Chapter 1962 There are so many rich people in the Tang Dynasty
Qian Mu, who was still in Jinling City, continued research with his technical staff, and initially planned to develop a gasoline engine that could be mass-produced and applied to tractors.
But when he saw the car produced by Zhongyuan Automobile Company, he immediately changed his attention and directly changed his research direction to a gasoline engine that could be used in passenger vehicles.
As for the prototype car from Zhongyuan Automobile Company, he had seen it. Not to mention the vehicle design, but the prototype machine they used was produced by the laboratory of the Royal Institute of Technology. That thing was made by him, Lin Hui and other big guys.
Made together.
That thing seems to have good performance, but it can't be mass-produced at all. Even if you don't worry about the high cost, you can't make a few units, because in fact, most of the parts of the thing are hand-polished by the top fitters and others.
, there is no possibility of mass production at all.
Although no one said it, everyone who knew the inside story knew that the thing was specially made for the Emperor Sheng. With the current technical conditions of the Tang Dynasty, it is impossible to mass-produce it. Even if it is manual production, it will not be able to produce a few in a year.
tower.
Therefore, if Zhongyuan Automobile Company wants to build a car based directly on the Royal Institute of Technology's laboratory prototype, it will be doomed to tragedy, because it is impossible for them to obtain such an engine.
What is Qian Mu doing with his technical staff now?
Simplify the design and weaken the performance so that current Datang technology can mass-produce gasoline engines.
Qian Mu has specialized in internal combustion engines for many years, and has also been involved in the research and development of gasoline engines from beginning to end. His knowledge of gasoline engines would rank among the top three in the entire empire.
With him taking the lead, the original design was quickly produced. After the design was finalized, Hangzhou Power Machinery Company immediately organized manpower and equipment to manufacture several prototype machines for testing.
The results of the test satisfied the executives of Hangzhou Power Machinery Company.
Although the performance is much worse, and even the lifespan is far inferior to the experimental model of the Royal Institute of Technology, this thing can be produced with the current technical conditions.
Well, even so, Hangzhou Power Machinery Company still needs to invest heavily in upgrading the production line.
Even if the performance of the gasoline engine has been greatly reduced, it is still a top-notch industrial product in terms of the current Datang Industrial manufacturing capabilities, and the equipment required is the top-notch currently available.
As a result, Hangzhou Power Machinery Company began to spend money to improve the production line.
At the same time, they also urgently established an automobile design department and established an automobile factory.
One month after Zhongyuan Automobile Company built the first car in human history, Zhongyuan Automobile Company had not even thoroughly researched the gasoline engine, and the engine factory invested by their company had not yet started construction.
Hangzhou Power Machinery Company, a purely private enterprise, officially launched their West Lake luxury car to the outside world and accepted reservations.
Hangzhou Power Machinery Company even spent huge sums of money to directly advertise in the Tang Dynasty newspaper, directly shouting the slogan that the West Lake brand car combines the most cutting-edge technology of the Tang Dynasty, the most luxurious decoration, and the most comfortable ride enjoyment.
!
Even the extremely high selling price of 8,000 Tang Yuan per car could not resist the enthusiasm of the rich. As soon as the advertisement was released, within a few days, the number of pre-orders from various places had already exceeded 1,000, and this order
The number is still increasing, and within half a month they have received orders for more than 2,000 vehicles from all over the empire.
When the management of Hangzhou Power Machinery Company learned that pre-orders had exceeded 2,000 units in just a few days, they were dumbfounded!
Their little hearts couldn't bear it anymore. They estimated before that they would only have one or two hundred taels of orders, maybe only a few dozen vehicles.
After all, this is a car that sells for 8,000 Tangyuan, and contains the most cutting-edge technological products of Datang. Hangzhou Power Machinery Company positions the West Lake brand car not as a daily car for people, but as a high-tech concept product. Rich people
toys.
They didn't think about going for volume, but for high-quality products, just selling dozens of cars a year, so they directly priced the Xihu brand cars that cost more than 3,000 Tangyuan at 8,000 Tangyuan.
This is because the rich who are really interested in these high-tech products will not care whether the thing costs three thousand Tang Yuan or eight thousand Tang Yuan.
With less output, higher profit margins are naturally needed to maintain the production line.
But they never expected that this thing could actually receive orders for two thousand vehicles. Some dignitaries even sent private telegrams to place orders.
Even Mr. Chen Lifu, who is known as the richest among the imperial officials, asked his butler to send a telegram and prepared to order a West Lake luxury car.
An order for two thousand vehicles is equivalent to sixteen million. They used to sell gas engines, steam, gas tractors and other messy products. From the founding of the company to now, the total sales of all products have been added up.
so much!
Now an order for 16 million Tang Yuan came in all of a sudden?
And the most important thing is that there is a gross profit of more than 8 million Tang Yuan!
This is Tang Yuan. Datang's annual fiscal revenue is only more than 400 million, but they directly received an order of 16 million Tang Yuan. This order has more than 8 million Tang Yuan.
profit.
This is higher than the total market value of their entire Hangzhou Power Machinery Company, and it is many times higher!
Qian Mu, a technology geek who hides in the laboratory all day long, was dumbfounded when he learned that his company had received an order for 2,000 vehicles, with the order amount reaching 16 million.
After a long time, he murmured: "There are so many rich people in our Datang Dynasty!"
But then he thought of a more serious problem. The production line he designed directly did not have such a large production capacity. It would be impossible to produce hundreds of Xihu brand cars a year.
The key to low productivity lies in the low productivity of gasoline engines.
Because even the gasoline engine he designed after weakening its performance is still a huge challenge to the existing industrial manufacturing level. The yield rate of many core parts is astonishingly low, and some core parts still require
The top skilled workers carry out manual processing, but it is not like the prototype of the Royal Institute of Technology. Almost the entire gasoline engine is ground by hand...
The ultra-high processing difficulty results in ultra-low yield, and the new materials used are inherently expensive.
So this has pushed up the cost of the Xihu brand car to a terrifying level of more than 3,000 yuan, and most of the cost comes from the gasoline engine!
But now it seems that cost is not an issue at all, the key is how to increase production capacity.
Nowadays, the production capacity of only two to three hundred vehicles a year is simply not enough. The enthusiasm of the market has given Hangzhou Power Machinery Company the greatest motivation since its establishment.
In order to urgently expand the production line and increase production capacity, they did not hesitate to mortgage some of their gasoline engine patents to the Royal Bank and obtained millions of funds for the expansion of the automobile production line.
At the same time, it is also prepared to be used to improve the supporting industries of the automobile industry.
For a time, the entire Hangzhou Power Machinery Company turned to the automotive industry!