Chapter 1439 Strangle the Upstream From the Upstream

On the plane, Li Mu planned the overall path of the electric vehicle project for Elon Musk.

In the first step, Li Mu and him jointly invested 50 million US dollars with him at a ratio of 7:3 to establish a new energy vehicle company. Part of the 50 million US dollars was used to acquire the R&D team he was following up, and the company should bring results together. All patents are taken by the team, and the rest are used as research and development funds for this team;

The next key public relations direction of this team is the related technology of lithium battery pack, followed by the drive motor technology, and the third is the peripheral supporting technology;

Second, Elon Musk needs to set up a professional team responsible for automobile research and development. While designing the frame, chassis, safety and aerodynamics of new energy vehicles, he has an in-depth understanding of several private automobile companies in China, so as to provide Prepare for the next acquisition;

There are two options for acquisition. One is to directly acquire a domestic auto company, and the other is to acquire the production line of an auto company. The former requires a relatively large amount of capital. If the funds are abundant at that time, it will be no problem. If the funds are not so generous, choose It is not easy for many domestic car companies to acquire production lines. When the production capacity cannot be fully opened, it is not impossible to squeeze several production lines and free up one production line to realize the realization. For Li Mu, the new energy vehicle project , having a low-end production line is also much better than starting everything from scratch;

Third, Li Mu specifically asked Elon Musk to give up his blind pursuit of excellence when running the new energy vehicle project, and not to build a new energy vehicle with a unit price of 100,000 US dollars. Things, in the first two or three years, who else could they sell to other than pretenders in the Internet industry?

Elon Musk has no way of understanding the idea that building a car is the "simplest" concept of four wheels and a sofa. He thinks that cars, like launch vehicles, are the crystallization of modern industrial achievements. To build a good car, there are too many There are too many places to work hard, so he said to Li Mu: "Mr. Li, I hope that our future new energy vehicle is an excellent, outstanding and even epoch-making product, it may even be completed within 3.5 seconds. From 0 to 60 mph, it's powerful, quiet, intelligent and futuristic..."

Li Mu asked him, "Do you know which is the most profitable auto company in the world?"

"Yes," Elon Musk said. "Toyota."

Li Mu nodded and asked him: "Why is Toyota the most profitable? In this year's corporate rankings, his operating income is lower than that of GM and Ford, but his net profit is dozens of times that of GM, and Ford's net profit is even negative. Although Volkswagen It is very profitable, but the profit margin and net profit are lower than Toyota, why do you think this is?"

Elon Musk smiled slightly and said: "Mr. Li, Toyota's entire group is more flexible, smoother and more efficient than other auto companies, and it captures market demand very accurately. For consumers,

Product fit is high. "

Li Mu asked him: "Do you think that you want to build a $100,000-level electric car, do you accurately capture market demand? Does it fit well with consumers?"

"this……"

Elon Musk was at a loss for words, but he was still reluctant to adopt what Li Mu said in his heart. He understood what Li Mu meant. It was nothing more than lowering his figure, lowering the threshold, and then selling low-threshold new energy vehicles to the world. , This may indeed allow new energy vehicles to have more audiences, but it still lacks the shocking sense of shock. If the products created are not good enough, it will lose a lot of motivation for him.

Li Mu also saw his mood, and said lightly: "I don't object to your idea of ​​building a top-notch new energy sports car, you can make this team move towards this goal in the future, after all, there is a higher specification of technology accumulation. It's always good, we can be backward compatible at any time, but you can't pin the future of the company on a product that is not grounded enough, so in the choice of the main model, you must lower the positioning, put more production capacity, Used to mass-produce cheaper goods.”

Elon Musk nodded and said, "Okay Mr. Li, I understand what you mean."

Li Mu knew that he understood what he meant, but he didn't know if he agreed with his point of view, but let him set up the stall first. If he insisted on taking the old road that Tesla has walked in his life in the future, then he Absolutely not allowed.

Afterwards, Li Mu changed the subject and reminded him: "Since you have decided to do new energy, you have to catch up on many things now, otherwise it will be easy to be strangled by others in the future."

Elon Musk asked subconsciously: "What do you mean?"

"Battery." Li Mu said, "I don't know how well the team you mentioned can develop battery packs and battery management technology. I only know that the capacity of an 18650 battery is only two or three thousand mAh. If you want to have A few hundred kilometers of battery life, so I'm afraid at least a few thousand such batteries?"

