On the evening of August 27, Beijing time, Xiaopeng automobile officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Due to the practice of "quiet period" after listing, enterprises will generally choose the first day of listing trading to communicate in advance regarding IPO and the development plan of the enterprise.

      On the night of the listing, He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xiaopeng Automobile, gave an interview to Tencent Automobile and answered the key questions of the competition among the top three, IPO timing selection, gross margin correction and product and enterprise planning.

      After the three new car forces listed, around the comparison between the three is inevitable, each has its own characteristics and advantages, who can go to the end is unknown. According to He xiaopeng, The advantage of Xiaopeng car lies in the more thorough combination of hard and soft genes, resulting in a higher proportion of research and development, as well as the positioning of 150,000 to 300,000 high-end car market. "Gradually, with the popularization of electric, I believe the middle and high-end market is the biggest market."

      He xiaopeng chose to go public at a time when he was five years old, believing it was a "natural thing" rather than pressure from shareholders. "The IPO is a new step for Xiaopeng, a new milestone."

      In the words of He Xiaopeng, after the IPO Xiaopeng car will have "ammunition", so what is the next most important thing? He simply summed it up as: good products, good customer service. Scientific and technological innovation is always the foundation, and the integration of brand, sales and service system supports sales through customer reputation.

      Meanwhile, in addition to the hardware side of the business model. Xiaopeng will explore how to combine software and operations to generate more profits. Xiaopeng is taking the first step on the P7 XPILOT 3.0.

     For the gross margin into positive expectations, he Xiaopeng bluntly, "there is no way to make a forecast of the financial or long-term. But now we are doing a lot of things, I believe six to 12 months will see a lot of good results.

     "The only thing we can say about the Xiaopeng's third model is that it's an A-plus class electric sedan," he said. "There must be quite A lot of innovation, and I think some of it is innovation that nobody has seen yet." He Xiaopeng revealed.

The following is the transcript of the interview:

"The top three newly-built cars are all listed. What are Xiaopeng's advantages?"

Q: All three of the new car forces are already on the market, and everyone will be going to the next three, who can run out in the next 10 years. What do you think is the particularity of Xiaopeng?

He Xiaopeng: I think any enterprise can succeed if it chooses a different path. In my opinion, Xiaopeng's road has certain characteristics. There are mainly several:

The first one, I'm probably a founder who is a combination of a programmer and a product manager, and our team's genes are more of a soft + hard mix, I think. So within this combination, a whole new set of genes and I think thinking about the future is a little bit different, this is the first one.

So in the context of this experience, we have the highest proportion of R&D. For example, the number of our R&D staff was over 60% before this year, even though it's still 43% this year. Our R&D accounts for the total annual expenditure is huge. Our R&D expenditure last year was over 2 billion. It can be seen that our investment in software and data, both in absolute and relative values, is very large in this industry, and very large in unilateral fields. This, I think, leads to our differences in both intelligent driving and operation, and I think it's our differences in software.

Third, There is a big difference in Xiaopeng. We focus on the mid-to-high-end positioning of 150,000 to 300,000 yuan, which is a big difference. You need to know that there are generally two kinds of car manufacturers in China. One is that most of them are below 150,000, and there are a lot of cars in the middle or low end, especially the private brands in the original system. The scale of the system is large, but the relative gross margin will be lower.

The other is what we see now. Many friends may be in the price range of 300,000 or more, which I think is very valuable when the cost of electric vehicles is relatively high. However, with the gradual popularization of electric vehicles, I believe that the middle and high-end market is the biggest market. So Xiaopeng Car I think a lot of thinking, positioning, product combination, our internal is the same, do not be a small positioning, a long-term thinking logic, because the long term when a time node appears, you will see the entire market explosion, at that time we are ready. We have always emphasized that we should be stable to meet the emergence of such a new positioning market, which I think will be a very big growth period in the next two to five years.

In my opinion, both P7 and G3 belong to the middle and high end. There are few private brand cars with stable price above 180,000 in China, but P7 is definitely higher. First of all, we believe that there are very few private brand cars in China in this segment. Second, why do we make an electric car for the third model? First, in the Market space of China, are there 130,000 to 150,000 A-class smart cars available now? I don't think there are, there are no electric cars, there are no smart electric cars, and that's something we're going to do well, and that's very important. I don't have the price of the third model right now, what I'm talking about is our whole, including P7, 150,000 to 300,000, which is our main market, so we need to have an A-class smart electric car, Which I think is certain. The electrification of cars today has something to do with electrification. Why? Low wind drag, lighter cars, less electronics, longer battery life, that's a technical feature, so it's up to the whole market. There are other internal reasons as well. So doing the Dandong sedan in our second and third models is to go together to relate to think. I also believe that next year's cars will have some interesting features that I will share with you.

