Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 620 A Factory, A City

As June arrived, Xu Shenxue traveled to Guangcheng to attend the commissioning ceremony of the Guangcheng Second Production Base, a subsidiary of Hailan Automobile Group.

This second production base in Guangcheng is a key manufacturing base that Hailan Automobile Group has been focusing on developing in the past two years.

Hailan Automotive Group's main manufacturing bases in the southern region include its Shenzhen headquarters, a large-scale, comprehensive manufacturing base that not only handles automobile assembly but also includes motor manufacturing, battery manufacturing, and lidar manufacturing.

The second is the Guangcheng Automobile Manufacturing Base, which is a relatively simple automobile assembly base. It utilizes the rich and complete automotive supporting industry chain near Guangcheng, along with some core component supplies from the Shenzhen headquarters base, to manufacture automobiles on a large scale.

The third is the manufacturing base in Guancheng, Hailan Auto's Guancheng manufacturing base, which is mainly positioned as a battery factory and a factory for various core parts. The solid-state battery production capacity of this base is currently the largest single solid-state battery factory under Hailan Auto, with an annual production capacity of over 100 gigawatt-hours. The fourth phase of the project is currently under construction, and after completion, it will be able to add another 30 gigawatt-hours of production capacity.

The solid-state batteries, motors, and other components produced at this Dongguan manufacturing base are mostly not used in the domestic market, but are supplied to other assembly plants of Hailan Automotive Group overseas, such as the Mexican, Thai, Brazilian, Spanish, and Hungarian plants, as well as the newly commissioned Indonesian and Turkish plants.

Hailan Automotive Group has a relatively large number of assembly plants overseas. Some of these overseas plants are pure kit assembly plants, where almost all important components are shipped from China for assembly and production. They only purchase a small number of low-tech parts locally.

Others manufacture low-tech components locally, but still ship the core components from China.

However, no matter which overseas factory it is, it does not have the capability to manufacture core or high-value-added components!
Especially the core components such as the power battery, motor system, braking system, and steering system... not to mention computing chips, various sensors, and various chips.

Therefore, the production capacity of Hailan Automotive Group's numerous overseas factories also needs to be guaranteed by Hailan Automotive's many parts factories in China.

Many factories in Dongguan do this kind of work!

The above three locations are the main manufacturing bases of Hailan Automobile in the southern region. Hailan Automobile also aims to further increase its production capacity and facilitate large-scale exports from nearby locations.

Starting last year, a large-scale new manufacturing base was built in a location on the outskirts of Guangcheng. In addition to the final assembly of automobiles, there are also supporting solid-state battery and motor factories, which is Guangcheng's second base.

After more than a year of construction, the Guangcheng Second Base of Hailan Automobile Group was completed and put into operation.

Bao Yongyan, who accompanied Xu Shenxue to the production launch ceremony, introduced to Xu Shenxue: "The Guangcheng Second Base is designed to have a total vehicle assembly capacity of 400,000 vehicles. As expected, most of this capacity will be used for vehicle exports!"

"Currently, the first and second production lines are in operation, with an estimated annual capacity of 250,000 vehicles. The third production line is expected to be put into operation next spring!"
"In addition to the automobile assembly plant, we have also established a solid-state battery plant in this second base in Guangcheng. The plant officially broke ground last winter and has now completed land construction and factory construction. A large number of manufacturing equipment have begun to enter the site. The subsequent equipment installation and commissioning are expected to last about six months. At the latest, this solid-state battery plant will be able to start production by December this year. Its designed capacity is 30 gigawatt-hours, which is sufficient to meet the early needs of automobile production at the second base!"

"At the same time, we have also launched the second phase of the solid-state battery project, which is expected to be put into production in July next year, with a designed capacity of 40 gigawatt-hours!"

"After both phases of the project are completed and put into operation, the solid-state battery production capacity of Guangcheng's second base will reach 70 gigawatt-hours, making it the second largest solid-state battery production base in the group, which is sufficient to meet the initial needs of Guangcheng's two major automobile assembly bases."

The solid-state battery factories of Hailan Automotive Group are actually quite scattered, except for the solid-state battery factory in Dongguan City, which is relatively special. They are basically built around the automobile assembly base.

In other words, wherever there is a vehicle assembly base of Hailan Automotive Group, there will be a supporting solid-state battery factory... mainly to facilitate local supply and reduce supply chain costs.

Guangcheng is no exception. The two phases of the solid-state battery factory are basically for supporting the two major automobile assembly bases in Guangcheng.

