He Xiaopeng has smoothed things over with Wang Fengying.

He Xiaopeng smoothed things over with Wang Fengying.

On the evening of September 17, XPeng's all-new G9L was launched, with a limited-time starting price of 231,800 yuan.

After the launch event, He Xiaopeng gave an interview to the media, talking about his working dynamic with Wang Fengying. He said the two often have disagreements at work, and they argued back and forth for many rounds in the conference room over the G9L pricing this time.

What do they do after a quarrel?

During meals, He Xiaopeng would ease the atmosphere a little, and "coax" her to make things right.

If you rewind a few years, you will find this arrangement rather meaningful.

Wang Fengying, who joined XPeng in 2023, has been working in the automotive industry for more than 30 years. Before taking the position of President at XPeng, she served at Great Wall Motor for a long time, holding positions including Vice Chairman, Executive Director, and General Manager. She is a senior professional manager in China's automotive industry.

He Xiaopeng, on the other hand, spent a long time in the internet industry before starting his own business. Later, he moved from UC to the automotive sector, bringing his mindset of software, internet and intelligentization into the automotive industry.

One comes from the internet industry, the other has worked in the traditional automotive industry for over 30 years. It is almost inevitable for the two to have disputes when they sit in the same conference room.

Interestingly, after Wang Fengying joined XPeng, the changes she brought are far more than just in procurement, channels and cost control. What she encountered is actually the part that He Xiaopeng found hardest to change: the working style of a founder of a technology company.

Operational Problems Exposed by the G9

In the early days, the most distinct label of XPeng was technology.

Intelligent driving, intelligent cabin, 800V platform, software capabilities - these constitute He Xiaopeng's understanding of automobiles, and have also become XPeng's most important differentiated advantages.

However, the launch of the G9 in 2022 exposed another side of the company.

Back then, the G9 was equipped with a large number of technical configurations, and the product versions and optional schemes were extremely complicated. After the launch, XPeng soon received feedback from users about the high difficulty of choosing configurations. Two days later, the company directly readjusted the vehicle models, naming, prices and configurations, and changed some intelligent and premium configurations to standard equipment.

This led to a situation where even with a vehicle with strong technical capabilities, consumers still had no idea how to make a purchase.

Looking back at this incident today, it is very much a microcosm of early-stage XPeng. He Xiaopeng knew where the automotive industry should head, but he was still learning how an automotive company can navigate this path successfully.

The pressure brought by the G9 soon spread to the organizational level.

In 2023, XPeng began a large-scale restructuring of its management team. He Xiaopeng later publicly stated that 85% of the heads of the 30 first-level centers had been replaced.

This adjustment was of a large scale, and even involved multiple core departments including product, sales and manufacturing. He Xiaopeng also redefined his own work focus, getting more directly involved in product planning, technology planning and operational decision-making.

This shows that the problems XPeng faced at that time were far more than just poor sales of a single vehicle model.

Problems in product decision-making, organizational efficiency, sales system and operation management began to emerge at the same time.

Of course, problems in the supply chain also came to the surface.

Before Wang Fengying officially took office, she found that XPeng's steel procurement cost was on the high side. He Xiaopeng later spent 9 months investigating this issue, and finally found existing problems inside the supply chain.

This also made He Xiaopeng realize that building cars requires a complete operation system.

And Wang Fengying came just with that set of system.

Wang Fengying Completes the Operation System

Wang Fengying's way of evaluating a vehicle is inherently different from He Xiaopeng's.

He Xiaopeng cares more about the upper limit of what technology can achieve, while Wang Fengying, who has long been engaged in complete vehicle operation, is more accustomed to examining products within the full chain of cost, manufacturing, supply chain, channels and sales.

Steel procurement is just one of the examples.

If costs cannot be reduced, even the most advanced technology can hardly support a healthy business.

After Wang Fengying joined XPeng, changes also began to take place in sales and channels. XPeng promoted the "Jupiter Plan" for channel reform, introducing dealer partners, and pushing forward the adjustment of sales networks and the optimization of store efficiency.

These changes are significantly different from the internet entrepreneurship logic that He Xiaopeng was familiar with in the past.

Internet companies are used to proceeding from users, traffic and product efficiency, while automotive companies have to take manufacturing costs, inventory, stores, transportation, dealers and after-sales services into account all together.

The value Wang Fengying brings lies in this complete profit sheet.

She keeps a close eye on procurement, and also pays attention to logistics. She even once raised doubts about the vehicle transportation method, requiring the team to recalculate the cost difference between ro-ro ship transportation and container transportation.

This kind of thing rarely appears in an intelligent driving launch event, but it shows up in the operation ledger of automotive companies every single day.

One person's attention is often on the capability boundary of products, while the other is focusing on whether automobiles can become a healthy business. When these two sets of logic collide, the conference room will naturally not stay quiet all the time.

But Wang Fengying did not only focus on cost management.

