Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 236 A Group of Automobile Manufacturers Are Dumbfounded

On April 14, the first batch of pre-order channels were officially opened on the official website of Hailan Automobile.

The pre-order channel is limited to the domestic mainland market. As for the markets in other regions, it will take time for the product to be launched in the future.

Launching a car overseas is much more complicated than launching a mobile phone, and it is not easy to obtain various licenses.

A little-known fact is that there is an international "1958 Agreement", which was originally an automobile safety standard agreement within the European Union. Later, many non-European countries joined, such as Japan and South Korea.

At the same time, many countries in the world do not join but cite this technical standard.

If a car wants to be sold in these countries, it must comply with the technical standards in the agreement.

However, the Chinese region did not join the agreement. It did not join when its automobile industry was weak, and it did not join when its electric vehicle industry became strong.

What is more noteworthy is that the United States did not join either.

This is not simply about mutual recognition of safety standards, but more of a battle within the automotive industry. It is very complicated and cannot be explained in just a few words.

In short, this is a set of rules of the game established by Europe itself, and Japan and South Korea chose to succumb for the sake of the EU market decades later.

But China and the United States ignore them. These two countries are the world's first and second largest automobile markets and major automobile producing countries. They each have their own safety standards and will not follow the Europeans and be controlled by them.

Therefore, the world's automobile market is more complicated. For example, a car that meets EU standards may not be able to enter the US market for sale, nor may it be able to enter the Chinese market for sale!
These three sets of standards are not universal.

Of course, this is not a problem for most car companies with a bit of brains. They just need to carry out localized adaptation and optimization for the markets of different countries. This is what most international car manufacturers do.

Of course, there are also some manufacturers who think they are so awesome that they shout about going overseas without optimizing anything, only to find that they cannot pass the local technical standards and are not allowed to be registered.

It got a bump on its head and still blames others for not letting it in!

Brother, you are going there to make money and reap the benefits, not to be a boss... Can you please be a little more careful?

As for the matter of cutting leeks, leeks can say whatever they want to hear. The leeks say that sweet tofu pudding is delicious, but you insist that salty tofu pudding is authentic and all others are unorthodox. Do you still expect the leeks to open their wallets?

Although HaiLan Automobile has not yet expanded overseas, its senior executives all have an international vision and have already made corresponding preparations for various countries.

Otherwise, there would be no exemption clauses prepared in advance for the different legal standards of each country!
Some detailed equipment of the car, such as plug-in lights, left and right steering wheels, etc., need to be modified in advance according to the standards of each country, designed locally, and then undergo various certifications to obtain licenses.

These things take time and cannot be accomplished in a short period of time!

There is also another problem, that is, the automobile factories under Hailan Automobile have not been completely completed yet. Some of the current experience cars are hand-made, not produced on an assembly line.

If you want small-scale production, you have to wait until after September, and real large-scale mass production will have to wait until next year.

This means that this year's production will be extremely limited, with the total output estimated to be only tens of thousands of vehicles.

Due to the troubles of listing overseas and limited production, Hailan Automobile currently only plans to launch this coupe in the domestic market. It will subsequently be listed and sold in other regions or countries depending on the situation, and the earliest will be next year.

HaiLian Automobile only allows pre-orders through domestic channels and has not opened overseas sales channels.

As soon as this news came out, it attracted a lot of criticism from potential overseas users, who believed that HaiLan Automobile was discriminating... What's the matter? They think we can't afford it. It's just a car worth sixty or seventy thousand dollars, but they act like we can't afford it.

Come here quickly and put it on the market for sale, otherwise you will be in trouble!
But even so, it cannot change HaiLan Automobile's established strategy. There are some capable and trouble-free overseas users who can purchase the cars in China and directly ship them back to their home countries, make some modifications themselves and prepare various documents for legal registration.

----

After the official pre-order channel of Hailan Automobile Industry was opened, many people began to look forward to how many pre-order orders there would be for this smart car that almost created human history.

It is worth mentioning that this pre-order is irreversible, and the deposit requires 10,000 to 30,000 yuan. If you don’t want it after placing the order, the money is non-refundable.

This is a time that truly tests Xu Shenxue's personal appeal, as well as HaiLan Auto's autonomous driving technology and marketing department's strengths.

Early in the morning of the 15th, Xu Shenxue received a report from Hailan Automobile: the pre-order orders on the first day reached more than 7,000 vehicles.

If no one would rather give up the deposit and cancel the order later, the sales volume will exceed 4 billion if the delivery is successful!
Moreover, as a high-tech enterprise under Xu Shenxue, HaiLan Automobile continues to uphold the tradition of high gross profit margins. According to HaiLan Automobile's internal calculations and estimates, with an annual production of 100,000 vehicles, the gross profit margin can exceed 20%.

This gross profit margin will gradually expand with the increase in production and sales volume. If the annual output can reach one million vehicles, after greatly diluting the R&D costs and production costs, according to their estimates, the gross profit margin can even reach 30%.

Simply put, the more you sell, the more you earn!

If it can achieve sales of one million, then HaiLan Automobile’s automobile business will be extremely profitable!
It’s just that it’s impossible in the short term because the market capacity is not that big.

However, the pre-order orders on the first day reached more than 7,000 vehicles, which is also worth celebrating. These 7,000 pre-order orders were all obtained thanks to Xu Shenxue's personal appeal, the uniqueness of intelligent driving, and some videos and pictures.

