From these design indicators, it can be seen that the target customers of this car are still the young rich and powerful and those with low incomes.
In fact, these design indicators were not proposed by Li Yubo, but by the marketing department under Qixiang Automobile Company.
Why did the marketing department put forward such a design requirement?
It is because after extensive market research, they believe that the market is relatively receptive to this type of car.
However, this is still not Li Yubo’s goal. Li Yubo’s goal is to create a car that sells for less than 1,000 yuan so that more high-income people can afford it.
He did not blindly pursue making it affordable for ordinary people, but pursued it for people with high incomes.
An ordinary worker in Songjiang Prefecture has an annual income of only about 100 yuan, and even a sale price of 1,000 yuan requires at least ten years of income.
If you want to make it affordable for ordinary middle-class families, you have to lower the price to at least 200 yuan, so that they can afford it after saving for many years.
And this goal is basically impossible to achieve now!
Because the patent fees for various technologies contained in a four-wheeled vehicle are more than two hundred Tang Yuan...
Every time Qixiang Automobile Company produces and sells a two-wheeled vehicle, it needs to pay a total of about 130 yuan in patent fees to different manufacturers and patent holders such as the Royal Institute of Technology. If it wants to produce a four-wheeled vehicle,
For a car, the patent fee costs at least two hundred Tang Yuan.
Therefore, Li Yubo's goal is to make it affordable for those high-income people, especially those who own private carriages, have a single annual income of more than 500 Tangyuan, and a family with an annual income of more than 1,000 Tangyuan.
They are not considered a wealthy class, but they are still high-income earners in the Tang Dynasty society and have extremely strong spending power.
But the current car prices are still too expensive for them.
Nowadays, the best-selling Xihu car and the cheapest one cost more than 8,000 Tang Yuan. As for Zhongyuan Auto, the price is not cheap either. They had previously produced a cheap version with a price of 4,000 Tang Yuan, but they soon discontinued the cheap version.
A deluxe version was re-produced, with a starting price of 6,000 yuan, but sales were average.
With such a high income, even people with an annual income of 500 yuan would have to earn more than ten years to afford it.
As a comparison, these high-income middle-class families generally own private carriages. They can buy a very good luxury carriage for one hundred Tang Yuan, but the cost of maintaining a private carriage is not cheap.
But if a private car only costs about 1,000 yuan, then for these high-income groups with an annual income of 500 yuan, they can buy it with only two years of income, and the market will suddenly open up.
Although there were many rich people in the Tang Empire, there were even more high-income earners.
The current social structure of the Tang Empire is still a relatively typical pyramid structure. At first glance, there are many rich people at the top of the pyramid, ranging from hundreds of thousands of people.
But there are more high-income earners under the rich, far more!
Research provided by the marketing department shows that if their two-wheeled vehicles can stimulate the purchasing desire of this group of high-income people, then annual sales of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of taels are possible.
It is a pity that their two-wheeled cars, and later their three-wheeled cars, have never been able to pry the purchasing desire of this group of people.
These high-income people are basically well-known in various places. They are either corporate executives, university teachers, senior technicians, officials, local gentry, or small and medium-sized businessmen.
At the same time, these people are generally the breadwinners of their families, mostly middle-aged men.
It would be degrading to let them parade around on a two-wheeled car, so even though they can actually afford a two-wheeled car, they still don't sell it. They continue to trust their own private carriages.
This private carriage is so comfortable to sit in. Why do you make the mistake of riding a two-wheeled car and suffer the consequences?
After detailed market research, the marketing department of Qixiang Automobile Company submitted this report to Li Yubo!
The price of two thousand yuan was still too high in Li Yubo's opinion. It would be better to achieve a price of one thousand Tang yuan.
But he also knows that the price of one thousand Tang Yuan is unattainable at this stage. Let alone one thousand Tang Yuan, even the price of two thousand Tang Yuan is very difficult.
Among the main costs of contemporary cars, the largest one is the engine. As for the frame, chassis, transmission structure, etc., although they are not cheap, they pale into insignificance compared with the cost of the engine.
Basically, the engine can account for more than half of the cost of a current car. This refers to luxury cars with relatively high costs in other aspects. If it is a truck or a two-wheeled car, the engine cost will reach 60% or even 60%.
More than seventy percent.
Now Datang's automobile company, to put it bluntly, does not sell cars, but engines!
Therefore, the most direct and only way to reduce costs is to reduce the cost of the engine.
However, today's engine production is complex, and the yield rate is low. Many core components still need to be polished by hand, which cannot be considered industrial mass production...
Li Yubo's goal is to achieve full mechanization of engine production, without the need for high-level fitters to manually polish core components one by one, in order to achieve true mechanized mass production.
In this way, costs can be reduced!
In order to develop new engines, Li Yubo and his research team have been conducting various studies in the past year.
Now, Li Yubo looked at the seemingly crude engine core machine in front of him and said with expectation: "Start the ignition test!"
Immediately, the researcher on the side said: "Yes, prototype No. 68 has started the ignition test!"
After the instruction to start the test was given, the staff who had been prepared directly started the two-cylinder gasoline engine with a design specification of four horsepower. This horsepower was equivalent to the prototype of the first two-cylinder gasoline engine of the Royal Institute of Technology.
, but its size and weight are significantly larger than the first two-cylinder gasoline engine prototype of the Royal Institute of Technology.
This alone actually shows that even after such a long time, the four major automobile companies have sold tens of thousands of gasoline engine-powered cars of various types.
However, no matter whether the engines of the four major automobile manufacturers were mass-produced or under development, their performance could not surpass the first prototype at that time.
There is no way, the prototype machine produced by the Royal Institute of Technology was specially prepared for inspection by Emperor Sheng. The materials used were all cost-effective. Every component was hand-polished by top fitters and other craftsmen.
Finally assembled.
In order to assemble a prototype for demonstration, I don’t know how many parts were scrapped, and the yield rate was impossible to see.
It can be said that the Royal Institute of Technology spent all its efforts to build a prototype.
But now the three major car manufacturers have to consider costs!
After controlling costs, the performance of the gasoline engines produced is naturally inferior to the laboratory products of the Royal Institute of Technology.
But Li Yubo doesn’t pay attention to these, he pays attention to costs!