MTL - Rebirth in a Perfect Era-Chapter 1708 Ford's bottom

For Li Mu, if he wants to do the automotive industry, it is impossible to be a Tesla.

Even if new energy vehicles are the general trend, this trend has to go a long way in the world.

Even in China, if you want to really achieve car sales, the ratio of new energy vehicles to fuel vehicles will be 50-50. It is estimated that the most important thing is after 2020, even after 2030.

Prior to this, most of the automobile market will still be dominated by traditional fuel cars.

Moreover, Li Mu's favorite thing is to deeply integrate resources. This integration is not to integrate Jaguar, Land Rover or Volvo into Tesla and become a better Tesla, but to integrate Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo and Tesla. Tesla integrated with each other into Tesla, Jaguar, Land Rover, and Volvo.

Take out Tesla's advantages in electric transmission, Jaguar's advantages in luxury cars and sports cars, of course, before they have declined too badly; take Volvo's advantages in household passenger cars and Take advantage of safe driving, and then take out Land Rover's ability in four-wheel drive and all terrain adaptation.

Although Volvo's product line is very comprehensive, it has always been relatively niche. It is impossible to sell Toyota on his own if he is exhausted. However, if Volvo uses Tesla and takes the hybrid route, it may be possible to mix this. Overtaking in the corner directly drove Toyota, the strongest hybrid at this stage.

Although the sales of hybrid and new energy vehicles were not large in the early stage, their influence in the social elite is still very strong. In the United States, a special kind of moral superiority prevails in places like Silicon Valley.

For example, the big guys of those Internet companies, who have billions of dollars and live in tens of millions of dollars, have to drive a Toyota Prius with tens of thousands of dollars. Why? It is because they need this sense of moral superiority.

When they went out with tens of thousands of dollars of Prius, they had a strong sense of "I am protecting the earth", and then they could stand high and use a critical look at those ordinary fuels. Ordinary people in cars, even large displacement fuel cars.

That's why Toyota Prius is highly sought after in North America's elite. Corporate CEOs, executives, university professors, fund founders, almost have a Prius.

In the future, pure electric Tesla and hybrid Volvo may become the new darlings of these elites.

Immediately, Li Mu asked Davidson: "I would like to ask you to help me if I can have a time to talk to Ford executives. I'm interested in Volvo and Jaguar Land Rover in their hands. If they are interested, I can consider taking it down. "

Then, Li Mu said, "Well, if you have other automotive resources, please help me introduce it."

Davidson asked in surprise: "Do you want to buy Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover?"

Li Mu said, "If the price is right, it's not impossible to buy them all."

Davidson said, "But all three brands are now losing money, and the losses are quite serious. IMHO, you do n’t have relevant experience in the automotive field now, and there is no professional team to help you get global suppliers and sales. Internet, it is impossible to make a profit in the short term, and it is likely to be a huge loss in the end. "

Li Mu laughed: "It doesn't matter, we will start the IPO-related work after a while. Once it is successfully listed, it will raise at least tens of billions of dollars, and it is enough to take out one-tenth of it. As for the loss, it doesn't matter, it's playing. "

Then, Li Mu said, "Maybe I'll get a rally team next year, and another two teams in F1."

Chen Ze dreamed of getting a team, but he didn't dare to hope for F1. Now he is getting a team of kart drivers to train every day at the Shunyi Circuit. In his plan, he can get a Formula 3 team in the future. Already his biggest dream.

As for cultivating a real F1 driver for Huaxia, this is basically something that Chen Ze never dreamed of. Formula One drivers are extremely demanding. Most of them have been trained systematically since childhood. When I was sitting in a kart, I kept burning money and burning money all the way to 20 years old. Not only must I have enough money to burn it, but also enough talent, or I can't make it.

Training F1 drivers is, to a certain extent, more difficult than training a first-line player. At least football is not a money-burning sport. With enough talent, a football is enough.

With so many teenagers playing in the streets of Brazil, many people have finally become first-line players or even top players in the world, but they have never heard of anyone who can drive themselves into an F1 racer by driving three rounds in the slums.

Therefore, Li Mu's thinking is different from Chen Ze's.

Chen Ze wants to train a Chinese F1 driver, and Li Mu wants to build a Chinese F1 team.

For example, I bought Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover this year, and then went to China to create a new brand. The new brand is very simple. It is sufficient to directly integrate the technologies of these three brands. If the domestic team is not well integrated, it does not matter. Big money to dig the top teams, Germans, Japanese or Swedes, Italians, isn't it money? Makino has money.

When the new brand comes up, it will directly throw money into the team, whether it is a rally, a British caravan, or a formula, as long as it can be done with the money, it is all done with money.

