On April 29, Li Xiang expressed his views on the "survival theory" of the new car market, saying that although the car market is big enough, it is also very difficult, and if only three of the hundreds of new car manufacturers survive, Lixiang will definitely try to make himself one of them, and I hope that my comrades in arms are Xiaopeng and WeiLai.
On April 30, Lixiang brightened up the 6500+ delivery data, while holding a one-hour streamlined spring media communication session, Lei Feng Net based on the collated points are as follows.
As of April 29, 2020, Lixiang has delivered 6,500 Lixiang ONE's since the official delivery in December 2019, and as of April 29, Lixiang has delivered 2,600 Lixiang ONE's in April.
Responding to the rumors of Lixiang going public in the United States, he said that it is meaningless to answer yes or no, as Lixiang does not need large-scale external blood transfusion to sustain its operations.
Lixiang will only be the Lixiang one in three years, and as they continue to improve their product, they will also make various improvements to the older models through the "hardware OTA" method.
Lixiang does not have strong requirements for profit, but has a strict grip on the entire operating cash flow.
Lixiang is frugal in its own right, and startups must look like startups.
More importantly, the Lixiang ONE is no longer classified separately as a supercharged hybrid, but instead moves into a plug-in hybrid, accurately called a tandem plug-in hybrid.
According to Li Xiang, the national technology division and subsidies have always assigned range increase to the plug-in hybrid, range increase itself is a kind of plug-in hybrid, and from the actual user experience and feedback, "range increase" is not easy to understand.
"The previous model our way is very engineer, we now become fool mode, you have charging stakes at home you just charge, the rest of nothing, you do not have charging stakes at home and do not want to charge, just use fuel, no different from you bought a hybrid." Li Xiang said.
Do 3 years of doing just one smart car sell much?
Li Xiang once confessed, "We only get one chance to play, and if we don't do it once, we don't actually get another chance to play."
Judging from the recent Lixiang ONE delivery data, Li Xiang's "card" seems to have the thinking behind it.
"The fact that we only do Lixiang ONE for three years and one car for three years is the essential difference between a smart car and a conventional car."
According to Li Xiang, the ceiling of car sales depends on the value of the product, and there are three main indicators to measure the value of the product: product power, product quality and price.
According to him, once the traditional car is delivered, the product power and quality is stable, and the only thing that can change is the price.
For example, the Audi Q5 started off with a promotion of 1-20,000, then dropped 3-4,000, then dropped to 6-7,000, and now dropped 8-9,000 to get more than 10,000 units sold.
In short, it's difficult for traditional automakers to make major hardware upgrades, usually achieved through annual or overhauled models, which are a 30%+ loss once they're in and out.
And smart cars are different from traditional automakers.
Li Xiang said that if he wants to improve sales, Lixiang can also choose to continuously reduce prices like traditional car companies, "but the biggest value of smart cars is that we can continuously improve the product power and product value, it is a difference of choice, our direct management system also makes it difficult for us to reduce prices, can only go to improve the first two."
According to him, the greatest value of smart cars comes from the fact that both product power and quality can change, product power can become better and better, quality can become better and better, so that the user to buy this car is really a car that follows his use process in growing.
Strategies for software and hardware upgrades
The Lixiang ONE will launch a new OTA with optimized seats, suspension and other parts.
According to Li Xiang, Lixiang will gradually add and optimize the features of Lixiang ONE based on user's usage and feedback.
What's in this OTA upgrade?
On the software, Lixiang ONE pushed the latest version of V1.1.9 via OTA on April 27, and will push V1.2 at the end of May.
In V1.1.9, Lixiang has been optimized for new driving mode, new off-road de-troubling mode, optimized assisted driving system, new mileage display information, new wheel view function, WeChat car version, 44L of available fuel, and improved mobile wake-up speed.
At the software level, Lixiang ONE has already pushed the latest version of V1.1.9 software via OTA on April 27, and will push V1.2 at the end of May.
For the new energy driving mode, the previous range increase mode, power conservation mode and hybrid mode have been adjusted to pure electric priority and fuel priority mode.
This upgrade OTA, users according to their own habits to choose to consume electricity or fuel based, more simple and easy to understand.
In addition, the new version adds an "off-road trapping" mode, a new feature that improves the vehicle's passability by optimizing the control logic of the ESP (Electronic Stability Control).
