Xiaopeng Motors CEO He Xiaopeng’s hometown in Hubei has recently had a big news.
Dongfeng Motor Group, headquartered in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, has jointly subsidized several of its automobile brands with the local government and started a crazy price reduction model, with a maximum price reduction of 90,000 yuan. It turns out that the Citroen C6 with more than 210,000 yuan can be driven home with only 120,000 yuan. This confirms the saying – there is no unsold car, only unsold prices.
The atmosphere of the big price cut in the Hubei auto market quickly fermented and spread to the whole country. Rumors of Mercedes-Benz BMW with a price reduction of 100,000 yuan, Toyota with buy one get one free, and fancy car purchase subsidies in various places emerge endlessly. According to statistics, at present, over 86 models in China’s auto market have reduced their prices.
Perhaps because the spring started earlier, Guangzhou-based Xiaopeng Motors did not feel the chill in the auto market. On March 10, Xiaopeng bucked the trend and released the new P7i model with a “price increase”-the price range is 249,900 yuan to 339,900 yuan.
Xiaopeng P7i (Source: Xiaopeng Motors)
As a mid-term facelift, compared with the old P7 model (209,900-249,900 yuan),The starting price of the new P7i not only did not drop, but rose by 40,000 yuan.
249,900 for the 702 Pro version;
269,900 for the 702 Max version;
289,900 for the 610 Max performance version;
610 Pengyi performance version 339,900.
Xiaopeng P7i price list (Source: Xiaopeng Motors)
Based on this pricing strategy, we have no way of predicting the sales performance of Xiaopeng P7i after its launch.
But just 4 hours after the P7i price was announced, the first-line sales call hit the author’s mobile phone, “Sir, we have a new P7, do you still consider it?” Obviously, in the “golden 24 hours” after the new model is launched Here, front-line sales are still calling potential customers. It can only be said that this car is very important to this company.
With 250,000 yuan in hand, do you want to give it to Xiaopeng whose price has increased?
Three years ago, if you had 200,000 to 300,000 yuan and wanted to buy a B-class pure electric car. Then, your choices are nothing more than these three: first, give the money to Elon Musk in exchange for a domestic Tesla Model 3; second, give the money to Wang Chuanfu in exchange for a Tesla Model 3 BYD Han; the third option is to give money to He Xiaopeng in exchange for a Xiaopeng P7.
In the past three years, BYD ate most of the meat in the bowl, Tesla drank most of the soup in the bowl,And Xiaopeng was lucky to get a share of it. There is not enough food to talk about, but it is enough to solve the problem of food and clothing.
Today, three years later, Xiaopeng P7 finally ushered in a mid-term facelift, P7i. However, the price of nearly 250,000 yuan makes Xiaopeng P7i 20,000 yuan more expensive than the starting price of Tesla Model 3 (229,900 yuan). Even, you only need to add 8100 yuan to buy Weilai ET5 (choose the BaaS battery rental plan). It can be said that there are fierce tigers in the front and back, and wolves in the back.
So how does P7i compete with Tesla, Weilai, and BYD? In this regard, compared with the old car, the facelift and upgrade of the P7i is mainly carried out from three levels: intelligence, three-electric system, and comfort configuration.
1) Intelligent
On the 249,900 yuan entry-level version 702Pro, the P7i starts with the Nvidia Orin-X self-driving chip. The Max version is a combination of dual Orin-X chips and dual lidar (Sagitar M1 lidar), with a computing power of 508TOPS. The whole car has a total of 31 sensing elements including lidar, which you can understand as the hardware of Xiaopeng G9 is decentralized, and the functions realized are almost the same.
P7i lidar (Source: Xiaopeng Motors)
Someone in the autonomous driving industry revealed to Tiger Sniff that the current cost of a single Nvidia Orin-X is around 3,500 yuan. The hardware cost of dual Orin-X+ dual 126-line lidar is about 15,000 yuan.
The 15,000 yuan hardware cost increase, coupled with the upgrade of the software algorithm, can realize XNGP navigation assisted driving on the P7i that does not rely heavily on high-precision maps. That is to say, the vehicle can generate a “high-precision map” in real time through its own powerful perception hardware, providing users with intelligent assisted driving in all scenarios from parking to urban areas to high speeds.
