Suddenly being scolded by Li Mu, Elon Musk felt particularly depressed and aggrieved.
Faced with Li Mu's rebuke, he said very innocently: "Mr. Li, regarding the new energy vehicle project, I actually don't think of this matter as noble and great. I just analyzed it from an investment perspective and felt that this project There is the possibility of subverting the traditional automobile industry. From an investment perspective, the more projects that have the potential to subvert, the higher the profit margins that can be expected in the future... "
Li Mu was stunned for a moment, then nodded gently.
Li Mu once believed that Elon Musk was a person with a strong sense of social responsibility. However, after a series of exchanges just now, Li Mu found that there was a certain error in his understanding.
In his opinion, Elon Musk is far less noble than he imagined. He is actually a businessman, a businessman who pursues profits and fame. At least, at this stage, when he is not well-known to the world. , he has not yet been crazily praised by the world, and he has not yet established a strong sense of social responsibility for himself.
Even at a certain moment, Li Mu felt that the inner world of Elon Musk in the early days of entrepreneurship was not much different from that of Steve Jobs in China. Everyone is an adventurer and hopes to take a big gamble in life and win. If you lose, you will have to start all over again. Elon Musk won the bet on Tesla, and then won on SpaceX.
Perhaps, Elon Musk will gradually have a stronger sense of social responsibility as he gradually moves towards success, but at least for now, Li Mu has not really seen it from him.
In his eyes, new energy vehicles are not really for environmental protection, nor are they to popularize the importance of clean energy to the world. He just accidentally discovered a small company called AC-Propulsion that specializes in developing battery-driven vehicle-related technologies. Team, and from a businessman’s perspective, he thought this thing was promising from a commercial perspective, so he was ready to invest some money, just like an angel investor.
Recall that Elon Musk only invested US$6.2 million in Tesla at the beginning. No matter how you look at it, this investment is not equivalent to the scale of an automobile manufacturer, so it can also be seen from the scale of this investment that Elon Musk's original intention of investing in Tesla was cautious. For Tesla, the money is probably enough to build a prototype car, and then use it to tell stories and attract the next round of investment.
Therefore, Elon Musk's original intention to build Tesla, as he just said, is a simple investment project for him. As for the multiple renderings from the media later, in Li Mu's view, it is probably the same The team behind Elon Musk did it deliberately.
The whole world praises Tesla for leading the development of new energy vehicles and the era of environmentally friendly and clean energy. However, until Li Mu was reborn, Tesla was still just a plaything for the rich and middle class.
Li Mu realized that there was nothing wrong with Elon Musk's behavior as a businessman. The mistake was that his expectations for him on the personality level were too high, and the root cause was that the media that praised him crazily in his previous life always He spares no effort to present his perfect image to the world. He is the "Iron Man of Silicon Valley", he is the "Hope of Humanity", and he is the "colonizer of Mars". In the eyes of the media and some people, he is the most powerful company on earth. Now it seems that these remarks are absurd to a certain extent.
Li Mu didn't despise Elon Musk because of this, but he suddenly felt that a figure who was exaggerated to be like a god was actually just a businessman through and through, but he chose a field that was more likely to make ordinary people's blood boil.
But in the final analysis, there is nothing wrong with this. On the contrary, it is an extremely normal thing. However, Li Mu's heart was somewhat different because he saw through this.
After Li Mu adjusted his inner gap with Elon Musk, he said to him very seriously: "In the future Tesla, whether it is to make money or to popularize the concept of clean energy, we must try to make our products We’ve already agreed on reaching more people, right?”
Elon Musk nodded repeatedly.
Li Mu went on to say: "Society is very impetuous. I admit this. The society respects extreme products rather than universal products. I also admit this. Therefore, the first car that Tesla became famous for can be A pure performance sports car is used to attract people's attention, but after our official debut, what we really want to launch to the world must be a product matrix of high, middle and low-end products;
We should not only allow rich people to drive clean energy cars, but also allow ordinary people to have the same opportunities. We should allow new energy to have as many potential supporters as possible. If our market share in the future, or the entire new energy If the share of automobiles can reach 30% of the automobile market, it is foreseeable that we will achieve 30% energy saving and emission reduction for global household cars! 30%, perhaps equivalent to several billion tons of greenhouse gases, is significant. "
Elon Musk understands what Li Mu means and thinks that new energy vehicles will be an excellent investment project. However, he believes that new energy vehicles will make a huge contribution to environmental protection. The premise is that the concepts and products of new energy vehicles can be gained popularity worldwide.
