For Xpeng Motors, before and after the release of the third production car P5, there were many things and debates.
first of all, it must be Huawei.
Huawei announced their ADS autopilot system this week, and our measured results are very good, and the computing power of ADS 4/8 TOPS looks "scary". P5, who also embarked on the lidar route, is naturally compared.
followed by Tesla.
The dispute between Xpeng Motors's former employees and Tesla, which has been lingering for nearly two years, has officially come to an end this week. Tesla has reached a substantive settlement with Cao Guangzhi and withdrew the lawsuit. But Xpeng Motors, who is not the defendant, still seems to be unable to escape the whirlpool of public opinion.
At the Shanghai Auto Show today, we threw these questions to He Xiaopeng, hoping to get a response.
to our surprise, He Xiaopeng's answer was very direct and explosive, and the scale was far beyond our imagination.
sit still and hold steady. let's start.
Huawei ADS can only be regarded as "quasi-mass production"
He Xiaopeng's first answer was amazing.
The so-called short-term is used to describe the cooperation between Huawei and car companies. He Xiaopeng said that in the UC era, they adopted a similar model and "died miserably later".
There are many challenges encountered by this model, which he summed up as two: First, each partner has different demands, "You will be very painful, and you will have a lot of unhappy points when you finish his things".
Secondly, He Xiaopeng thinks that the amount obtained by Internet in China is "basically free or very low-charged". For example, Android is basically free, and iOS charges a little patent protection fee. This industry (automobile) is a diverse field, so we must find a reasonable price.
returning to the product, He Xiaopeng thinks that NGP, the city of P5, will perform no worse than Huawei-because "Huawei has not achieved mass production".
He Xiaopeng thinks that at present, Huawei's ADS is limited to a few cities, such as Shanghai, which can only be regarded as "quasi-mass production". He even said that this route has been done in Tucki, and if it is done, it is really good, but the scope of application is very narrow.
as for what is real mass production, He Xiaopeng thinks that the key lies in "data". For example, how many roads can be opened, for example, what percentage of the scene can be used if it can be opened, and how many times to take over 1 kilometers in the scene.
Returning to the field of engineering, He Xiaopeng thinks that the more important data is the "experimental mileage" of autonomous driving actually running on the road.
He Xiaopeng thinks that in China, the data should be at least 1 million kilometers per month, but in fact, it should be 1 billion kilometers per month one day, that is, 1, times more than one million, which is "more stable". And there are many steps from 1 million to 1 billion.
As far as the Tucki team has gone through seven years of research and development of autonomous driving and three years of mass production practice, He Xiaopeng thinks that the ability that has been achieved and is extremely difficult to achieve is "to achieve autonomous driving at a relatively convergent cost".
He described this ability as follows: "If you want to spend 1 yuan to make a good thing, it is ten times more difficult to spend 3 yuan to make something as good as it.".
In addition to experience, data and model, another factor that makes He Xiaopeng cautious about Huawei lies in people's habitual thinking about "big companies".
"I never agree that a big company can (definitely) accomplish one thing." He Xiaopeng said that if this logic is followed, SF should be 1% successful in making fresh food.
He told us firmly: "The success rate of affiliated ventures in large companies is extremely low, and the failure rate is extremely high.".
For this reason, He Xiaopeng concluded that he was "not worried at all". Because he thinks that being an enterprise is not like Tu Longdao, "it must be the ability of system and long-term layout".
He Xiaopeng told us that he respects some friends and businessmen because they have a strong "long-term thinking ability" and "no matter what others say, it is only right to do it step by step".
But He Xiaopeng finally said that Huawei is still an excellent company in the field of autonomous driving. He believes that Huawei is already stronger than many autonomous driving technology companies because Huawei has a hardware system to accommodate (software).
even, there is a great possibility for Tucki to cooperate with Huawei in the future-He Xiaopeng said it might be a discussion on the supply chain, "I always had dinner with Xu Zhijun the other day".
as to whether P5 will perform better than Huawei's ADS, He Xiaopeng's answer is: Huawei is a great company, but Tucki city NGP will have many features better than what Huawei saw today, and will really share them at the official P5 conference.
As for the sales volume of P5 at that time, his answer is also very interesting: "I am very confident that P5 will surpass other cars now.