However, we haven’t experienced the smart driving of P7i yet. In terms of intelligence, we only feel the upgrade of car-machine interaction. The P7i has replaced the original Qualcomm 820A with the 8155 cockpit chip, and the computing power has been improved by 3 times. The full-scene voice 2.0, which had been upgraded on the Xiaopeng G9 before, has been transferred to the P7i this time.
For example, the traditional voice interaction is to call the voice assistant first, such as “Hello XX, turn on the air conditioner”. But Xiaopeng P7i can say the instructions that need to be completed first, and then add wake-up words, such as “turn on XX, little P”, highlighting a “free dialogue”. In addition, in many common scenarios, the user does not need to wake up the word, just say the command, and the small P7 can complete the operation accurately and quickly – highlighting the word “fast”.
The upgrade of the intelligent level is almost difficult to see from the outside. You can only sit on it and play with it yourself, and drive it for a while. Similarly, a highly hidden change is the three-electric system of P7i, which has been greatly optimized.
2) Sanden
In order to improve battery life in winter, the P7i comes standard with an integrated thermal management system, commonly known as a heat pump. It brings three benefits: first, the heating energy consumption is reduced by 35% at 0°C, and the battery life in winter is increased by 15%; second, the heat dissipation of the battery at the charging peak is increased by 160%, which greatly improves the charging efficiency; third, heat dissipation Double the performance and be able to perform at the limit for a long time without battery or motor overheating.
However, due to the addition of the heat pump, the front trunk of the old P7 was forced to be canceled on the new P7i.
P7i (Photo: Tiger Sniff)
The power battery at the bottom of the car has also been upgraded in charging speed. The new P7i supports high-current charging close to 500A. Under the S4 charging pile built by Xiaopeng, it can achieve 10%~80% charging time as fast as 29 minutes. It is almost 10 minutes of charging, and the battery life is 240km.
The motor has also been upgraded this time around. The rear-wheel-drive model has a maximum power of 203kW, a maximum torque of 440 N m, and accelerates from 0 to 100 kilometers in 6.4 seconds; a four-wheel-drive model adds a 153 kW front asynchronous motor, with a total power of 348kW, a maximum torque of 757N m, and accelerates from 0 to 100 kilometers in 3.9 seconds.
In addition, the top speed of P7i has finally been increased to 200km/h.When I stepped on the old P7 above 140km/h before, no matter how I stepped on it, the speed would no longer increase.After the motor upgrade this time, it is finally no longer the weak P7 in the rear.
3) Comfort
The meme that has been complained the most before is the smart Xiaopeng, even the trunk is manual. This time, the P7i is not only equipped with an electric trunk as standard, but also with an electric suction door as standard.
P7i interior (Source: Xiaopeng Motors)
While the seat design and materials are upgraded, it is also equipped with full-vehicle seat heating, front seat ventilation, and steering wheel heating as standard.
In short, there are more than 160 upgrades inside and outside the P7i, and the starting price has increased by 40,000 yuan, which is arguable.
Big price cuts for the whole people, the mentality of buying a car has changed
After the price of P7i was announced on March 10, two extreme voices began to appear on the Internet: one kind of people think that the price of P7i is too expensive at 250,000; In fact, both views have their rationality.
Screenshot from Xpeng Motors App
First of all, “expensive” is relative. In the B-class pure electric car market segment, and even the entire pure electric car market, there is only one model that controls the pricing power-Tesla Model 3. The entry-level Model 3 made in China dropped its price to 229,900 yuan in January this year, the lowest price in Tesla’s history worldwide.
Tesla official website
Among Tesla’s Model 3 competitors, there are only two types of players – one that sells more expensive than the Model 3, and one that sells cheaper than the Model 3. If you have to sit on the right number, the dark blue SL03 belongs to the category that is cheaper than Model 3. The only ones that can sell more expensive than Model 3 are BYD’s Han and Seal. But now, Xiaopeng P7i will also join the ranks of BYD.
If the market is a static competition, then the pricing and product strength of Xiaopeng P7i can indeed compete with Tesla. But the problem is that after the price cut sentiment is ignited, those consumers who are currently holding money on the sidelines will definitely hope that Tesla Model 3 will continue to cut prices. Even, it is not ruled out that BYD is also involved in the tide of price cuts. For Xiaopeng P7i, it is difficult for consumers to “order with passion” in the first place.
