On the plane, Li Mu gave Elon Musk an overall plan for the electric vehicle project.
The first step was to invest 50 million US dollars in a 7: 3 ratio with Li Mu to establish an alternative energy vehicle company. A portion of the 50 million US dollars would be used to acquire the R&D team that Li Mu was following up on. The rest of the 50 million US dollars would be used to fund the R&D team.
The team's next focus would be on lithium battery technology, followed by the drive motor technology, and then the peripheral technology.
Second, Elon Musk needed to set up a professional car R&D team to design the frame, chassis, safety, and aerodynamics of the electric vehicle. At the same time, he would have a deeper understanding of the private automobile companies in Hua Xia to prepare for the acquisition.
There were two options for acquisition. One was to directly acquire the domestic automobile companies. The other was to acquire the production lines of the automobile companies. The former required a lot of capital. If they had enough capital, it would not be a problem. If they did not have enough capital, they would choose to acquire the production lines. Many domestic automobile companies were having a hard time. If they could not operate at full capacity, it was possible to squeeze out a few production lines. For Li Mu's electric vehicle project, having a low-end production line was better than starting from scratch.
Third, Li Mu especially wanted Elon Musk to give up his blind pursuit of pretentiousness when he started the new energy vehicle project. He didn't want to start building a new energy vehicle with a unit price of 100,000 US dollars. If he built something that expensive, who else could he sell it to in the first two to three years but pretentious criminals in the internet industry?
Elon Musk could not understand the concept of building a car with four wheels and a sofa. He felt that cars were like launch vehicles. They were the crystallization of modern industrial achievements. There were too many aspects to build a good car. Therefore, he said to Li Mu, "Li Zong, I hope that our future electric vehicle will be an outstanding, outstanding, and even epoch-making product. It can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds. It will be powerful, quiet, intelligent, and futuristic …"
Li Mu asked him, "Do you know which car company is the most profitable in the world?"
"I know." Elon Musk said, "Toyota."
Li Mu nodded and asked: "Why is Toyota the most profitable? In this year's corporate ranking, its revenue is lower than General Motors and Ford, but its net profit is more than 10 times that of General Motors. Ford's net profit is even negative. Although Volkswagen is very profitable, its profit margin and net profit are lower than Toyota. Why do you think this is? "
Elon Musk smiled and said, "Mr. Li, the operations of the entire Toyota Group are more flexible and smooth than those of other automobile companies. They are also very efficient and have a very accurate grasp of the market demand. For consumers, the product is highly compatible."
Li Mu asked him back, "Do you think you can accurately capture the market demand if you want to build an electric car that costs a hundred thousand US dollars? Is there a high degree of compatibility with consumers? "
"This …"
Elon Musk was a little speechless, but in his heart, he was still unwilling to accept Li Mu's words. He understood what Li Mu meant. It was nothing more than to humble himself and lower the threshold. Then, he would sell a low-threshold electric car to the rest of the world. This might indeed allow electric cars to have more customers, but it still lacked an earth-shattering impact. If the product was not good enough, he would lose a lot of motivation.
Li Mu also saw his mood and said calmly, "I don't object to your idea of building a top-notch electric sports car. You can totally let this team work towards this goal in the future. After all, it is always good to have a higher standard of technology accumulation. We can work towards it at any time. However, you can't pin the future of the company on a product that is not down to the people. So, in the choice of the main model, you have to lower your position and use more production capacity to mass produce cheaper products."
Elon Musk nodded and said, "Okay, Li Zong, I understand what you mean."
Li Mu knew that he understood what he meant, but he did not know if he agreed with his point of view. However, who cares, let him set up his shop first. If in the future, he insisted on walking the same path as Tesla in his previous life, then he would definitely not allow it.
Then, Li Mu changed the topic and reminded him, "Since you have decided to do electric cars, there are a lot of things that you have to do now. Otherwise, it will be easy for others to grab you by the throat in the future."
Elon Musk asked subconsciously, "What do you mean?"
"Batteries." Li Mu said, "I don't know how good the team you are talking about can develop battery packs and battery management technology. I only know that the capacity of a 18650 battery is only two to three thousand milliamperes. If you want to have a range of hundreds of kilometers, then I am afraid you will need at least a few thousand of such batteries, right?"
