From knock-off old-man's electric vehicles to industrial giant

Chapter 20 Beast!!

Meanwhile, Xu Yi was ramping up production capacity.

the other side.

Others have reached similar conclusions.

"The current microcars, or rather, low-speed commuter cars, are just the beginning..."

"With the implementation of the motorcycle ban and increasingly strict urban road regulations, the low-speed four-wheeled vehicle market will expand several times more than it is now."

"Mr. Zhou, I think we should continue to increase investment in the factory and R&D, transform the brand into a more formalized one as soon as possible, establish a large number of directly operated stores, and instill the concept that Leading Auto is the leading brand of legitimate microcars in the minds of all consumers. Then we can solidify our market position and steadily improve our business."

Conference room at Reading headquarters.

Vice President Liu Bin spoke eloquently about the market reports.

have to say.

His insights were quite forward-thinking, which drew frequent nods of agreement from the others in the meeting room.

Reading Company has only developed in the last few years.

I was fortunate to catch the wave and witness the transformation of microcars from a small niche market to a household name.

In the early 2000s, motorcycle sales were booming across the country, but now they are a thing of the past and have come to an end.

From a macro perspective, whether it's national policy guidance or the advancement of urbanization, there is still broad room for development in domestically produced four-wheeled vehicles.

"That's a good point. The company is developing, the market is progressing, so how's the progress of the offline directly-operated stores?"

Boss Zhou Tao began.

"President Zhou, we now have over forty self-operated brand stores, and the company's channels and warranty and after-sales services have been transferred to them. However, some regional distributors have expressed strong opinions, but after coordination, they have all accepted it," said Zhang Lan, the financial director, who was in charge of this matter.

Zhou Tao smiled slightly. He didn't take the opinions of some distributors to heart. They wanted to develop directly operated stores, and these sacrifices were necessary.

Getting better.

Everything is fine now.

Once the market for mini four-wheeled vehicles is unified, we can consider officially entering the car manufacturing market.

However, before that, we need to find a way to obtain a new energy vehicle manufacturing qualification.

Leiding Auto has been planning this for more than a year or two. Although it started by manufacturing two-wheeled vehicles and electric cars for the elderly, who doesn't have a dream of growing bigger and stronger?

and.

The cars they manufacture are, after all, products of a policy vacuum, and they need to find a way to legalize and legitimize their products as soon as possible.

Otherwise, if a major policy crackdown comes down one day, these cars will be completely unable to drive on the road and most of them will have to be scrapped.

The current market for completely scrapped motorcycles serves as a cautionary tale.

This is also why Zhou Tao is so eager to change her career path.

Only when you get ashore can you be considered truly secure.

How are sales lately?

The marketing manager said, "Boss, last month our sales reached 13,000 units, and this month we have already shipped 8,000 units. We expect to reach around 11,000 units by the end of the month."

"Why are sales still low?"

Zhou Tao frowned.

Normally, these two months should be the peak season for microcars.

"It's possible that the brand's direct-sale stores are undergoing a transformation, resulting in insufficient customer acquisition. The separation from some distributors has indeed affected sales to some extent," the marketing manager quickly explained.

"Okay, we need to focus more on offline sales. I want to see a significant increase in sales next month."

Zhou Tao nodded reluctantly, not really taking it seriously.

Once all their directly operated stores are in operation, they won't need so many dealerships anymore, and they'll have to switch to the traditional 4S store model.

It's normal for a transformation to have some impact on sales.

Don't panic, it's just a technical adjustment.

……

Another week has passed.

The internal sales report for Reading Auto has been released.

The results were quite surprising. The combined sales of its various models amounted to only slightly over 9600 units.

"What happened? The shipment volume for the last week didn't even reach a thousand units?"

Zhou Tao stared blankly at the market report in front of him.

These past two months have been a peak period for car sales, and as far as he knows, the other two leading companies haven't released any new models recently. So why have their sales suddenly plummeted?

at this time.

There was a knock on the door.

Vice President Liu Bin strode into the office, looking very nervous.

"Mr. Zhou, we've found the reason. Recently, a Xingchen brand four-wheeled vehicle has appeared on the market, attracting a lot of sales with its high-imitation appearance and price difference."

Star brand four-wheeled vehicle?

Zhou Tao took a closer look, and was completely stunned the next second!
The photo of the car that appeared before him left even the CEO of a leading company that specializes in making electric vehicles for the elderly slightly taken aback!
Porsche?
wrong!

Is this a four-wheeled vehicle?
With that appearance, he really couldn't hold it in anymore!
Which outlaw did this?
soon.

After the vice president explained the situation, he understood what had happened.

"You mean this car sells for just over 20,000 yuan, and its configuration is even better than ours, so it quickly opened up the market."

"Yes."

"How come Jinpeng and Lichi only saw a decrease of a little over a thousand units in sales, while our sales plummeted by several thousand units year-on-year!"

"Our investigation revealed that Zheng Guozhao, in collusion with several dealers, maliciously misappropriated the reputation of our Leding Auto to attract customers. They also widely distributed advertisements to our customer and after-sales groups, and even displayed our promotional signs to sell Xingchen cars..."

Liu Bin was covered in sweat; they had only discovered this mistake a few days ago.

Zhou Tao was stunned!

This is... something a human could do?
What a beast! ! !
The key issue is that the speed at which Star Cars stormed in was simply too fast.

When was their house raided?!

Has it been dealt with yet?

"We have already sent people to handle this urgently and removed all the promotional signs from their relevant stores."

"What about the customer base that was lured away?"

"Many of them have already taken delivery of their cars."

"Hold!!!!"

……

……

Yang Li is currently looking for suitable material for an episode.

As a professional car reviewer, and one of the earliest media professionals in China to make car review videos.

They successfully created the professional car review account "Fat Brother Talks Cars".

It created many memorable moments.

This includes the "Lifan 520 Incident," which went viral online previously.

The references are as follows:

Lacking experience in automobile manufacturing, Lifan Motors didn't know what sound to use as the car door closing alarm, so they ultimately chose the sound of a doorbell, which is present in almost every household...

Of all the vehicles I've ever driven, the Lifan is the first and only one whose steering wheel wasn't directly facing me...

So, since this isn't directly facing my steering wheel, how well does it handle? You could say it has almost no handling at all.

……

It was this humorous car review that made Yang Li an instant sensation.

In the years that followed, it was even regarded as the "bible of the automotive industry".

This also led to the collapse of Lifan Motors as soon as it went public.

In the early days of the car review community, it wasn't as toxic as it is now. At least a few years ago, before pay-to-win was so common, car reviewers didn't spout too much nonsense, and their reviews were quite professional.

But recently, Yang Li has clearly felt that his creative work has hit a bottleneck.

(End of this chapter)