First spend money to buy off-the-shelf from Formula 3 chassis and engine suppliers, get the Formula 3 team together, and then spend money to buy top F1 technology and team talent in Europe, and hire overseas drivers, even if the entire team is even a driver It is okay to bring logistics to foreigners, because its headquarters is in Huaxia, and the team and brand belong to Huaxia.

Only in this way can the true essence of this sport be introduced to Huaxia, so that the people of Huaxia realize that we have this thing ourselves, and that it is in our own home, which is far more than training the talent of one or two with the power of the whole country. It's much better to go overseas.

In other words, if there is a football league with a sufficiently high level in the country, then sending domestic players to the five major leagues is not as good as putting in a domestic league, because the improvement of the general environment is always much stronger than the improvement of the individual.

If Huaxia really cultivates an F1 driver and there is no team in the country, the driver can only compete in F1 in the teams of other countries and in the shirts of other countries in case the technical strength reaches Less than absolute excellence, the tail of the crane has been so weak that the presence is so weak that it is difficult to arouse the domestic people's true enthusiasm for the sport.

However, if a team is introduced into Huaxia, it is tantamount to moving in a complete system. It doesn't matter if you own it. You first need to pay for foreigners to do it. As long as this system is moved in, you will be able to bring Huaxia drivers one day. Huaxia's engineer team has been cultivated. By that time, the entire domestic automobile industry will improve.

Once the system is in place and the overall strength comes up, good drivers will inevitably be discovered and cultivated one after another.

Davidson didn't understand Li Mu's interest.

If it's a hobby, it doesn't matter if you engage in a football club. After all, a football club can't spend too much money, and it does not involve any problems in the industrial chain, supply chain, or sales chain.

There is a big difference between a car and a football club. It seems that a car brand is very beautiful, but except for the top brands that can make money, the rest are basically very hard.

More than half of the car brands are loss-making or slightly profitable. It is really normal for a company to invest hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to lose tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year. There are also billion-dollar cars. The brand has a net profit of only several hundred thousand dollars after a hard year. Regardless of the former or the latter, for the holder, it is a hot potato, a huge asset that is inactive.

Ford is a standard example. In difficult times, several brands under the palm of their hands have lost money. Jaguar can lose hundreds of millions of dollars in a quarter and lose hundreds of millions in a year.

Volvo and Land Rover are sometimes good and bad. This is good and bad. Bad means losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and good means losing tens of millions a year.

Moreover, the losses of large-scale industries are similar to those of powerless planes. The weight of hundreds of tons has been planted from tens of thousands of meters high. It is not easy to rescue it.

Any production line of an automobile brand cannot occupy an area that is too small. The cost of land, construction and maintenance costs of workshops, equipment maintenance, renewal, and depreciation costs are all large numbers.

In order to operate a production line, there must be at least thousands of workers. The labor cost alone is an astronomical figure;

It also requires a costly R & D team, management team, and sales team, which is not lower than the production line workers at all;

Not only that, if you want to build a car, you need to purchase various parts from hundreds of suppliers around the world. The US dollar has grown like wings, and it has flown from factories to other parts of the world.

As soon as the huge production line is opened, it is equivalent to throwing a bundle of US dollars into it. The money is thrown in, and the car is created. Money comes into the production line, so this is a big cycle that spans the globe.

But what if the car doesn't sell? The cost has been invested, but the products that came out can not be exchanged for money, or not enough money, and continuously invested 100 million US dollars a month. In addition to a bunch of stock cars, only 50 million US dollars are returned. This time is five With a gap of 10 million US dollars, if you want to keep the production line non-stop, you can only drop 50 million into it.

At this time, there is no overhead road for the car. Whether it is in the hands of the manufacturer or the dealer, there are more and more stocked cars and increasing financial pressure. In the end, there is no way to sell it at a reduced price. It's time to log off.

As a car company with a valuation of several billion or even billions of dollars, it is almost unable to recover from the losses of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, but the production line cannot be stopped. Once the production line is stopped, the dealers and workers will immediately As a bird and animal, in that case, the entire brand was instantly paralyzed, and this car company with a valuation of billions or even billions of dollars will immediately become worthless.

At this time, the only way for car companies that can't carry it is to find a large car group to sell it before it is cool. Large car groups often feel that they have a large body, wide channels, and relatively strong profitability. Strong, thinking he could bring this brand back to life, he decided to make a bottom.

It was just that Ford was unlucky, and he made a few bottoms on the mountainside.

However, Davis didn't know that Ford not only copied the bottom of the mountainside, but also cut the meat at the bottom of the mountain.

Volvo, Jaguar, and Land Rover are all Ford's "bottoms". In the end, they lost a lot and couldn't sell it at a low price. As a result, they were copied by others.

Now, what Li Mu wants to do is to copy Ford's bottom in advance.