In just half a month, Xpeng has had two waves of car owners collectively defend their rights. Who is it provoking? In fact, the cause of the matter is this. Last month, after Xpeng completed its 1024 Technology Day, a group of early Xpeng P5 owners suddenly found themselves "abandoned." You know, the P5 is a 2021 car. As the first mass-produced model equipped with lidar that year, the P5 claimed to have high-end smart driving NGP functions when it was released, and it will be available in many cities across the country in the future.
But two years later, P5 NGP still only supports five cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Buddha.Not to mention that on the Technology Day, the 25-50 city high-end smart driving announced by Xiaopeng (to be realized before the end of this year) are all for other cars. There is absolutely nothing about P5. Doesn’t this make old users anxious?
Who predicted the success of PPT in car-making back then?
Moreover, it’s not just that the smart driving pie is falling short, Xpeng has also forgotten about the old P5 in many new features.
For example itThe latest cockpit system XOS Dimensity has not been adapted to the P5.The car owner asked the store, and the reply he got was "Because the P5 has a vertical screen, it does not support adaptation."
Everyone was at a loss, so there was a joint letter from hundreds of Xpeng P5 owners, hoping to get an explanation from the manufacturer.
Soon, this matter spread online, and Xiaopeng indeed damaged the rights and interests of these P5 owners. So the official finally came up with a solution:Launch more OTA functions on P5 and issue a 20,000 yuan voucher as compensation.
Although this coupon can only be used to buy a car, it can be transferred to others, which is equivalent to a disguised subsidy of 20,000, which is quite real to be honest.
At this point, Xiaopeng car owners have completed a successful collective rights protection.
But this is not over yet. After seeing the P5 owner successfully defending his rights, the P7 owner next door couldn't sit still and immediately sent a joint letter.
This time there were even more people defending P7 rights, with more than 1,500 car owners at the beginning.Looking at the form and writing style of the joint letter, it is not exactly the same as the previous letter P5, but it is at least modeled on the same model.
The reasons for safeguarding rights are similar, mainly because old models have been left behind after the new system upgrade.
And some problems reported by P7 owners,For example, the visual wiper (which automatically adjusts the wiper speed according to the amount of rain) has not been updated, and the Android version of the Bluetooth key is not supported, etc., which are exactly the same as those proposed by P5 owners.
When they saw this letter, people from Xiaopeng probably had the same feeling: Huh? Why are you here again?
In fact, electric car products are originally released very quickly, and with the iteration of new technologies, the big OTAs can easily be replaced. Every car company may encounter this situation of not being able to take care of old models.
However, Xiaopeng has been defended by car owners, which somewhat shows that when it makes products, it does not consider some aspects carefully enough.
Take the smart car, which has the greatest opinions among P5 car owners, as an example.At that time, due to the limitations of pure visual algorithms and chip computing power, vehicles' identification of roads relied more on high-precision maps.
Because high-precision maps contain rich information such as road shapes, markings, traffic signs, and obstacles, vehicles can use this information directly without having to spend energy identifying it, and the overall efficiency will be higher.
At that time, not only Xiaopeng was like this, but other car companies (except Tesla) were also following this plan.
But later, everyone gradually found that the road to high-precision maps was difficult to navigate. Because roads are being repaired every day, as long as a place is moved, the map must be collected again, which means huge maintenance costs. At the same time, the update frequency of the map is also slow, which cannot keep up with the needs of smart driving.
For example, Huawei said before that it took them two years to complete the map collection of the Shanghai area, and only about two-thirds of it was completed.
Therefore, to improve intelligent driving capabilities, car companies can only skip high-precision maps.Later, Xiaopeng also adjusted its smart driving plan. It was originally based on CNGP on P5, and later gradually switched to XNGP, which does not rely on high-precision maps.
However, the new solution requires higher hardware, which P5 cannot support.The computing power of the smart driving chip used by the P5 is only 30TOPS, while the computing power of Xpeng’s subsequent models that support XNGP are all 508TOPS.
Autonomous driving involves a lot of sensors, controllers, etc., which are very complex, and currently cannot be reinstalled or replaced in the back-end market.
In other words, P5’s intelligent driving problem is basically unsolvable now. The fundamental reason is that Xiaopeng sold immature products to consumers at that time. So these joint letters are not unfair at all.
However, apart from such unsolvable problems, there are some things that may be able to be solved.
For example, a large number of complaints from P7 owners come from vehicle lag.Because the P7 is equipped with a 14nm process Qualcomm 820A chip, it is a product of the previous generation.
Although in the year when Xpeng P7 was launched (2020),The 820A was indeed a better choice at the time, but later Qualcomm released the 8155 chip with a 7nm process, which instantly beat the previous generation in performance.
This has caused many domestic car manufacturers to upgrade on the spot. For example, Ji Krypton upgrades undelivered vehicles at the factory before shipping them.
Other manufacturers such as NIO and Lantu have launched upgrade packages so that old car owners can replace them offline. Because the cockpit is not like a smart driving system, there are not so many parts involved, and they can generally be obtained in a store.
However, Xpeng did not launch a similar upgrade package. Instead, it updated to the 8155 chip on the facelift model P7i last year. So there is a joke among the car owners circle——If you want to use 8155, you have to buy a new car.
Of course, Neck is not a cockpit professional. I can’t say whether the old P7 really doesn’t technically support the 8155 upgrade, or whether Xiaopeng doesn’t think it’s necessary. But no matter what, the manufacturer gives car owners an explanation, but it’s not too much...
In addition to the above, some small functions can also be optimized.
For example, the most typical one isautomatic wiper, old users say it’s not easy to use, and the most abstract thing is,The top version of the P7 does not have automatic wipers, but the low-end and mid-range versions do.
The next-door Ideal ONE also optimized the wiper logic through OTA after its release. Why can't Xpeng do the same?
However, let’s not look at this small wiper blade.It was not easy for people to do this. It is said that it cost a lot of money and took several months of negotiation to get it done.Even if Xiaopeng wants to do it, he is somewhat helpless.
After all, it is not your own piece. If you want to change any details, you have to discuss it with the supplier. Domestic ones are fine, but what about foreign ones? I’m afraid you won’t know until you try it.
Of course, we are not saying that manufacturers should focus all their energy on old cars and old users. In fact, how to maintain the relationship between new and old products is a problem that all manufacturers must face.
Taking mobile phones as an example, Apple is the best at it. System upgrades have always been carried out with old products.Moreover, the iPhone 6S was not updated until iOS 16 released last year., you must know that the 6S was launched in 2015! No one uses it now.
Not to mention cars, we will own cars for much longer, so each generation of products requires longer-term planning.
In this era of rapid technological advancement,These old cars are products from the industry's most reckless and immature times.
Everyone has not even thought about the technical route and direction of efforts, and car companies will inevitably make mistakes on the technical route.These old car owners are paying for the technology.
At least, in terms of "compensation", Xiaopeng has given enough.