpeng motors' full-year goal is to achieve 50% of its sales in overseas markets, enter more than 30 countries and regions, and a considerable part of them are in europe.

he xiaopeng admitted that it is very difficult to go global. first, it requires long-termism, second, win-win cooperation with the local community, and third, a high-quality approach. xiaopeng motors wants to "do different things locally, promote intelligence, and promote energy management and supercharging."

but in an interview on august 27, he denied the plan reported by foreign media to build an automobile plant overseas, and only cautiously stated that "we are looking for partners overseas, and it would be better if we could do it together with partners."

in 2024, among the first generation of new car-making forces, xpeng motors and nio have both passed the ten-year threshold of entrepreneurship, and li auto will celebrate its 10th anniversary next year.

ten years ago, there were about 300 chinese auto brands, but after a market reshuffle, there are only about 40 left. the competition is so fierce. no one knows which new car-making forces will continue to stay at the table in the next decade.

xiaopeng motors hopes to become one of them. li bin of nio has also expressed similar views many times.

what is certain is that if time could go back, he xiaopeng would still choose to build cars without hesitation, but the way of building cars might change. compared with most new car entrepreneurs, he is more inclined to software and internet thinking, and rarely thinks about micro or short-term planning.

if you don't consider the market and business, business and the market will teach you a lesson. after learning from several market lessons, he xiaopeng began to change, and mona is a major result of this change.

this means that "xpeng motors pays more attention to commercialization, and has undergone tremendous changes in marketing capabilities, organizational processes, etc." he xiaopeng concluded that in the past xiaopeng motors considered technology more, and later considered user experience. this year, it is focusing on business on the one hand, and on horizontal management and horizontal business on the other.

but that’s not all. to become a great company in the next decade, we must continue to improve our organizational capabilities. xiaopeng motors has already started to adjust its framework.

some people left the battlefield with regret, some people joined the game with all their heart, some people ran blindly, and some people shed tears on their clothes. this is the cruelty of business. after ten years of fierce competition, the pattern of china's new automobile industry is still unclear. in this, every entrepreneur needs to face his past, present and future truthfully.

at the "xiaopeng ten years of passion night" event held on august 27, many people sent their blessings to xiaopeng motors. lei jun, founder of xiaomi motors, and cheng wei, founder of didi, were present. among the three new car makers that year, li bin did not attend in person, but sent a video blessing, while li xiang did not take any action.

but no matter what, the business and friendship of the three new car manufacturers once existed together. in the short memory of the internet, many people were impressed by the photo of the three musketeers in the same frame posted by he xiaopeng on wechat moments in june 2020. in the photo, the three sat side by side, from left to right, namely he xiaopeng, li bin, and li xiang.

the three appeared together again on the afternoon of july 15, 2023, at the changchun nanhu hotel, at the "china automobile t10 special summit" for the 70th anniversary of china's automobile industry.

the most recent one was in march this year, when all three of them appeared at the xiaomi su7 launch conference. unlike the previous two times, he xiaopeng sat between li bin and li xiang this time.

on august 22, 2017, he xiaopeng wrote a message on weibo: "another cycle of entrepreneurship, with all its ups and downs, and i am still a young man when i return... a new cycle, the end is also the starting point, subvert yourself and enjoy the journey." then, he joined xpeng motors, a company he invested in, and embarked on his second entrepreneurial journey.

now, ten years have passed.

i wonder if xiaopeng motors' original intention to start a business has changed. is he xiaopeng still the young man who has returned? what kind of suffering and test did the three new car makers endure in the ups and downs of the business world when they started their business?