Elon Musk nodded and said, "That's right, Li Zong. Under normal circumstances, we need at least seven thousand batteries to ensure a range of 400 kilometers."
Li Mu sighed and said, "If you sell a car, others will sell seven thousand batteries. If they earn you one dollar for each battery, then you will help the battery manufacturer earn seven thousand dollars for each car you sell. It is unknown whether we can earn seven thousand dollars by selling a car. If most of the net profit is cut off by them in the future, then we will lose all initiative. You have to be prepared for this problem. Don't let the upstream raw material supplier choke you by the throat."
Elon Musk said, "Many companies have the technology for 18650 batteries. It's just that there's a slight difference in product performance and quality control. We can't form a monopoly in this market, so I think we'll still have a lot of negotiating advantages in front of battery companies in the future."
Li Mu secretly shook his head.
Although Elon Musk is known as the Iron Man of Silicon Valley, he is not rigorous enough. Although he is far-sighted, there are a lot of loopholes and omissions.
Tesla's biggest weakness in its previous life was that it did not consider production capacity in advance, and the high cost of batteries in the cost of the entire vehicle was Tesla's biggest weakness. It would be too late to think about expanding production capacity, researching and developing batteries, and building a super battery factory many years later. At that time, new energy vehicles would be springing up all over the world, and major automobile companies would announce that they would stop the production of fuel vehicles in the near future. Governments would also announce that they would ban the sale of fuel vehicles in their own countries in the future. At that time, if they were to think of ways to expand production capacity and research and produce batteries, they would have greatly delayed themselves and wasted their advantage of starting earlier.
Li Mu sighed in his heart. Elon Musk did not foresee that batteries will become a major pain point in electric vehicles. Li Mu is a little disappointed. In a decade or so, electric vehicles will be all over the world. Not only will battery prices skyrocket, but even the key materials for lithium batteries, lithium and cobalt, will also skyrocket.
A ton of cobalt costs hundreds of thousands of RMB. Especially cobalt. The proportion of cobalt used in lithium batteries is not much lower than lithium, and cobalt is much rarer than lithium. China is a large country, and according to the statistics published by the West, China's cobalt reserves are only 1% of the world's cobalt reserves. When the new energy era comes, whoever controls cobalt will be the father of the new energy industry.
Thinking of this, Li Mu had an idea. The rapid development of lithium batteries would take at least a few years, and the cobalt and lithium related industries should be at a low or stable stage. If he could use a few years to develop the cobalt and lithium mines around the world, then when the new energy era arrived, the market value of these industries would increase by at least ten times or even dozens of times. This in itself was a profitable business with a high profit margin.
More importantly, with these core resources, Li Mu could control the battery industry from the upper reaches of the electric vehicle battery industry. In the future, if these companies dared to act cool, Li Mu would immediately rob them of their profits and force them to submit. He could even control the lithium battery production industry and penetrate the upstream and downstream of the battery industry.
Once Lu Zhou could control the upstream and downstream and form a closed loop, when the price of lithium battery raw materials skyrocketed, not only would he be able to ensure that the cost of his electric vehicles would be more flexible, but he would also be able to directly control the upstream resources to take advantage of other lithium battery manufacturers. This would maximize the market growth brought by the explosion of the electric vehicle industry. This would be worth at least ten times the profit. Whether it was from an economic or a strategic point of view, it was very worthwhile.
Therefore, after the plane landed and the arranged motorcade sent Li Mu and his companions to the hotel in Harvard, Li Mu hurriedly called Li Ziwei to his room and said to her, "Ziwei, I have an important task for you. Do it seriously during this period."
Li Ziwei quickly said, "Li Zong, please go ahead."
Li Mu said, "Through the shell companies that don't have any direct contact with us, go and ask a well-known international business investigation company to help me investigate the entire lithium battery market, as well as the mining and processing of various key lithium battery raw materials. I want to know in detail the proven reserves of each element in various countries, the difficulty of mining, and the current mining situation. I also want to know where these minerals go after they are mined. For example, which countries do they go to, which companies do the processing, and which companies do they sell to."
Li Ziwei quickly wrote it down with a pen while nodding and saying, "I've written it all down, Manager Li. Anything else?"
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