"Our future plan in Guangcheng is to increase automobile production capacity to one million vehicles per year. In addition to automobile assembly, this will also include the production capacity of supporting motors, batteries and other components, forming a comprehensive production base and further reducing supply chain costs!"

"In this way, the production capacity in Guangcheng can form a good synergy with the headquarters base in Shenzhen and the base in Dongguan, supplying the domestic southern market while also having sufficient production capacity for exports!"

In Hailan Auto's production capacity layout, the production capacity in other regions is used to supply the domestic market, while the production capacity in Guangcheng and Shenzhen is used to supply the domestic market and also to export complete vehicles. As for the production capacity in Dongguan, it is used to export core components.

There are many factories, and it looks a bit chaotic, but it's actually quite clear.

Of course, the above refers to large manufacturing bases, and these are Hailan Auto's own manufacturing bases, not including various supply chain manufacturers.

A single Hailan car has more than 20,000 parts in the traditional sense... and Hailan Auto Group cannot manufacture all of these parts itself.

On the surface, Hailan Auto manufactures its own core subsystems such as power batteries, motors, body, and a few LiDAR/automotive-grade cameras.

Even within these self-made core subsystems, a large number of spare parts and raw materials still need to be purchased... Strictly speaking, Hailan Auto is just a system integrator.

Behind it are hundreds of Tier 1 suppliers... and below Tier 1 suppliers, there are Tier 2 suppliers, and then there are even more.

When a large automotive giant like Hailan Automotive Group builds a large production base, it requires its supply chain companies to invest and build factories there as well, in order to reduce supply chain costs.

This is why Hailan Auto attracted so much attention and even fierce competition when it wanted to build an automobile manufacturing base... Behind an automobile assembly base is an entire automobile industry chain, which generates a huge amount of employment and tax revenue.

Putting aside everything else, the sheer number of workers and the tertiary sector they generate through their daily consumption is enormous!

Guangcheng Second Base is one such example. The area surrounding Guangcheng Second Base, which was originally a remote suburb, has even rapidly developed into a bustling small city.

For such large manufacturing bases, it is easy for a factory to become a city.

Xu Shenxue attended the production launch ceremony of the second base that day and even personally test-drove the first Hailan SLMC that rolled off the production line... As for his feelings, he naturally didn't feel anything.

The Lavida SLMC has been a mature model for many years, and the annual upgrades and replacements are just minor modifications, but the overall vehicle structure design has not changed much.

Making changes isn't easy; the entire chassis would need to be redesigned, and it's impossible to change it every year.

The next-generation Hailan SLM C from Hailan Automotive Group is still under development and is expected to be launched to the market next year... At that time, people will be able to see a completely new Hailan SLMC inside and out.

After inspecting the Guangcheng Second Base, Xu Shenxue went to Guancheng to check on the production of Weiku Industry and saw the new generation S21 mobile phone that was scheduled to be launched in August.

There's not much to say about this phone; there aren't any major changes, except it uses a new SOC chip...

Of course, for promotional purposes, Zhiyun Group specifically used the name of a four-nanometer process for the new SOC, calling it the so-called N4 process.

In reality, the N4 process is just a low-power version of the 5nm process, with some improvements, but not significant ones.

The five-nanometer process produced by current EUV lithography machines in a single exposure has basically reached its physical limit. It is no longer possible to further reduce the size of the process itself. The only options are to try to increase the transistor density or reduce the power consumption as much as possible by changing the shape of the transistors.

This 4-nanometer process means that the transistor density remains the same, but the power consumption is slightly reduced.

However, there's no need to explain these technical details to the general public; the official explanation is simply that it's a four-nanometer process.

It's not just Zhiyun Group that does this; TSMC and 4Star also like to do it, boasting about their process nodes, especially 4Star.

Currently, the four major semiconductor manufacturers, namely Intel, Samsung, TSMC, and Zhiyun Microelectronics, have very different process nodes that they claim to be.

For example, at the 7nm process node, Zhiyun Microelectronics has a transistor density of 100 million, Samsung and TSMC have more than 90 million, while Intel hasn't even gotten it yet... It's not that their technology is inferior, but their 10nm process already has a transistor density of 100 million.

So in reality, Intel's 10-nanometer process is equivalent to Zhiyun Microelectronics' and Samsung's and TSMC's 7-nanometer processes... In terms of technical specifications, they are about the same.

At the 5-nanometer process node, Zhuyun Microelectronics has a transistor density of 200 million, while TSMC has a density of over 170 million.