On our third car, now, I think the only thing we can say is that it is A grade A + electric car, it must have A lot of innovation, but please allow me to leave A bit imprison son, in next year's introduction to share with you the next car, I think there are some and the innovation is now everyone not seen innovation.

"Going public is not a matter of shareholder pressure, it's a matter of nature."

Q: Do you think this IPO is based on shareholder pressure or is it your own thinking? Would you choose not to go public without pressure from outside shareholders?

Xiao-peng he: there is no any shareholder pressure to us, I think business the most important thing is to choose a good shareholder, I think xiao peng car shareholders I think all is good, they give us a lot of advice, they gave us a lot of good thinking, they help us to recommend talent, but they didn't give us a piece of pressure, I think it is the natural thing, this is a naturally go to the stage, I think this is a new stage, a new milestone.

"Hardware will definitely make money, but Xiaopeng will explore software + operation to generate more profits."

Q: You just said that hardware is not a good thing to do. Can you make money just by making hardware? Because I see that XPILOT 3.0 will start to add money, is this software going to account for 20% of the revenue structure in the future?

He Xiaopeng: Hardware certainly can make money, but we also see that the whole hardware industry if no one can make money, then no one will make hardware. But I think the smart car is a combination of hardware and software to serve the people, which I think is very important. If you just rely on hardware, I think you'll get into a red sea of past competition. But if the hardware, software and service operations are combined, I think it will open up a whole new track and bring some new innovations, and I think this is what a company like smart Car can do. In the further future, we will definitely explore how to combine software and operations to generate more profits. As I explore more in the future, I look forward to having more ideas to share with you.

Today, Xiaopeng is doing the first step of exploration in XPILOT 3.0 of P7. We will continue to share with you when we have more specific data.

"With ammunition, Xiaopeng focuses on technological innovation and customer reputation"

Q: After Xiaopeng went public, its IPO has raised 1.5 billion US dollars, Idev nearly 17 billion US dollars, And Nextev 11 billion YUAN. These three families now have tens of billions of bullets in their hands. What do you think will happen next in this industry? What would happen if everyone had enough ammunition?

He Xiaopeng: This is a process that needs a lot of money, a lot of people, a long time and the whole thing is very complicated. I think more ammunition is a fundamental problem. What does more ammunition do for us? The most important thing I think is to do a good job in product and customer service. I think it's mainly these two things. In the next step, I think with more "food", I think we will be more stable, more long-term thinking and more rhythmical to do well in innovation, which I think we will do well in the next step.

In such an era, it will be two or three years, because I have been working on a car for more than two years, and in two or three years, three or four years, three or five years, I think new products will bring new product experience to customers. I think this is a very valuable thing. Therefore, I have been saying that this year is the first year of smart cars, which will accelerate the development speed of smart cars.

Q: Are there any major commitments now? Or what are the things that need to be reinforced?

He Xiaopeng: I think for most enterprises, just like Xiaopeng, the most important thing to do is to develop, expand and innovate, which is the most fundamental. I have always believed that if any Chinese company can go global, the most core basis is technology or innovation, and it is based on this. The second thing to do well is your brand, sales and service system, through the combination of the three systems, so that customers have better satisfaction, better reputation, with customer reputation after you will have sales, I think these two points are basically all enterprises to do.

"Inability to predict and financially envision a positive gross margin turnaround"

Q: When do you think the gross profit transfer will be completed? And this number may be the first earnings data is coming out, do you have such expectations?

Xiao-peng he: I have no way to financial or vision to make predictions, but xiao peng car operating is very efficient in the past time, we has been released from the past earnings as you can see, the gross profit margin on the past year we have the very big change good sign, I for the future business development, xiao peng xiao peng and business development, sales and service system of the forward I am very confident, and after this round, we reserve the more "ammunition", we will be more long-term thinking how to do better in the future.

Because I have always firmly believed that the logic is that investment, human life, business, should be long-term compound interest thinking, it is possible to think more, because for me the concept of forever is, the more behind the smile is the happier smile, there are barriers to smile is a better smile. From another perspective, I believe that we will get better and better in the future. We will decompose and execute according to our long-term thinking logic, and you will naturally see very happy results.

Q: Will we intentionally control the size of the company, and will P7 be able to bring our gross margin back up?

He Xiaopeng: I can't predict the gross profit of P7, but we will continue to optimize the scale. If one day you see that Xiaopeng car raised a lot of money to buy financial management, then this will not make any sense. As I said just now, the most important is investment. All investment should be from a long-term perspective, including the snowballing investment, including research and development, including brand, including service, including the reputation of customers, which we will re-invest in the future. In previous resource-first situations, you might have taken this shot and not taken it well, and I think our rhythm and balance will be good in the future. We're doing a lot of things right now, and I'm sure you'll see a lot of good results in 6-12 months.