She also began to participate in XPeng's product planning and market judgment, gradually connecting the previously scattered product, sales and operation links together.

The value of this can only be seen after the products actually hit the market and perform well.

He Xiaopeng Reclaims the Role of CEO

The real change that XPeng Motors has undergone in recent years has happened to He Xiaopeng himself.

Wang Fengying did not replace He Xiaopeng to make technical judgments. Instead, she made He Xiaopeng start to face that huge list of matters beyond technology.

Whether there are problems in procurement, whether product pricing is reasonable, whether channel efficiency is sufficient, whether people in the organization are telling the truth - all these matters eventually fall on the CEO.

He Xiaopeng in the past was very much a typical technical founder.

But when an automotive company enters the stage of large-scale development, the matters the CEO faces will become more and more specific.

The cost of a single chip, the efficiency of a single store, the configuration of a single vehicle model, the quotation of a single supplier - all of these may affect the final operating result.

He Xiaopeng later mentioned that he did not hold himself to the CEO standards of a large-scale manufacturing, technological innovation and globalization company in the past.

The organizational restructuring in 2023 itself was a process of self-reflection.

More interestingly, He Xiaopeng did not step back into the technology department just because Wang Fengying joined the company.

He began to redefine his own role, devoting more energy to strategy, technology and products, while participating in the overall operation of the company.

Wang Fengying also did not transform XPeng completely according to her own past experience.

The two have been correcting each other all the time.

When Wang Fengying first joined XPeng, she did not have such a high evaluation of the value of assisted driving, but now she has become a recognizer of intelligent driving capabilities.

He Xiaopeng, on the other hand, is paying more and more attention to cost, supply chain and organizational management.

The judgment boundary of each person has been expanded by the other.

Cost Consideration Integrated into Product Decision-Making

Changes will eventually be reflected in products.

In 2024, XPeng readjusted the configurations and prices of the G9, making the product logic more straightforward, and the company's cost optimization also began to integrate into the product system.

This matter is worth noting.

In the automotive industry, price is part of market competition, and cost determines whether an enterprise can sustain this competition in the long run.

After Wang Fengying joined XPeng, cost consideration has become part of product decision-making itself.

How to set configurations, how to set prices, how to manage the supply chain, how to lay out channels - all these eventually have to be reflected in the same profit statement.

As a result, technology exists in a new form.

Intelligent driving is still XPeng's most important product capability, and He Xiaopeng has not abandoned this development route.

On the contrary, XPeng is investing more and more heavily in intelligent driving, and has even made it the core product label of the brand.

At this point, the division of labor between the two can be clearly seen.

This does not mean that technology has to give in to cost.

For a technology to truly become a product capability, it ultimately has to stand the test of price, cost and scale.

The change that XPeng is experiencing is exactly here.

Technology begins to operate under operational constraints, and operation is also guided by technology.

XPeng Enters the Dual Flagship Era

Let's go back to the G9L launched on September 17.

With a starting price of 231,800 yuan.

This time the two were still arguing over the price.

The difference is that today's XPeng already has a much clearer product system.

The G9L is positioned as a large five-seat technology flagship, covering pure electric and super extended range versions, forming a dual flagship strategy with the GX.

On the other hand, XPeng is also strengthening the flagship positioning of the P7 series in the sedan market, with the sedan and SUV product lines taking on different market roles.

This is already very different from the G9 in the old days.

Early-stage XPeng tended to start from technology and then embed technology into products. Today's XPeng needs to address product positioning, pricing, cost, channels, technical capabilities and commercial returns all at the same time.

Products are beginning to take on more defined responsibilities.

What market a specific vehicle model targets, what role another vehicle model plays, which technology should be set as standard, how to design price differences - all these issues need to be calculated from the three dimensions of product, technology and operation.

In the past, XPeng was always thinking about what kind of cars it could build, but now it starts to consider what kind of cars are worth building, who they should be sold to, and how to keep selling them sustainably.

This is the change brought by the operation system integrating into product development.

He Xiaopeng is still pushing the boundary of technology outward, while Wang Fengying is leading these capabilities onto the track where the automotive industry actually operates.

This is probably the most important management change that XPeng has made in recent years.

He Xiaopeng did not "coax" Wang Fengying into becoming another version of himself. The two will argue over products, over prices, and over management methods.

He just accepted one thing: an automotive company needs someone different from himself.

Beyond the Page:

China's automotive industry is bidding farewell to the era where a single person defines an entire automotive enterprise.

In the early days of car building, the competition was all about the founder's judgment: judging the technical route, judging user demands, judging the brand direction. After the company scales up, the propositions the company faces become far more complicated, with technology, manufacturing, supply chain, channels and capital market all existing at the same time.

A vehicle can be defined by one person, but it is increasingly difficult for a company to be defined by a single person. The running-in process between He Xiaopeng and Wang Fengying is just a microcosm of this change.

This article is from the WeChat public account "Beyond the Page", author: Huahua, published with authorization from 36Kr.