It is worth mentioning that this OTA upgrade also includes the optimization of the assisted driving system.
Specifically, the ACC's full-speed adaptive cruise comfort has been improved, with a focus on active following and responsiveness to parallel lines in front of the vehicle, reducing the average following distance from 13 meters to an average of 10 meters, including high and low speed situations. The start delay for adaptive cruise has been reduced from 1.7 seconds to 1.3 seconds, reducing the chance of congestion due to a slow start and improving the speed of response to parallel lines of vehicles ahead.
The optimization of Lixiang ADAS has to be more adapted to the road conditions in China, and after this optimization, the parking recognition rate has increased to 75% and the parking success rate has increased to 93%.
Long Xianpeng revealed that Lixiang had "made a lot of determination to do" the operating system "Li OS" has now completed the verification of the pre-prototype, "the development of the test car is progressing step by step".
Based on user feedback and usage data, the new version adds a "wheel view" function to the 360° surround view, increases the available fuel to 44L, adds WeChat car version, and improves the speed of waking up the vehicle with the mobile app.
As for version V1.2.0, Lixiang will push an update at the end of May, and the V1.2.0 update will roll out features including new vehicle up and down logic, classic Bluetooth mode, Bluetooth headset connectivity for co-drivers, Bluetooth key-sensing tailgate for mobile phones and more.
In terms of after-sales service network, Lixiang said that its after-sales service network has covered 25 provinces and municipalities so far. By July 2020, Lixiang's after-sales service will be extended to all provinces and municipalities except Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, with coverage expected to reach 100 cities nationwide by the end of the year.
Lixiang spends less, doesn't lack money.
Wang Xing said something that impressed Li Xiang: "2019 may be the worst year of the past 10 years, but the best year of the next 10 years."
Li Xiang considers it "normal" for Lixiang to achieve positive cash flow.
Three entrepreneurial experiences are where his confidence lies.
"Our first financing was an IPO, when we only financed $100 million, but there were big hundreds of millions of dollars in dividends." He stresses that "focusing on cash flow is a requirement for an elite team that focuses on itself."
He said that Lixiang is very frugal in his own right.
"Lixiang Beijing R&D Center, the cost per square meter is one yuan, people think about it, can you rent a house in Beijing for one yuan? It's just that we put those things like the storefront and the car to good use, but it's still frugal in its own right."
According to Li Xiang, another advantage of saving is that their suppliers will not "blacken" them when they see that they are saving. It's an atmosphere, not Lixiang's lack of money.
A startup must have the look of a startup, from 0 to 1 survival period, from 0 to 10 development period, from 10 to 100 high speed development period, each stage is in fact the whole way to operate and manage each stage.
So, Li Xiang thinks it's an atmosphere, and it's not necessarily simply a situation to save money to do so.
On the other hand, Li Xiang calls himself "perverted".
In the company, he demanded that everything must have a mathematical model to understand, whether it is sales, service, store opening, display, put, everything can be explained by a mathematical model, rather than doing where to calculate where, if there is no way to explain a mathematical model, Li Xiang felt that this thing still did not think about it first.
Li Xiang stressed that the biggest problem many times is spending a dollar that shouldn't be spent, and needing to spend three dollars to make up for the problems generated by the dollar that shouldn't be spent, which goes to the core essence of business.
sum up
The automotive industry needs a long time to accumulate technology, culture and system, and as far as the current new car manufacturing enterprises such as Azulai, Xiaopeng, Lixiang and Weimar are concerned, their progress and the direction of their efforts are worthy of recognition.
However, 10 days after the release of the 2020 New Deal on New Energy Subsidies, Tesla officially opened a wave of price cuts for new energy vehicles in China. According to the latest subsidy regulations, the price of subsidized new energy vehicles should be less than 300,000 yuan before they are subsidized. And the domestic Model 3 is right on that threshold, so the decision was made to lower the price.
This is a "disaster" for the new forces in car manufacturing.
Li Xiang wrote on Weibo that the 300,000 yuan subsidy threshold is a "catastrophe" for domestic pure electric brands, and will "accurately help Tesla to destroy domestic pure electric brands".
By 2020, the vast majority of the new forces of car manufacturing exit is almost a foregone conclusion, perhaps, as Wang Xing predicted, the new forces of car manufacturing in the end will leave only three.
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