This also understands why first-line sales will quickly contact potential customers who have seen the car before the release of the new P7i.
P7i (Source: Xiaopeng Motors)
Second, “value” is also relative. If you compare the Xpeng P7i with the 2023 Jikrypton 001, which has a higher starting price, you will find that there is not much difference between the two in terms of basic parameters such as battery life and acceleration, but the price of Xpeng is much cheaper.
Taking the entry-level models of the two as an example, the Jikrypton 001WE version with a 100kWh battery has a cruising range of 741km (CLTC standard below), and the asking price is 300,000 yuan. The Xiaopeng P7i 702 Pro only needs 249,900 yuan to get a battery life of 702 kilometers. Even, in terms of the peak power of the motor and the acceleration from 100 kilometers, the Xiaopeng P7i is slightly better. What’s more, intelligence is still a plus point for Xiaopeng. The place where Jikrypton 001 can outperform Xiaopeng P7i may only be the chassis, control and space.
In addition, part of the reason why people feel that it is worth it is that the price of P7i is much cheaper than that of P7 when it was first launched. When the P7 was first launched in 2020, the version with a cruising range of 706 kilometers cost 270,900 yuan, but now the cruising range of 702 kilometers only costs 249,900 yuan. This is equivalent to a reduction of more than 20,000, while upgrading the chip, comfort and so on.
But this is only a rational analysis, and it is often an emotional decision when buying a car.
(Photography: Tiger Sniff)
For example, in the statistics released by Xiaopeng, the top three reasons for consumers to buy P7 are: attractive appearance (71%), easy-to-use smart cockpit (52%), and strong driving assistance ability (47%). However, the top 3 reasons for the most satisfactory use of P7 car owners are slightly different. The rankings are: appearance design (72%), intelligent assisted driving (55%), and intelligent cockpit (53%).
Obviously, appearance is the first factor that makes P7 car owners “impulse consumption”, not the intelligence that needs “long-term inspection”. Even, the more obvious trend is that more than 50% of the users did not expect assisted driving so much at first, and only felt more satisfied after using it.
However, Xiaopeng Motors insists on using intelligence as a differentiated competitive advantage of the brand. On the one hand, the BOM cost of the entire vehicle needs to include a large amount of hardware costs necessary for forward-looking configurations. On the other hand, Xiaopeng Motors needs to undertake continuous expansion, continuous upgrading, and continuous in-depth software and hardware research and development. The costs borne by the company will be added to the products invisibly.
Xiaopeng P7i Pengyi Edition (Source: Xiaopeng Motors)
If part of the intelligent configuration is cut off and the product price is blindly lowered, the intelligent image that Xiaopeng Motors has worked so hard to build will become tasteless. And if we want to ensure the integrity and leadership of the smart driving and smart cockpit experience, Xiaopeng has to invest a lot of hardware costs in the car. This has led to the P7i being scolded for being too expensive, and being scolded for being too cheap.
Still the same sentence: As long as the price is in place, the disadvantage can be an advantage.
write at the end
Xiaopeng P7i, in fact, was not originally called this name. In a static experience in early February, all the materials were written as “new P7”. But after two release delays, the “new P7” was renamed “P7i”. The process of changing the name may be a bit hasty. During the dynamic test drive event in early March, the tail of the test drive car has not been changed from “P7” to “P7i”.
Xiaopeng and Tesla choose one, who do you choose? (Photography: Tiger Sniff)
According to insiders of Xiaopeng Motors, the decision to change the name before listing came from Yi Han, a new executive who was appointed at the beginning of the year. According to public information, Yi Han, a former Geely executive, joined Xiaopeng Motors after the Spring Festival as the general manager of marketing and was responsible for marketing and public relations. And Yi Han’s report object is Wang Fengying, the former president of Great Wall Motors who just joined at the end of January this year, and now the president of Xiaopeng Motors.
For Xiaopeng’s management, the subsequent sales performance of P7i is nothing more than a performance. But for Xiaopeng Motors, if the P7i cannot shoulder the “explosive mission” of the old P7. The next knockout round will be even more difficult.
Some people say that changing the name can change the life, but this “superstition” has not yet been fulfilled in the Xiaopeng P7i. At least 24 hours after the price was announced, similar posters with more than 10,000 orders have not yet been released. If changing the model name doesn’t work, try changing the brand name?