Chapter 258: The era of industrial mass production of automobiles
When researching this four-horsepower engine, he boldly adopted many new designs and new materials. During the research process of this new engine alone, they applied for more than 300 patents.
And these new designs and new materials have only one purpose, and that is to reduce costs!
At the same time, the production laboratory of Qixiang Automobile Co., Ltd., together with the company's main production equipment provider, Zhaoqing Machinery Company, specially designed production equipment in order to allow the mechanical equipment to complete the processing of various parts of the entire engine. It is no longer the same as in the past.
It also requires craftsmen to polish core components by hand.
The prototype in front of you is a prototype machined using mechanical equipment. All parts are machined.
Although it looks very crude and its performance is not very good, Li Yubo has high hopes for it.
What does it mean if this prototype is successful?
This means that Qixiang Automobile Company can establish a large-scale engine production line, the production cost of the engine can be directly reduced by more than several times, and the output can even be dozens of times higher.
This means low cost!
Enough for Qixiang Automobile Company to produce a car with a price of no more than 2,000 Tang Yuan!
As the technicians operated, the engine in front of them soon ignited successfully.
Ignition successful!
However, Li Yubo still pays close attention to changes in various data.
It's just that the ignition is successful. This is nothing. Most of the dozens of previous prototypes can also ignite successfully, but not many can pass subsequent tests. Many of them malfunction after running for at least a few minutes or more than dozens of minutes.
If the engine stalls, in severe cases, the cylinder may explode directly.
After the engine is successfully ignited, it continues to run. Many instruments monitor the operation of the engine and continuously report it.
"Running for the fifth minute, the speed remains at 500 rpm!"
“The jitter is slightly higher than the design value, but still within the estimated range!”
“The noise is good, five bel lower than expected!”
…
As technicians continued to test and record data, Li Yubo kept staring at this engine.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, the prototype was still running.
As time passed bit by bit, the expressions of the personnel in the laboratory became better and better.
An hour later, Li Yubo himself breathed a sigh of relief.
This prototype successfully passed the preliminary test and achieved a trouble-free operation time of one hour, which was the initial goal they set for themselves.
As long as the initial operation can be successful without any major problems, it means that their design, materials and processing have been tested. As for the many minor problems exposed, they will be solved later.
But the overall design framework can be determined.
Two hours later, after the first phase of the test ended, warm cheers erupted in the laboratory!
They succeeded!
They successfully built a gasoline engine using purely mechanical equipment!
After the initial test was successful, Li Yubo continued to organize personnel and made targeted improvements based on some problems exposed in the first test, such as noise, jitter, and severe jitter at high speeds.
Not long after, they produced multiple prototypes and conducted various tests simultaneously.
The test results revealed more problems, but Li Yubo's mood became better and better.
Because although more problems were exposed, they were all minor problems, but the main design direction was correct.
After the second batch of tests, Li Yubo continued to lead a large research team to continue improvements. After the improvements were completed, a third batch of prototypes was produced for testing.
After three batches of intensive testing, the smile on Li Yubo’s face became stronger and stronger.
Because the results of the third batch of intensive testing showed that the engine they developed is already ready for practical use.
Even though there are still some small details that need to be improved, this is no longer important. What is important is that his engine can be industrialized and mass-produced, and the low-cost engine can be practical.
Although the performance in terms of size and weight is not very good, and some other small performances can only be said to be average, the cost of this thing is low.
The production department of Qixiang Automobile Company estimates that after this engine is put into mass production, the initial production cost will be only about a quarter of the previous semi-mechanical and semi-manual production of engines. If the materials and processing methods continue to be improved in the future, further
If the yield rate is improved, the cost can be reduced to one-fifth or even lower than that of existing engines.
In the contemporary automobile industry, where the cost of the engine accounts for more than half of the cost of the car, the cost of the engine has been reduced to one-quarter or even one-fifth. This is a very huge reduction.
After the engine passed the test, the details continued to be adjusted and modified in order to make it more perfect.
However, at this time, test vehicles have already begun to be moved on for testing.
"This car is the first four-wheel passenger vehicle we have developed. The frame and chassis were designed from the beginning to accommodate the engine we are developing."
"We did not directly improve the chassis from the horse-drawn carriage like Xihu Automobile and Zhongyuan Automobile. Instead, we adopted a brand-new design to make the chassis more stable and adopted multiple spring suspensions. Taken together, our chassis has reduced the
The vibration performance is very excellent, even better than that of West Lake Motors!”
"This not only effectively protects the engine, gearbox and other mechanical structures, but also makes the car more comfortable to ride!"
"In addition, we also learned from the spring sofas that have been very popular in recent years, and designed and installed the current special car seats to make them more comfortable to ride."
Li Yubo nodded while listening. He knew that the car in front of him actually only had the engine, chassis, seats, etc. that were made by them themselves, but there were two other core parts that were not made by them.
That's the gearbox and tires.
The technical difficulty of gearboxes is also very high. Currently, the only gearboxes available are those of Songjiang Heavy Machinery Company.
Although other companies, such as Qixiang Automobile Company, are also developing gearboxes, and in the previous basic licensing of automobile industry patents hosted by the Royal Institute of Technology, the other three major automobile companies also obtained the right to use basic patents for gearboxes.
But they allow you to use the basic patent of the gearbox, but you are not allowed to use other detailed patents. Therefore, if the other three major automobile companies make it intact, they will only get the most primitive gearbox, and if you want to
To obtain a gearbox with advanced performance, you can only develop it yourself, bypass some of the many gearbox patents of Songjiangfu Heavy Machinery Company, and develop a more advanced gearbox.