Perfection of Rebirth

Chapter 810 The money-burning auto industry

"Outsiders actually don't know how much money the auto industry burns. As an outsider, I actually entered this field after fully understanding it, so you don't have to worry about the lack of funds for Guanghui Automobile," Jiang Hui told Pi Wei said.

Since Pi Wei was worried, Jiang Hui felt that he needed to say a few more words to dispel his worries.

After all, not everyone knows the future direction of the world economy, not everyone knows that 2008 is the best time to acquire assets, and not everyone knows Jiang Hui's various plans for the future.

Besides, since Pi Wei has this worry, it is estimated that some other executives of Brilliant Motors also have it, but they just didn't say it.

"Mr. Jiang, factory investment is only a threshold for investment in the automotive industry. The subsequent research and development and promotion of new models are also very expensive, and this kind of money is a continuous investment," Pi Wei continued.

Jiang Hui actually has a concept in his heart about how much money it will cost to develop a model.

The Hongqi H7 of later generations was developed based on the crown platform, and it is said that it cost more than 100 billion yuan. If it is completely developed from scratch, it is estimated that it will be more than this amount.

On that day, Hongqi's expenses were an exception, a "joke" in the industry, and could not represent the overall level of the industry. After all, if the car companies were all at this level, they would have gone to Northwest Wind long ago.

However, at least it can be seen that the auto industry is indeed very expensive.

"I know that developing a new car is very expensive. All our first models are based on Ford's powertrain and CRV body structure. After making some adjustments in appearance, the next model is still based on the same. To build it with ideas, first let Brilliant Automobile have hematopoietic ability, alleviate its demand for external funds, and embark on the road of a virtuous circle.”

"Mr. Jiang, I am relieved that you can realize this. Our medium-sized SUV has basically completed the preliminary development and has begun to enter the product verification stage. After a few months, our equipment installation is completed, and we can start small batch production trials. Models, further various verifications,” Pi Wei said.

"Do we have to do a lot of verification?" Jiang Hui asked a layman.

"There are so many. Compared with other mass consumer products, the comprehensive evaluation of the car product should be well-deserved in terms of complexity and reliability.

The number of casualties due to traffic accidents in the world has always been the highest among various injury factors.Although the reasons for this vary widely, many of them are subjective reasons of people rather than the real reasons of car design.

However, as the most commonly used means of transportation, automobiles are always difficult to get rid of, which also leads to the extremely strict pursuit of quality and reliability in automobile research and development." Pi Wei didn't think Jiang Hui asked this question too much. Ignorance, after all, is not an industry insider, it is difficult to understand what tests a car needs to do before it goes on the market.

"Furthermore, product verification is the most expensive part of product development," continued Pi Wei.

"Oh, is that so? Why is product verification the most costly part?" Ask if you don't understand, and Jiang Hui didn't pretend to understand. If you don't ask now, it will be easier to make a fool of yourself in the future.

"Although the technology of virtual analysis has been greatly improved in these years, and many experiments have been replaced by virtual analysis, but in the process of developing a car, hundreds of real cars are manufactured for various experiments. of.

The cost of these pre-produced real cars is very high-at least dozens of times, or even hundreds of times, the price of mass-produced models.

In other words, it is equivalent to spending the equivalent of tens of thousands of mass-produced models in the early verification.” Pi Wei’s answer is indeed a bit unexpected.

"Do you need so many different cars for testing?".

"Yes, throughout the R&D process, we probably have three rounds of integration verification work at the vehicle level, and the rest of the component and subsystem level verification also follow these three rounds, but an additional round or rounds of testing is also very normal.

The verification at the three-wheel vehicle level corresponds to the three levels of verification of infrastructure components, preliminary design concepts, and final design products.

Before the start of each verification stage, some prototype vehicles will be manufactured with parts that have completed their own verification, and then the verification test specifications for the entire vehicle will be run. The content of the test is different in each round, and the problems found are different. These problems After being resolved, it will be checked in the next round of verification. "

"That is to say, the reason why our product verification is the most expensive development stage is because we need to make more than 100 prototypes?" Jiang Hui said summarizing some of Pi Wei's content.

"Yes or no, these more than 100 prototypes must account for the bulk of the cost, but product verification still has a lot of other places to spend money. For example, our crash test will have a relatively high cost. In addition to the prototype vehicles required for the crash test itself, the crash dummies used in the test are also very expensive.

At present, only one safety system company in the United States supplies collision dummies in the world, each selling for 100 million yuan.In the crash test, four dummies will be placed in the car, and more than 100 sensors will be installed all over the body to obtain various data of a simulated real-life collision.

For example, the head sensor mainly measures acceleration, and if it is too large, it may cause brain death; the neck sensor mainly measures shear force, whether it will cause neck fracture or serious spinal injury.

In addition, more than 10 high-speed cameras are installed on the left, right and top of the collision platform, which can record more than 1000 photos per second for researchers to analyze every detail of the collision in detail.

All of these are piled up with money," Pi Wei said with emotion.

"It's no wonder that independent brands have been unable to compete with joint venture brands in recent years. Cars really need some accumulation."

"Yes, product verification alone is not something ordinary independent brands can invest in. After all, there are too many projects involved, including tests in various working environments, such as TLF under high temperature conditions, and extreme cold conditions. In Heihe, the high-humidity working condition is in Hainan, and everything from all over the world must be taken care of.

There are also all kinds of roads around the world, asphalt roads, cement roads, gravel roads, dirt roads, uphill, downhill, and even bad roads that have been crushed by heavy vehicles.The differences in the usage habits of different customers also require different targeted tests.Nowadays, various complex functions are integrated on the whole vehicle, and the testing of these new functions increases the workload of verification.

The reason why the joint venture brand has a good reputation after all is that they have done enough testing work, and many problems have been solved before mass production, unlike independent brands, which always have some minor problems when used.” Pi Wei said.

(End of this chapter)