"The court has seen the codes of Tucki and Tesla"
When this sentence came out, we were shocked.
and the complete expression of this sentence is "in the end, the court took Tesla code and our code, and when the court saw it, nothing happened.
maybe this sentence can't completely douse the spark of public opinion collision, but it should explain many problems.
When talking about this topic, He Xiaopeng said that he actually "never paid attention" to this matter, because Tesla never sued Xpeng Motors from beginning to end. Therefore, whether it is civil or criminal, there will be no compensation, "because we are not in any litigation."
like Huawei, Tesla is also a frequently mentioned name in this interview. The most acute question is about last year's famous Weibo who strongly hit back at Musk.
He Xiaopeng responded that if it is in reality, it will be more personalized and casual, but the essence of that Weibo is actually "anger".
"Because I am a programmer, programmers are straight men", He Xiaopeng explained that this does not mean that programmers are bad, or that straight men are not a good word, "honest and frank is anyway".
"This (Weibo's response) is not our team's suggestion, and it is totally different from the suggestion," He Xiaopeng added.
Smart cars are moving from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period
In the interview, He Xiaopeng also made a bold judgment on the future: Smart cars are moving from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period.
this bold judgment consists of several parts.
first of all, the proportion of sales of smart electric vehicles has reached 1%, which is a critical point.
Secondly, at present, more and more "forces" are entering the automobile industry, but He Xiaopeng thinks that this is not a bubble, but a part of a reasonable process. In his view, there are still some opportunities in the market in the next five years, but after 225, it will be a change from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period.
He predicted that by then, there will be 5-1 automobile enterprises in the world, the centralized one.
Third, it is not feasible for L4 autopilot companies to learn from Huawei's technology decentralization and dimensionality reduction. Because Huawei has hardware, and their solutions are too expensive.
"I made a very interesting point before. High-end customers of communication are often low-end users of data. People who pay 1, yuan a month for telephone calls don't surf the Internet, while those who pay 5 yuan a month spend a lot on the Internet. The more mid-to high-end customers are interested in autonomous driving, the more ultra-high-end customers have absolutely high demand for luxury and power of car brands.
finally, there is a potential risk in smart electric vehicles. That is, in the total cost, the proportion of intelligence is rising, "resulting in the cost of car use is not lower than that of gasoline vehicles, but higher.
although in the general trend, intelligent electric vehicles must have better experience, cheaper use and more environmental protection than oil vehicles. But today's intelligence still has a lot of expensive hardware.
"I think it will definitely become intelligent one day, which may account for a relatively low cost in the whole car field, so that we can build the ecology. How much does today's mobile phone intelligence account for the cost of mobile phones?
"I'm not worried at all"
Moving from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period means extremely fierce competition. What does He Xiaopeng think is the key to the future?
around it, He Xiaopeng said many times, "I can't tell you. But in the end, he still expressed his logic.
for example, how to achieve the best capability compliance at a limited cost? He Xiaopeng thinks that P5 is such a typical car, which pushes the ability of high-order automatic driving to a lower price.
He Xiaopeng said that compared with other autonomous driving companies, the characteristic of Tucki is that it can "create a good effect" at a reasonable cost and continuously reduce costs. For example, because the perception ability is already very strong, can P5 remove the rainfall sensor? The front camera system is all there, can you remove AEB? Because it is no longer necessary.
for another example, although short-term is also very important, it is difficult to form a foundation without long-term lines. No matter what others say, it is best to grow bigger step by step. A system is a balanced logic, so Tucki should consider the longer-term thinking and global thinking.
Because of this, He Xiaopeng is a bit Versailles when talking about fierce competition: "Maybe I'll be killed if I don't do well. Even if I do well, I'll fuck you. It doesn't matter. I don't worry about it from another angle."
At the end of the article, two eggs are added.
the first one comes from an interview. He Xiaopeng said that Xpeng Motors is the largest car manufacturer in China, which has covered 14 cities. "This year, it is planned to spread it in all prefecture-level cities in the country and dozens of county-level cities in the TOP this year, and return to their hometown. There are always prefecture-level cities and county-level cities next to them.
The second one comes from his interaction with Li Bin. When interviewing Li Bin at Weilai booth this afternoon, He Xiaopeng suddenly arrived. The above two pictures were taken by me with my mobile phone at that time, and the two of them smiled "shoulder to shoulder". This will be one of the famous scenes of the new car-making movement in China.