Chapter 353 Heavyweight Model Planning
In Shenzhen in October, the temperature is still relatively high, not much different from summer.
The inspection team from the Ligong Special Vehicle Factory came over to communicate, and naturally it was not just about the gearbox.
But as the most core project, after getting the gearbox, the subsequent discussions will be much easier.
After sending them away, a particularly important meeting was held inside BMW.
When Zheng Haiming came to inspect before, Jiang Hui had already said that BMW would establish the BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Land Rover and Red Rabbit brands to operate various types of models.
But except for the two products of BMW Light and Mercedes-Benz sedan, there are no specific plans for other products.
This situation certainly cannot continue forever.
"Factory director, our sales team analyzed the situation at home and abroad and believed that if the factory wants to make a breakthrough in foreign markets, the best way may be to develop an epoch-making pickup truck and let it enter the Middle East and Africa. market, competing with international giants such as Toyota Motor ”
"Relatively speaking, these markets are not very mature and the competition is not that fierce. There are not many models for consumers to choose from, but the prices are relatively high."
"If we can develop competitive pickup products, it is entirely possible to export several thousand units every month."
Chen Chenxing was the first to stand up and express his opinion.
BMW's Light has encountered Waterloo in overseas markets, and Mercedes-Benz sedans will most likely not have very good results in overseas markets.
In order to break this situation, it is natural to consider other models.
"Pickup trucks may not have much market in China, but it is different on the world stage, especially in the United States, where they are very popular with consumers."
"If we can really develop an excellent pickup truck product, we may even enter the American market."
Hou Guoming is also someone who often goes abroad for inspections. He still has some understanding of pickup trucks, which are relatively unfamiliar to Chinese people.
Even when he went to the United States last time, he personally experienced a Ford pickup truck.
"Foreign pickup trucks use relatively large engine displacements, and our current 1.5L and 2.5L engines are definitely not enough."
"I think we need to develop the 3.5L engine as soon as possible and launch a large-displacement pickup truck."
Naturally, Jiang Hui would not object to the pickup truck product that both Chen Chenxing and Hou Guoming supported.
However, in his impression, foreign pickup trucks seem to have larger displacements.
The engines currently developed by BMW seem to be a bit insufficient.
"I think the better-selling Toyota HiLux has engine displacements of 2.4L and 3.0L. Affected by the oil crisis, the sales are quite good."
"On the contrary, sales of large-displacement pickup trucks from General Motors and Ford have declined."
“So I think we can consider learning from Toyota’s development path in the early stage?”
Fang Huihui is the one with the strongest international vision in the BMW Group. After all, she grew up in Hong Kong.
Many times, when making some decisions, she would refer to Japan's practices, which she found more useful.
This time is no exception.
"What Mr. Fang said makes sense. I think the initial launch of 2.5L and 3.5L pickup trucks is enough. In the future, after the V8 engine planned by Director Jiang is successfully developed, it should be too late for us to launch a large-displacement pickup truck. .”
"However, many pickup truck models overseas are equipped with diesel engines. Our research in this area is still relatively weak. We may need to consider simultaneous research and development of diesel engine technology."
“For example, 2.5L diesel engine and 3.5L diesel engine will be launched in the future.”
Hou Guoming still has a few brushes. At this time, no domestic passenger cars use diesel engines. Everyone uses gasoline engines.
In the eyes of most people, only trucks use diesel engines.
But in the international market, the situation is different.
Diesel engines are actually quite popular.
"Okay, then Land Rover's first product will be a pickup truck. The sales department will sort out some specific configuration ideas, and I will lead someone to personally design the appearance of the pickup truck."
"Now that 1984 is coming to an end soon, time waits for no one. In order to launch our pickup products before the end of 1986, everyone will have to work hard for a while."
The current automobile industry is not as busy as it will be in later generations. It generally takes three or four years to develop a new model. Jiang Hui compressed the time to about two years, which is already an exaggeration.
Of course, compared with later generations who developed a brand new electric vehicle in about a year, it would be much slower.
Taking advantage of its special advantages to quickly compress the time when developing the appearance of early models and selecting configurations, BMW's new model development schedule is still much faster than that of international automobile giants.
"As Mr. Fang just mentioned about Toyota's Hilux, we have compared some pickup products in the industry and feel that it may be more appropriate to use it as a standard to develop our pickup products."
"For some specific configuration requirements, we will take into account the industry benchmarking situation and formally report to the factory in the near future."
Chen Chenxing felt very good when he saw that his proposal was adopted.
"Director, since we have developed a pickup truck, can we consider developing an off-road vehicle simultaneously based on the pickup truck model?"
“In markets such as the United States and Africa, off-road vehicles are also very popular, and the competition is relatively not that fierce.”
Hou Guoming is engaged in design. He believes that in order to make full use of the design experience of pickup trucks and maximize the sharing of development costs, he can develop another model at the same time.
The development work of the Mercedes-Benz sedan has almost been completed, and what is left is more tinkering work.
The R&D center has more manpower to develop new models.
If a pickup truck and an off-road vehicle use the same platform, then even though two models are developed at the same time, the workload is definitely not doubled. Instead, it only takes 1.5 times or even 1.2 times the time to develop one model. The development of two models can be completed.
This is definitely a scene Hou Guoming is very happy to see.
Comparing the sales of international automobile giants, all Chinese automobile manufacturers combined are not enough.
He is not very young anymore, and he eagerly hopes that BMW cars can become the pride of China.
"I support Director Hou's proposal. In the future, when we expand overseas markets, we cannot rely solely on a Land Rover pickup truck. It is best to have off-road vehicles to complement each other." "With at least two products, we can better Open markets in some places.”
Chen Chenxing and Hou Guoming are old acquaintances, and they definitely support his views both in public and private matters.
