On April 14, Xiaopeng Automobile had another spontaneous combustion accident. A Xiaopeng G3 in Guangzhou spontaneously ignited in the charging pile.
But also on the same day, Xiaopeng Motors released its third new model, the Xiaopeng P5, which is the world’s first mass-produced smart car equipped with lidar.
Earlier, when Xiaopeng Motors announced that it would install lidar on models produced in 2021, Musk had been stubborn. He Xiaopeng responded strongly, saying that Tesla would be unable to find any other people in autopilot.”
He Xiaopeng, one of the heads of the “new car-making forces” in China, is familiar to many people. He has personally created the well-known product UC; he gained more than 10 billion fortune at the age of 37; he was on the 40-year-old stall. , Left from Ali and invested more than 10 billion again to build a new kingdom-Xiaopeng Automobile in Guangzhou Chengzhong Village.
In this issue of “100 Business People”, let us learn about the career of He Xiaopeng, an excellent product manager and young entrepreneur who cross-border entrepreneurship.
He Xiaopeng who wants to beat Tesla to the east
1. “Internet Product People”
He Xiaopeng, a “straight man in science”, has a rare “quagma” in his choice of life.
In 1999, after graduating from South China University of Technology with a major in computer science, He Xiaopeng from an ordinary background began to apply for a job. “Life is the moment when I jumped out of the car,” He Xiaopeng said when he recalled the day when he chose AsiaInfo for the first time looking for a job. When he arrived at AsiaInfo, He Xiaopeng began to work hard to make money, from the development department, operation and maintenance, testing, to customer service, pre-sales and after-sales. There, He Xiaopeng began to lay his genes as an “Internet product man”.
Later, not satisfied with the salary of a few thousand yuan a month, I wanted to change to HP, but failed. In 2004, it was the eve of the Internet entrepreneurship boom. It was a post-PC era, and the Internet fire has become a prairie fire. Also in this year, He Xiaopeng chose a promising and early field, mobile browsers.
Immediately, together with Liang Jie, an alumnus of South China University of Technology, he founded UC Youshi, an early mobile Internet enterprise in China, and many of my friends must have used its UC browser.
Obviously He Xiaopeng founded UC with foresight. Before the mobile Internet broke out, he took the lead in occupying a place, especially shortly after the launch of the UC browser, which was regarded as a high-quality traffic portal by the outside world. The highest M&A price of 4.35 billion US dollars was sold to Alibaba. He Xiaopeng’s wealth ideals were realized at a lightning speed, and he also became an “Aliman.”
2. After wealth and freedom, cross the border into the automobile kingdom
As early as 2013, He Xiaopeng had the idea of making a car. He is the one who has had a soup in the mobile Internet era, so this also extends his entrepreneurial logic: now is the era of feature phones to smart phones, will functional cars be transferred to smart cars in the future?
On June 13, 2014, Tesla CEO Musk announced that the company adopts an open source model and opens all patents to the outside world, which means that more companies can join in making cars. So He Xiaopeng suggested to make a car inside Ali, but he did not proceed as expected.
He Xiaopeng couldn’t restrain himself anymore. In the same year, he and Li Xueling and other dozens of Internet people, as well as many venture capital institutions invested in the establishment of Xiaopeng Motors.
At first, He Xiaopeng joined the new force of car building as an investor. At this node, a man named Xia Heng appeared, and he was one of the important roles in He Xiaopeng’s next life.
Xia Heng was originally the head of the control section of the GAC New Energy Center. He has rich experience in automobile manufacturing. He soon received investment from He Xiaopeng after forming the team. Xia Heng is now the co-founder of Xiaopeng Motors.
It wasn’t until 2017 that another important man, GGV Jiyuan Capital Fu Jixun, appeared. A phone call touched He Xiaopeng and made him change his mind.
In August 2017, He Xiaopeng resigned from the position of President of Alibaba’s entertainment and mobile business group and took up a full-time job at Xiaopeng Motors.
On the same day, He Xiaopeng posted a circle of friends: “Starting a business is a cycle, bittersweet, sweet and salty, and returning home is still a teenager.”
Third, touch Tesla, plagiarize or catch up?
Among many car companies, Xiaopeng Motors can be regarded as a new force that has an absolute intersection with Tesla. Not only is the brand and product positioning very similar, even the main model Xiaopeng P7 almost completely overlaps the price of Tesla Model 3.
We can often see He Xiaopeng and Musk talking on social media. Most of the content is that Musk questioned that Xiaopeng Motors copied the source code of Tesla’s self-driving software. He Xiaopeng responded with “I want to fight Tesla. Can’t find the East”.
What I have to say is that Xiaopeng Motors does have many executives who have worked for Tesla.
On January 3, 2019, Cao Guangzhi, an engineer of Tesla’s autonomous driving system, resigned and joined Xiaopeng Motors. Gu Junli, who previously served as the vice president of research and development of Xiaopeng Auto’s autonomous driving, is the former technical leader of Tesla Machine Learning. We don’t know whether this high degree of coincidence of personnel is normal talent exchange or other hidden reasons.
Aside from the technical dispute, Xiaopeng Motors has also been criticized for its quality issues.
Automobile blogger Wang Tonggen commented on Xiaopeng’s definition of autonomous driving after experiencing Xiaopeng’s car. “Xiaopeng’s ability to recognize surrounding vehicles can only be described as miserable. I hope that fans of autonomous driving will be able to hand over it. Do a little more homework before controlling the throttle and brakes, and understand what an unreliable function is entrusted with your wealth and life.”
In addition, at the end of January this year, Xiaopeng G3 recalled 13,399 products due to a defect in the inverter, which may cause the model to fail to start or lose power. This recall is the largest among the new forces, compared to the small one. The cumulative sales volume of Peng G3 11,691 in 2020 is even higher, and the product quality is really worrying.
In the coming next decade, competition in the new energy vehicle market will be even more brutal. Can He Xiaopeng achieve his second goal of “doing a different thing”? Can Xiaopeng Motors truly become Tesla’s “biggest enemy” in the future, or even surpass it? let us wait and see!
There are no shortcuts to business, and capital is the most ruthless. If you like this video, please like and follow us. See you next time!
Reference materials:
- Interface News, “He Xiaopeng: Where is Xiaopeng”
Lieyun.com, “How does He Xiaopeng recognize the upgrade for a successful second entrepreneurship? 》
Titanium Media, “He Xiaopeng “The Stunner in the World””
Article transferred from: Business Junior
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