Almost all of the pre-order users have not even seen the actual car. It is worth mentioning that a considerable number of the first batch of pre-orders were placed by people in the automotive industry... You can tell at a glance that they want to buy it and take it apart to see how awesome this Aquamarine is, understand its technical features, and then wonder if they can copy it.

There is no shame in plagiarizing the products of Xu Shenxue's high-tech enterprises!
In the mobile phone industry, other mobile phone manufacturers, even Apple, are copying Zhiyun phones every day, but they just can't copy many things.

There are also drones. After the launch of the Xinjiang drone owned by Xu Shenxue, although the market is very niche, it still attracted the attention of many companies, especially high-tech companies and even Internet companies. Many drone startup teams have emerged in China and have obtained investments from these Internet companies.

People are also heading into the new field of drones, but it is difficult to do well one by one.

Today, electric vehicles are no exception. If Xu Shenxue’s HaiLan Automobile can make electric vehicles, so can we.

It's just a set of batteries and a motor, and then four wheels and a steering wheel or something. It's very simple... Even some companies that make agricultural machinery and three-wheeled vehicles have the confidence to do it after seeing it.

I can't make a car, but it won't take me long to make an electric tricycle, an electric two-wheeler, an electric old man's car, etc.... I don't even need a lithium battery, a lead-acid battery will do.

However, for regular car companies, it is much more formal.

After the launch of Aqualung, many car companies have quickly launched corresponding plans and want to develop their own electric cars. Even if they don’t, they will prepare a project first just in case.

Although I don’t know what the future of electric vehicles will be like, since Xu Shenxue has done it, I can just follow suit.

As for not following, what's the matter? Can you have a better strategic vision than Xu Shenxue? Why don't you become the richest man in the world?
Based on this mentality, after the launch of Aquamarine, especially after the subsequent first-day pre-orders came out, well-known automobile manufacturers in the world have successively launched the so-called electric vehicle projects. Of course, the degree of importance they attach is definitely different. Some manufacturers attach great importance to it and are prepared to invest huge sums of money to do it, while some manufacturers are purely following the trend and doing it casually.

However, they were soon collectively dumbfounded. Why are lithium batteries so dangerous?

Everyone on earth knows that Aqualung and Tesla next door use lithium batteries, and lithium batteries are something that everyone has seen a lot. They are found in a lot of various electronic products.

But how to use it in cars?

Their R&D personnel took a few lithium batteries and tried them out, and they exploded and caught fire...

Then, everyone asked a soul-searching question: How dare you use such a dangerous thing as a car energy source? You think your life is too long!
The most important thing is, how did you two manage to avoid fire or explosion?
Motor and electronic control seem simple, but it is also very troublesome to do well. An energy recovery system and a power control system are not so easy to implement.

Just doing the above three things is extremely troublesome, and the investment is not something that can be solved with just one or two hundred million yuan. Many car companies have estimated that if they want to do it, they have to go around a lot of Tesla and Hailan’s patents, and it will cost at least tens of billions of yuan, and it may not succeed.

BYD on the side silently looked at his own lithium battery pack, motor, and electronic control, and then smiled. Fortunately, he started playing with electric cars early, even ahead of the world's richest man!

Now is the perfect time to take advantage of the global popularity of electric vehicles and launch new electric vehicle models to seize the market!
The above are just conventional electric vehicles, which are things that other car companies can copy, but what is the real core selling point of Aquamarine?
It’s not just an electric car, but its automatic assisted driving system!
A black technology widely promoted by the media as autonomous driving.

The automatic assisted driving technology is the core technology that makes Hailan Automobile popular all over the world and attracts countless people's attention. If it is just an electric car, it will not have such a sensational effect...

It's just an electric car. It's not something we haven't seen before. It's nothing special. People have been playing with this thing for more than a hundred years. In the past few decades, it has only appeared once in a while, but that's it.

But the automatic assisted driving technology is different. In the media's mouth, this technology has become autonomous driving technology, which is a true black technology.

However, there is a problem... To be honest, this thing has nothing to do with the traditional automotive industry. In the world, the only autonomous driving manufacturer besides Zhiyun is Tesla, and there are also a few Internet companies, such as Google and Baidu.

Then a group of car manufacturers were dumbfounded. Whether it was autonomous driving or assisted driving, they were not good at this and could not copy it!

Some people have also analyzed that the underlying core technology of the automatic assisted driving system used by Hailan Automobile is Zhiyun Technology's artificial intelligence!
If you want to develop automatic assisted driving, you must first develop artificial intelligence!
Artificial intelligence is the most cutting-edge and technologically advanced high-tech field today.

Countless experts and scholars have confidently stated that this is the true fourth industrial revolution in the history of human development.

You may not believe what experts and scholars say, but you cannot ignore the actions of a large number of the world's top companies.

Since Zhiyun Group officially released the artificial intelligence Xiaoyun last year, a large number of wealthy high-tech companies in the world, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and a number of high-tech companies in China have all flocked to develop this artificial intelligence, but have all been struggling to survive.

R&D funds are being poured down in billions, but the R&D results are pitifully few!
Because Zhiyun has never published the technical principles of its artificial intelligence, let alone any core source code.

To the extent that other companies now don’t even understand the technical principles of how Zhiyun implements artificial intelligence.

This shows how difficult the technology of artificial intelligence is!

At this time, you tell a group of traditional car manufacturers who have been dealing with machinery all their lives that the next generation of cars will be equipped with artificial intelligence. If you want to keep up with the times, you must first develop artificial intelligence...

People will be dumbfounded when they hear this!

Are you crazy!

Is that something we can do?

It’s not a suitable major, I don’t have the ability, you know!

(End of this chapter)