Intel's corresponding technology is what they call a 7-nanometer process, which should have a transistor density of 170 to 180 million, but they haven't gotten it working yet.

But what about the four-star side... they've already boasted about having a process node count of over 120 million as a five-nanometer process.

When it comes to boasting, Samsung is even more ruthless than Zhiyun Microelectronics... This year, Zhiyun Microelectronics is calling its second-generation 5nm process, a low-power version of the 5nm process, a 4nm process... If nothing unexpected happens, TSMC and Samsung will continue to follow suit with their boasting.

Although the so-called 4-nanometer process is not a big improvement over the 5-nanometer process, it is still an improvement. The reduction in power consumption also means less heat dissipation, which allows the chip size to be made larger... The internal space of a mobile phone is very limited, and heat dissipation is also very difficult to manage.

Therefore, if the chip's power consumption is not well controlled, simply increasing the chip size and the number of transistors will result in a super-powerful chip... just like Qualcomm's early Snapdragon 810 chip, which is still remembered by many consumers over the years.

The N4 process reduces power consumption, allowing for a larger chip size under the same heat dissipation conditions, thereby improving chip performance.

Therefore, the S21 phone this year does have an overall performance improvement, but it's not very significant... Of course, even without the improvement, the performance of the current S series flagship phones is sufficient.

With the current level of technological development, the performance of the Zhiyun S series phones is actually a bit overkill!
As in previous years, the latest chip, which uses the N4 process and is more expensive, will only be used in the S21 Max and S21 Max Pro models.

The S21 standard edition and S21 Pro will use the 5-nanometer chip released last year to reduce chip costs... This 5-nanometer chip will also be used in the A21 phone to be released next spring.

These days, with the advancement of technology, the investment cost of advanced semiconductor processes is rising year by year, and the cost of chips using advanced processes is also gradually increasing.

It's gotten to the point where many products are unaffordable...

Zhiyun Microelectronics' 5nm process technology has primarily been used in various computing chips, mainly the GPU cores of the APO series graphics cards, followed by the S-series and W-series SOC chips. A smaller portion is used in its own CPU chips, and it also manufactures some of Huawei's self-developed SOCs.

The above items constitute the majority of production capacity... Of course, even these orders alone are large enough to keep the demand for Zhiyun Microelectronics' 5nm process capacity insufficient.

Currently, many products still use chips that are based on 28-nanometer and 14-nanometer process nodes. Even 7-nanometer technology is rarely used, let alone 5-nanometer technology.

Currently, many smart home devices, as well as other industries such as telecommunications and automobiles, are shifting their chip manufacturing processes to 28-nanometer and 14-nanometer technologies on a large scale, resulting in an ever-growing market.

This is also why many domestic semiconductor manufacturers are actively investing in these two process nodes, as the market demand for 28nm and 14nm process capacity is increasing...

Of course, for Zhiyun Microelectronics, this is already a mature process, so the contract manufacturing price is just average and the profit is not high. Zhiyun Microelectronics has long given up on expanding its production capacity at these two process nodes.

Currently, Zhiyun Microelectronics' capacity expansion is concentrated on the 7nm and 5nm processes, while it is also making large-scale investments in 3nm and even 2nm processes.

They are playing with EUV lithography machines as the core of advanced technology, and they are eyeing the most profitable piece of the semiconductor manufacturing market.

The overall changes in the semiconductor industry have affected many industries, especially many companies outside the industry, but the impact on Zhuyun Group is not significant.

Others can't afford these advanced chips, but Zhiyun Group can, and they can make a fortune from using them.

The reason is that Zhiyun Group's products are all high-end goods with high gross profit margins, which can support such high-priced chip components.

The S21 series phones are a prime example!
After seeing the S21 series mobile phones in the early stage of small-scale trial production at Weiku Industry, Xu Shenxue did not stay for long and quickly went to the Dongguan base of Hailan Automobile Group.

The main purpose was to visit the local solid-state battery factory!
After all, it is the largest battery factory under Hailan Auto... and even the largest power battery factory in the world, so Xu Shenxue attaches great importance to it.

Even if such a public inspection is just a cursory visit, a symbolic look at the factory buildings and workshops, and a short meeting with the factory's management, it's impossible to actually see anything too in-depth.

However, nowadays, Xu Shenxue doesn't often need to see or solve problems on the spot. He only needs to show that he values ​​the matter, and then other managers in the company will naturally follow up.

For Xu Shenxue, it is very important to promptly convey his attitudes to the senior and middle management of his various companies; in fact, it can be said to be his main daily task.

