In the second half of this year, the most important model for Xpeng Motors is MONA M03. This low-end model, with a price of about 120,000 yuan, has successfully reversed the sales decline in Xpeng Motors, with the monthly sales volume jumping from about 10,000 to nearly 19,000. However, behind the hot orders, Xpeng Motors is facing a new problem-a serious shortage of production capacity, and some customers have begun to cancel their orders.
Sales picked up, M03 became the mainstay.
In the fourth quarter of last year, Xpeng Motors briefly ushered in a highlight moment, with an average monthly sales of nearly 20,000 vehicles. However, after entering 2024, the sales volume has been sluggish, and it has remained at around 10,000 vehicles most of the time. This situation changed significantly after the listing of MONA M03. With the price close to the people and accurate market positioning, MONA M03 quickly became an explosion in the A-class pure electric car market. According to the data, the sales volume of MONA M03 reached 10023 in September, accounting for 54% of the total sales volume in Tucki in that month, and it became the mainstay of sales volume.
Capacity bottleneck, delay in delivery caused dissatisfaction. However, with the surge of orders, the capacity problem in Xpeng Motors gradually emerged. Recently, MONA M03 has been complained by a large number of users because of its slow delivery. Some car owners reported to the media that they placed an order on September 23, and originally planned to deliver it in 8-10 weeks, but the latest news shows that the car will not be picked up until January 2025. This is unacceptable to many car owners, because the delay in delivery will cause them to miss the subsidy policy for old car replacement, and the loss will be as high as 20,000 yuan.
The compensation measures are limited, and the dissatisfaction of car owners is high.
In view of the delivery delay, Xpeng Motors offered a compensation scheme of 1,500 points/day/car in Tucki Mall. However, this compensation standard is obviously difficult to meet the needs of car owners. A car owner said that 1,500 points is equivalent to 150 yuan, and even if it is compensated according to this standard, it is far from enough to make up for the loss of 20,000 yuan. This compensation measure obviously failed to effectively alleviate the dissatisfaction of car owners.
Can the expansion plan solve the urgent need?
In order to cope with the problem of insufficient production capacity, Xpeng Motors announced that it would expand production for the third time in October on the basis of two expansions in September. According to the official APP, the delivery cycle of the 620 long battery life version is 13-17 weeks, the 515 long battery life version is 9-13 weeks, and the 580 long battery life MAX version will not be delivered until after the Spring Festival.
Future Outlook: Can M03 Continue to Help Tucki? By September, Xpeng Motors had delivered a total of 98,561 new cars, a year-on-year increase of 21%. Among them, 21,352 new cars were delivered in September, up 39% year-on-year and 52% quarter-on-quarter. This data fully demonstrates MONA M03′ s great impetus to Xpeng Motors’s sales. However, faced with the bottleneck of production capacity and the risk of losing customers, it still takes time and market test whether Xpeng Motors can successfully catch this "lavish wealth".
The hot sale of M03 has undoubtedly brought huge market opportunities to Xpeng Motors, but the production capacity has become a key bottleneck restricting its development. Xpeng Motors must speed up the expansion of production capacity and optimize the production process to meet the market demand, otherwise this "lavish wealth" may be lost due to the delay in delivery. In the future, the market competition will be more intense. It is worth waiting and seeing whether Xpeng Motors can seize the opportunity and resolve the challenge.