Elon Musk nodded and said: "Yes, Mr. Li, under normal circumstances, we need at least 7,000 batteries to ensure a battery life of 400 kilometers."

Li Mu sighed: "If you sell a car, others will sell 7,000 batteries. If they make you $1 per battery, then if you sell a car, you will help the battery manufacturer earn $7,000. , it is still unknown whether we can earn seven thousand dollars by selling a car by ourselves. If most of the net profit is intercepted by them in the future, then we will lose all the initiative. You have to be prepared for this issue. , don’t be caught by the neck of upstream raw material supply companies instead.”

Elon Musk said: "Many companies have 18650 battery technology, but there is a slight gap in product performance and quality control. This market cannot form a monopoly, so I think we will still have a negotiating advantage in front of battery companies in the future. of."

Li Mu shook his head secretly.

Although Elon Musk is known as the Iron Man of Silicon Valley in reality, this buddy is indeed not rigorous enough in his work. Although his vision is long-term, relatively, there are many loopholes and negligence.

Failing to take into account the issue of production capacity in advance is a major flaw in Tesla's previous life, and the battery cost accounts for too much of the cost of the whole vehicle, which is a major Achilles' heel of Tesla. After many years, it will consider expanding production capacity, It is too late to develop batteries and build super battery factories by ourselves. At that time, new energy vehicles are springing up all over the world. Major auto companies have announced that they will stop producing fuel vehicles in the near future, and governments of various countries have also expressed their opinions. In the future, the sales of fuel vehicles will be banned in the country. At that time, trying to expand production capacity and develop and produce batteries has greatly delayed myself and wasted the advantage of an earlier start.

Li Mu sighed in his heart that Elon Musk did not foresee that batteries would become a core pain point of new energy projects, which really disappointed Li Mu. After more than ten years, when new energy vehicles spread all over the world, let alone batteries Prices are rising, and even the prices of lithium and cobalt, the key raw materials for lithium batteries, will skyrocket.

Lithium for power is hundreds of thousands of meals, cobalt is hundreds of thousands of tons, especially cobalt, the proportion of use in lithium batteries is not much lower than that of lithium, and cobalt is much scarcer than lithium, and it is as big as China. According to the data released by the West, my country's cobalt reserves account for 1% of the world's total. When the new energy era comes in the future, whoever masters cobalt will be the father of the entire new energy industry.

Thinking of this, Li Mu's mind moved. The rapid development of lithium batteries will take at least a few years, and the cobalt and lithium-related industries should be in a low or flat period as a whole. If it can take a few years to deploy the global cobalt mines, Lithium mines and supporting production and smelting, when the new energy era arrives, the market value of these industries will increase by at least ten times or even dozens of times.

More importantly, with these core resources, Li Mu can go from the upstream of the upstream battery industry of electric vehicles to the neck of the battery industry. In the future, if these companies dare to pretend to force themselves, they will immediately plunder their profits from the source and force them. If you surrender, you can even deploy the lithium battery production industry and penetrate the upstream and downstream of the battery industry by yourself.

Once you can penetrate the upstream and downstream, and form a closed loop that is not affected by the completion, when the raw materials of lithium batteries skyrocket, you can not only ensure that your new energy vehicle costs have more flexibility, but also directly rely on yourself to upstream resources. control, to snatch the wool of other lithium battery manufacturers, and maximize the market growth brought about by the outbreak of the new energy industry. It's worth it from a strategic point of view.

So, after the plane landed and the arranged motorcade sent Li Mu and his party to the hotel on Harvard campus, Li Mu hurriedly called Li Ziwei to his room and said to her, "Ziwei, I have an important task for you during this time. Do it carefully."

Li Ziwei hurriedly said, "Mr. Li, please speak."

Li Mudao: "Through the external shell companies that have no direct contact with us, I will invite a relatively well-known business research company in the world to help me investigate the entire market situation of the current lithium battery industry, as well as the mining of various key raw materials for lithium batteries. , production and processing, I want to detail the proven reserves of each element in various countries around the world, the difficulty of mining, the current mining situation, and the whereabouts of these minerals after they are mined, such as which countries they went to, Which companies do the processing and refining, and which companies are they sold to.”

Li Ziwei nodded quickly and said with a pen, "I have written down Mr. Li, is there anything else?"

Li Mu thought for a while and said: "Lithium ore and cobalt ore should be paid attention to. I want to know the market trend of these two kinds of ores in the world, and whose hands are mainly concentrated in these two kinds of ore industries, and whether they have won them. Possibly, if so, how much money would be needed!"