Chapter 213 Riding on the popularity?
Chapter 213 Riding on the popularity?
At this time, Kang Chi was still inspecting a newly built battery swap station in Dongyang. The staff was conducting the final debugging of the newly installed automatic battery swap system.
”After the actual test, the battery swap time was 54 seconds in total, which meets the acceptance criteria.”
Hearing the feedback from the staff, Kang Chi nodded with satisfaction.
Speaking of this automatic battery swap system, there was actually a rather tortuous incident.
When NIO first learned that Datang Heavy Industry planned to lay battery swap stations on a large scale, it showed great interest and felt that they finally had like-minded comrades.
So NIO was very proactive and contacted Datang Heavy Industry, hoping that the two sides could cooperate.
However, after several rounds of contact, Datang Heavy Industry refused to agree to use NIO’s battery swap standards at the upcoming battery swap stations.
The reason is that NIO’s battery pack does not meet the standards of Datang Heavy Industry.
Similarly, the technology of the battery swap station is not up to standard.
This makes Mr. Li feel disappointed and a little unhappy.
If Datang Heavy Industry does not cooperate with NIO and adopt NIO’s standards, then the many battery swap stations built by Datang Heavy Industry will be useless for NIO’s car owners and cannot improve NIO’s user experience.
Moreover, if your own things are disliked, no one will be happy.
This makes Mr. Li deeply aware that Kang Chi is clearly here to subvert the standards of the new energy industry this time! Even if NIO has the same philosophy as him, it is still not immune.
In fact, Mr. Li is a little naive about the battery swap model.
From a business model perspective, battery swap is destined to be monopolized by only one company.
The simplest truth is, if a car’s battery just reaches the scrap standard when it is replaced, then who should be responsible for scrapping this battery? After it is scrapped, who will pay for the purchase of a new battery? Is it Datang Heavy Industry or NIO? Or other companies that join the battery swap service? Even if all batteries are owned by Datang Heavy Industry and Datang Heavy Industry is responsible for scrapping and replacing them, new problems will also arise. For example, some battery swap stations can give priority to car owners to ensure that the batteries in their battery swap stations are new, and their energy storage can be higher than others, and they can make more profits by selling electricity at off-peak times. Once everyone follows this trend, the result is that new batteries are all in the battery swap station, and old batteries are all in the car owner’s car. For example, some battery swap stations think that it is too troublesome to replace the scrapped battery with a new one, so they simply continue to replace it with the car owner and pass the blame to other battery swap stations, resulting in the old battery being kicked around.
This is just what Kang Chi can think of casually, and with the dirty thoughts of those capitalists, they may be able to come up with a more bizarre “business model”.
In short, there are too many places to argue here, which is absolutely hard to guard against…
Originally, Kang Chi wanted to buy battery swap technology from Weilai to save some time and energy.
But because the two sides did not talk very happily, Kang Chi finally did not speak.
Although Weilai’s battery swap technology is also quite mature, it is actually far from meeting Kangchi’s requirements.
First of all, Weilai’s battery swap service requires the owner to turn on automatic parking so that the car can automatically and accurately reverse into the battery swap parking space.
And Datang Heavy Industry’s battery swap station will serve a variety of car models and car owners in the future. It is impossible to require every car to have an automatic parking function.
Not everyone is an experienced driver. Car owners without automatic parking may not be able to park their cars accurately at the battery swap position…
Secondly, the average time for each battery swap of Weilai is about five minutes.
And Kangchi’s goal is to compress this time to less than one minute.
This will improve the efficiency of user battery swaps while greatly reducing the equipment and space of the battery swap station and saving costs. Therefore, even if Weilai’s battery swap technology is purchased, drastic improvements and designs are still needed.
So Kangchi finally decided to spend more time and energy to design and manufacture a battery swap system from scratch, and then upgrade the analysis to obtain more advanced technology.
After completing the inspection of the battery swap station, Kangchi and Chen Hai returned to the car, and then received a call from Zhang Qing.
“Mr. Kang, Tesla is going to hold a press conference.”
”So soon? When?”
”Three days later.”
”Well… let’s stick to the plan, November 2″I understand!” So, after Musk announced that Tesla would hold a new car launch conference three days later, Datang Heavy Industry followed suit and announced that Datang Heavy Industry would hold a new car launch conference on November 2. The time was just one day later than Tesla. Because Datang Heavy Industry did not have many fans on major social platforms, this announcement did not attract much attention at first. It was not until Kang Chi’s Weibo, as well as Daqin Optics, Dahan Silicon, Dahan Core, CATL, Qirui Automobile and other companies, forwarded Datang Heavy Industry’s announcement on major social platforms, that it immediately caused heated discussions among netizens on the Internet. “Fuck, is Mr. Kang really making a car?” “I have heard rumors in Jianghu that Qirui is helping Datang Heavy Industry to manufacture a pure electric car. I didn’t expect it to be true, and the speed is so fast. ”
“First, there was the battery swap station, then it invested in CATL to make sodium batteries, and now there is a new car launch conference, everything is linked together!”
“Sure enough, it is the style of Master Kong, to do the whole show, is this the rhythm of taking over the entire industry chain?”
“This is just the beginning, the battery is manufactured by CATL, and the car is manufactured by Qirui, which is far worse than BYD.”
“The person above, do you know what OEM means? It means that the core technology is all from Datang Heavy Industry, and Master Kong can make it by itself at any time, but it is not necessary.”
“Fuck, so excited! I wonder what surprises Mr. Kang can bring us this time.”
“Holding the press conference one day later than Tesla? Why does it feel like Huawei’s criticism of Xiaomi is exactly the same, is Mr. Kang targeting Tesla? ”
“…”
Anil, the head of Tesla’s Greater China region, soon learned the news from the public relations department, and immediately reported this ‘suspected targeting from Kang Chi’ to Musk.
“Targeting us?” Musk just curled his lips lightly after hearing this, “Don’t worry about them, haven’t there been many people who have taken advantage of our popularity in recent years?”
“But… this Kang Chi has a high reputation in China, and after all, he can make EUV lithography machines. From all the signs in the current Chinese market, it is shown that he has great ambitions and ambitions in the electric vehicle market. I think it is very likely to pose a huge threat to us…”
“So what?” Musk immediately asked back, “Are we not going to hold a press conference?”
“Anil, he hasn’t made a move yet, why are you panicking?”
“No matter what cards he holds in his hand, we have to wait until he plays them before we can consider how to deal with them. ”
”Besides, they are a company that has just started to get involved in the electric vehicle industry and has not even sold a single car, while we are in a leading position in the global electric vehicle market. In addition, the brand image we have established in the minds of Chinese people over the years means that they are in a passive position. ”
”The reason why they held the press conference a day after us is probably to find our weaknesses and then take advantage of the popularity. ”
Anil actually understood this truth, but for some reason, after knowing this, he has been feeling a little uneasy.
Perhaps, he did overreact a little? (End of this chapter)