At the Dongguan battery factory of Hailan Automotive Group, Xu Shenxue also saw the most advanced and largest solid-state battery production line in human technology.

Bao Yongyan explained to Xu Shenxue that this solid-state battery factory in Dongguan is currently a model base for solid-state battery manufacturing under Hailan Auto, as well as a research and development base... Hailan Battery Technology Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hailan Auto Group, is located here.

Xu Shenxue also took some time to meet briefly with the management team and key technical personnel of Hailan Battery, boosting their morale and encouraging them to continue their efforts in developing better solid-state batteries. He also urged them to further deepen their research and development, gradually reduce the manufacturing cost of solid-state batteries, and expand production capacity.

Solid-state batteries are still quite expensive. They're fine for high-end vehicles, but they're more difficult to use in mid- to low-end vehicles.

Especially for entry-level mainstream models priced around 100,000 yuan, cost control is extremely stringent, and the gross profit margin is not high. If solid-state batteries are used, car manufacturers will lose money on every car they sell.

Therefore, Xu Shenxue still hopes that the cost of solid-state batteries can be reduced in the next few years, so that they can be more widely adopted and their influence can be further expanded.

However, despite this, the technical difficulty is still very high, and it's hard to say when the cost will be reduced to the point where it can be used in low-end models.

While Xu Shenxue was still inspecting Dongguan, another industry giant under his control, Xiaojiang Technology, also released their new generation of cutting-edge technology products.

The second-generation X14 drone!
This press conference is quite interesting. Ordinary people don't pay much attention to it; at most, they'll just be a little surprised. Ordinary companies don't care much either. The low-altitude economy has been touted for years, but it still hasn't taken off. Whether it's for carrying people or cargo, AI-driven drones haven't made any major breakthroughs yet.

But there is one group of people who are very concerned... that is the armies of many countries.

Because...they are the main users of the X14 drone!

This is what makes Xiaojiang Technology special. Although many of their products are for civilian use, from design and development to sales, they are all geared towards the civilian market.

However, because their products are so good, many countries buy them for direct military use. A typical example is their aerial photography drones, which can be seen in the armies of many countries, and Xiaojiang Technology's drones have frequently appeared in some local wars.

And the X14 drone goes without saying!
They were originally designed for the low-altitude economy, hoping to use them to transport goods and even people, becoming air freight trucks, air taxis... but market acceptance was too poor, and very few were actually used by civilians.

On the contrary, the military forces of various countries have purchased a lot of these helicopters under the guise of civilian projects through various white gloves... mainly for low-altitude transport to the front lines, which is safer and cheaper than using light helicopters.

Now that the new generation X14 drone has been released, they are naturally paying close attention!
In response to this situation, Xiaojiang Technology has repeatedly emphasized that their X14 drone is a civilian drone.

Unfortunately, nobody took it seriously!
After all, many countries are already using the X14 drone in their exercises. Even the United States has purchased a lot of X14 drones, replaced them with their own communication modules, and made some modifications before using them.

They were even deployed directly to the battlefields in West Asia to participate in frontline combat... And let me tell you, the X14 drone's low-altitude flight performance is too superior, much safer than helicopters, and it is quite useful for supplying materials to forward outposts.

After all, traditional helicopters are already at their limit when they can fly to the treetops, and they can't sustain that for long. If they don't take it long enough, the pilots won't be able to keep up, and a slight lapse in attention could lead to a crash and loss of life.

After all, low-altitude, high-speed flight of a helicopter is actually very dangerous!

The X14 drone, piloted entirely by artificial intelligence, can maintain rapid flight at a height of several meters above the ground... Artificial intelligence does not suffer from inattention, fatigue, or psychological issues.

As long as the machine can withstand it, it can continue to fly at its limit!

This low-altitude, high-speed flight mode allows the X14 to easily evade various traditional air-to-air radar detections... It flies so low that, not to mention the curvature of the Earth, any tree can easily block its view, making it extremely safe.

This thing is now being used by various countries as a ground-hugging aircraft... otherwise, they wouldn't buy it!
Faced with this situation, no matter how much Xiaojiang Technology tries to argue, it's useless... You're just an arms dealer!

The management of Xiaojiang Technology is also quite helpless about this!

They don't want to be associated with arms dealers, since their drone business sells globally, and being associated with arms dealers would easily make them targets.

But other people insist on buying their civilian drones and using them for military purposes... there's nothing they can do about it!

(End of this chapter)