These suggestions are good for the company and are very thoughtful. Jiang Hui immediately agreed and added, "This idea is very good. We need to consider the issue of platform sharing when designing our parts from the beginning. , minimize development costs and reduce parts production costs.”
“It would be best if some of the parts used in Mercedes-Benz cars could be shared with Land Rover pickup trucks or off-road vehicles.”
For automobile manufacturers, the investment in developing a new model is very huge.
The best way to reduce development costs is to build a platform, which can save a lot of time and money.
Automobile giants around the world have already begun to take this path, but it is just the beginning. The degree of commonality of different models is completely incomparable with that of later generations.
It would be best if BMW could fully consider this from the beginning.
"It shouldn't be a big problem. Although our R&D center has been recruiting people, we have also hired some retired engineers from Japan. Some domestic college students are also willing to come and work here."
"But overall, manpower is still relatively tight. By promoting sharing, development man-hours can be reduced to the greatest extent, which is definitely a good thing."
Hou Guoming immediately felt the great significance of platformization and sharing mentioned by Jiang Hui.
He had vague ideas about this before, but he didn't expect it to be so thorough.
Now that Jiang Hui poked his finger, he suddenly understood.
"In this case, the next focus of our company is to develop the 3.5L engine and two new models of the Land Rover brand."
"Nanshan Transmission's 4AT automatic transmission must also be developed as soon as possible, so that our transmission technology can catch up with the international mainstream level."
Although the popularity of automatic transmissions in China is still very low, in fact, 4AT automatic transmissions appeared very early.
The 4AT gearbox was successfully developed in 1939. In 2020, there are still new cars on the market equipped with 4AT, such as the Hyundai Rena. The 4AT service cycle is close to 80 years.
Early 4AT automatic transmissions were exclusive to luxury cars, such as the 1968 Mercedes-Benz 280SE Coupe. As the top luxury car at the time, it was equipped with a 4AT transmission.
Of course, 4AT has slowly begun to enter the field of mid-level cars. For example, the Camry launched by Toyota two years ago is equipped with a 4AT automatic transmission.
If history had not changed, Toyota's Camry would not be upgraded from 4AT to 6AT until 2014.
It is conceivable that the 4AT gearbox is important to this era.
If Nanshan Transmission does not produce its own 4AT as soon as possible, it will seriously affect the competitiveness of its cars in the international market.
As for developing this gearbox and selling it in the international market, whether there will be any patent disputes is completely unnecessary.
After all, the 4AT automatic transmission had already been launched in 1939, and all patents had expired long ago.
Nanshan Transmission only needs to find a 4AT with relatively advanced performance to learn from and develop it, and Jiang Hui does not even need to give any special design plan.
He only needs to point out some material selection and process arrangements that cannot be grasped when dismantling and benchmarking, and the progress can be improved a lot.
Of course, the TCU part is a difficult part, and Jiang Hui will definitely need to lead everyone to break through as soon as possible.
These general directions were determined at the meeting, and various departments naturally took action quickly.
Ji Xia, who had already decided to go to work at Nanshan Gearbox, accompanied by Ji Hua, came to Nanshan Gearbox to start an early internship.
"Director Jiang, Xiaoxia still has some basic knowledge in gearbox design, and I will learn from you in the future."
Ji Hua and Jiang Hui had known each other for many years, so he was relatively relieved to leave his son to Jiang Hui.
"Today's college students are the proud ones of heaven, and all ministries and commissions are rushing to get them. It is definitely a good thing that the juniors from our school are willing to come to Nanshan Gearbox to develop."
"We have not only successfully developed the 5MT manual transmission, but are also focusing on 4AT automatic transmission technology. We will definitely be the first domestic company to produce automatic transmissions in the future."
"After Ji Xia comes in, he will first familiarize himself with the company's basic business, and then go to the 4AT automatic transmission development team, focusing on automatic transmissions in the future."
"4AT abroad is very mature and even has a history of several decades, but there is no domestic factory that can produce it. This situation must be changed as soon as possible."
"In the future, we will quickly launch 5AT and 6AT automatic transmissions based on the experience of 4AT to fully meet the needs of BMW cars."
"In particular, BMW has planned some new products and will enter the international market in the future. If the transmission technology is very backward, it will definitely not work."
Jiang Hui still attaches great importance to the gearbox.
Before the era of electric vehicles arrives, the importance of the three major components of traditional fuel vehicles is unquestionable.
If the engine, gearbox and chassis are not done well, it will be impossible to produce a good car.
Regarding chassis technology, Jiang Hui is relatively confident that the R&D personnel at Nanshan Technology and BMW can work hard to improve it on their own, with just a little guidance from him.
But if we rely on those people to study engine and gearbox technology on their own, we don’t know how long it will take.
As a young automobile company, BMW must have some special selling points if it wants to make a name for itself in the international automobile market.
Each automobile giant generally has its own historical heritage, which BMW cannot match.
In terms of various configurations, it is not easy for BMW to do better than others.
After all, the configuration must reflect the richness, which is closely related to the development of the parts industry.
For example, airbags and various electrical equipment all require time to accumulate.
But Jiang Hui is confident that he can come up with some tricks on things like gearbox gears and engine displacement.
For example, no car company currently uses 5AT or 6AT automatic transmissions. If BMW products can be the first to be equipped with such transmissions, it will definitely be a very good publicity stunt.
Another example is engine displacement. Domestic passenger cars are generally small and medium-displacement. BMW has launched several large-displacement engines, which definitely occupies the commanding heights in China.
Combined with some of the car's publicity strategies, Jiang Hui is preparing to continuously bring various impacts to the world's automobile industry, allowing BMW to quickly become famous.
(End of chapter)