Immediately, Elon Musk immediately expressed his position: "Mr. Li, I understand your request. First, we must have a platform awareness to prepare for multiple models and mass production in the future; secondly, we must have a sense of responsibility. We will not We are just building an automobile industry, not just to make money, but to make the world accept clean energy vehicles."
Li Mu nodded and said: "Purely to make money, I have many high-quality projects on the Internet that are light assets, high returns, and short cycles. There is absolutely no need to do such thankless asset-heavy projects, but the reason why we We still have to do it in order to provide the world with a practical solution for clean energy vehicles. Perhaps because of our efforts, in a few decades, 80% of the world's household cars will become clean energy vehicles. That’s our biggest goal.”
Li Mu is not pretending to be cool with Elon Musk. Makino Technology, together with Taobao and Alipay, will be enough to support a market value of more than one trillion US dollars in the future, and he has already won the father of Android, and will soon have the opportunity to invest in Google and acquire Apple, as long as these existing industries develop smoothly, its worth of two trillion US dollars is just around the corner. In this case, it does not need Tesla to make money for itself. In contrast, what Tesla represents The clean energy revolution is what Li Mu really values.
Speaking of this, Li Mu said in a particularly serious tone: "Once the concept of clean energy becomes popular, it will definitely set off an environmental storm around the world. I believe that in the near future, land transportation will increasingly develop towards clean energy. In addition to the electrification of railways, In addition, there will be more and more other new energy vehicles, including cars, mopeds, and trucks. This will be a revolution in the world's energy pattern and environmental protection. I hope Tesla can become the leader of this revolution. leader."
"Understood!" Elon Musk has begun to accept Li Mu's indoctrination subconsciously, which makes him feel that his shoulders are gradually beginning to bear more responsibilities.
Li Mu said: “When it comes to promoting new energy, we will face several big problems. These problems will be the targets of Tesla’s efforts, such as: the energy density of batteries, the price of battery unit capacity, and the price of batteries. There are issues with fast charging, issues with battery degradation, and issues with safety of use.”
After a pause, Li Mu added: "Future new energy vehicles will have a huge shortcoming in terms of battery life. The charging speed of any battery may not be as fast as the speed of filling the tank with gasoline, so we need to Start thinking of ways to strengthen this shortcoming. For example, you need to find a strong team to start developing how to fully charge electric vehicles in the shortest time, find a set of fast charging solutions, and reduce its cost as much as possible. , because in the future we may have to install this kind of fast charging equipment in developed countries and even developing countries around the world, so that our new energy vehicles and our users can break through the limitations of battery range."
Tesla only began to fully develop super charging pile technology and deploy super charging piles around the world in the middle and late stages. The density of this hardware deployment was very high, which greatly aggravated Tesla’s loss situation. However, the special situation at that time Tesla had to go all out to do this, because Tesla was just a plaything of the rich in the early days. The rich did not pay attention to Tesla's battery life, because when they needed a long-range car, they had fuel. Cars were the alternative, so Tesla became their short- and medium-distance transportation tool.
However, in the middle period of Tesla's development, Tesla began to lower its target users to the middle class group. At that time, Tesla began to be considered by the middle class group as the first car or the only vehicle, which was far lower than that of fuel vehicles. Battery life has become Tesla’s biggest shortcoming.
So in order to make up for this shortcoming, Tesla began to build super charging piles everywhere to increase the convenience of Tesla’s battery life. Even in the early days of super charging piles, Tesla users could charge for free. These measures are all In order to make up for the huge shortcomings of insufficient battery life.
Li Mu does not want Tesla to continue the same cramming rhythm as in the previous life. It only thinks about platformization when its production capacity is insufficient. It only starts to launch new models when its market performance is weak. It only starts building super charging piles when it has serious problems with battery life. Battery costs cannot be suppressed. It has only begun to prepare to build its own battery production base. This pace has greatly slowed down Tesla's progress. Therefore, starting the preparation of supporting technologies in advance is particularly important for Tesla's future development.
In Li Mu's expectation, once Tesla comes out, it will quickly launch different models and quickly achieve mass production. At the same time, it must strictly control costs. Before going on the market, it must actively promote the concept of new energy vehicles and then follow up. Governments of various countries apply for subsidies, and the methods of subsidies include but are not limited to: tax reductions for new energy vehicles, subsidies for new energy vehicle consumers, subsidies and convenience for the construction of super charging piles, etc.
Li Mu’s goal is that Tesla’s future product matrix must be affordable to at least half of car consumers. Teslas that start at RMB 800,000 or more can be purchased, but after enjoying various subsidies, Tesla, which consumers can buy with only 20,000 to 300,000 yuan, is the top priority!
(End of chapter)