Article by Wang Pan

On the evening of September 21st, XPeng G9 announced its price, causing many XPeng employees, including Chairman He XPeng, to stay up all night. Some even woke up with pimples on their faces. The next night, they stayed up all night again to discuss.

All of this was due to mixed reviews after the press conference. Some users thought that the product had a lot of selling points and was the most mature car XPeng had produced so far. However, there were also many criticisms, such as the complexity of optional equipment, bundled sales, and the lack of intelligence in the basic version. Some users who originally planned to buy the G9 found it difficult to choose and started considering other brands.

Nevertheless, XPeng saw the criticisms of the users and announced the next morning after the press conference that he would promote improvements internally and adjust the sales and optional equipment strategies within two days.

On the afternoon of September 23rd, 44 hours after the end of the press conference, XPeng officially announced that based on feedback from users about the difficulty and high cost of selecting product configurations, the company had adjusted the product naming logic and price configuration in two days, reducing the difficulty of user choice and making intelligent and luxury features standard.

After this adjustment was announced, the criticisms decreased significantly. Many users who were originally hesitant or unsubscribed re-selected the XPeng G9, but some will not return to choose this car again.

In fact, XPeng’s second adjustment of sales strategy was overall successful, even to the point where competitors joked that it was a pre-planned marketing strategy. The adjustment was made in just 44 hours from the official release to the release of the new strategy, which exceeded many people’s expectations and is also the first time in the history of China’s automobile industry. We see that user criticisms have received positive feedback, and XPeng has turned a negative situation into a positive one through practical actions.

Of course, such a turnaround comes with a huge cost. Although the adjusted strategy is more sincere, it also significantly reduces the gross profit of XPeng G9, and the company will face further pressure in the stock market, which will also delay the time point when XPeng achieves overall profitability.

Essentially, XPeng has no choice but to either offend users and be abandoned or take responsibility and swallow the bitter fruit, earning user recognition before thinking about the future.

XPeng’s actions during these 44 hours are enough to be recorded in the history of China’s automobile industry. It was during this period that we talked to He XPeng and participated in face-to-face “criticisms” of XPeng’s executives.Actually, before the release of the 2020 G3 model, both its configuration and range were improved while the price decreased, which hurt the feelings of 2019 G3 users. At that time, sales could think that they were not wrong, lowering the price was the only way to sell well, and the financing team might also think that there was nothing wrong, only good sales could convince VC to complete a new round of financing, but the interests of old users were ignored.

With the release of the G9, we do not know which department’s demands and ideas ultimately led to the initial pricing and options strategy, until user complaints emerged and the entire company realized that something was wrong, then had to quickly make corrections.

Although the company was able to discuss and quickly resolve the problem that occurred this time for two days and two nights without sleep, the root cause behind this issue still exists.

In my opinion, a company will repeatedly encounter such situations because of problems with its organization, culture, and values. Going deeper, it is because of the people behind it. For example, each department seems to express its demands reasonably and strive for its own interests, but ultimately no one speaks for the users.

If each department only cares about its own small plot of land and gains and losses, the interests of users will naturally be ignored, or those who think from a global perspective about the company’s interests may not have enough power to speak. Then this problem cannot be fundamentally solved, and similar things will happen again and again.

Although such problems are very difficult and realistic, fortunately, this company has discovered the problem. They did not conceal it or refuse to admit their mistakes, but acknowledged the existence of the problem and are working to solve it.

To solve fundamental problems, we must start with organization and personnel, followed by culture and values. If we see major changes in personnel at XPeng Motors in the next year, we should not think of it as “personnel earthquake,” but see that this company really started to tackle its own problems from the root. This will be a relief.

This time, we saw that the complaints of users did have a substantive effect on the adjustment of strategies, and XPeng’s users temporarily won. The large number of orders that poured in after the adjustment caused the XPeng Motors App server to crash temporarily. But this victory is only temporary, and no one knows when similar situations will occur again.

Next, XPeng must find a way to solve the root cause and make users always win such victories. Only in this way can they possibly win the long-distance race of car-making.

Everyone involved in the G9 decision-making should ask themselves, what is the mission, vision, and values of XPeng Motors? In the words of Lei Jun, who is XPeng Motors, and who is XPeng Motors fighting for? Is it for the interests of departments or for the interests of users?Since your brand mission is “using technology to create a more convenient and enjoyable travel life for humans,” shouldn’t we eliminate things that cause trouble and increase users’ understanding costs, which are neither convenient nor pleasant, and even hand over orders that are only a step away from being completed?

This time, users can be touched by your sincerity to admit mistakes and correct them instantly, and choose XiaoPeng G9 again. But what about next time?

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.