Wang Chuanfu Goes Ahead In The Debate On &Nbsp; How Far Can "New Energy" Cars Go?

In May 1st, Wang Chuanfu, together with California governor Schwarzenegger, officially announced in the Losangeles city hall that BYD will set up its North American headquarters in the center of Losangeles, so as to design and sell "new energy" vehicles in North America.

From "battery king" to the biggest black horse in China's auto brand camps and to the development of electric vehicles, every step of BYD's development has attracted considerable attention.

Wang Chuanfu summed up the development process of BYD, said: "along the way, BYD has been doing proof, proving that we are right."

Machine + human = robot

Wang Chuanfu was born in 1966 to an ordinary peasant family in Anhui.

In 1983, he entered the Department of metallurgical physics and chemistry of Zhongnan mining and Metallurgy College with outstanding achievements. After 4 years, he entered the master's graduate student of the Beijing Nonferrous Metal Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. After graduation, he studied the subject of the two charge battery of alkaline nickel, cadmium and nickel hydrogen.

In the unit, Wang Chuanfu, known as "technical maniac", was promoted to the 301 deputy director of the Institute at the age of 26, and later served as the general manager of the beg Battery Co., Ltd., established in Shenzhen by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In 1995, Wang Chuanfu saw in an international battery industry dynamics that Japan, the world's largest battery maker, has abandoned the production of nickel cadmium batteries.

Wang Chuanfu, quick witted, realized that this would lead to the international shift of nickel cadmium battery production base. He decided to seize the opportunity and go to sea to do business.

In order to raise funds, Wang Chuanfu sought to borrow money from his cousin in real estate business.

My cousin said, "I am different from you. You are a national cadre. Your career is stable and your future is boundless. Why do you want to venture into the sea?" if you make a mistake, you will lose everything. What will you do then? "Wang Chuanfu said confidently," I am a research manager in the battery business, and I believe I can do well.

As for the market, you can't trust my vision, but you must believe in the potential of the battery industry! "Wang Chuanfu finally persuaded her cousin to borrow 2 million 500 thousand yuan to start the fund.

In February 1995, BYD Technology Co., Ltd. was founded in a factory building in Buji Town, Shenzhen. At that time, there were only 20 employees in the company.

Because of the lack of people at the beginning of the business, Wang Chuanfu often lived in the company for several days.

A nickel cadmium battery production line in Japan costs tens of millions of dollars, and Wang Chuanfu simply can't afford it.

In order to save costs, Wang Chuanfu launched the idea of technological innovation.

He adopted a completely different way of production with robot operation, decomposing the battery production process into one manual operation step, and then using a special fixture to eliminate the errors caused by manual operation.

This not only solves the problem of high cost of battery production lines, but also takes advantage of the low cost of China's human resources, and the total cost of battery produced by BYD is 40% lower than that of Japanese competitors.

BYD nickel cadmium battery 1997

"Building cars for the rest of my life."

After making the battery successfully, Wang Chuanfu repeatedly said "too lonely".

His eyes soon focused on the automobile industry.

"The car is a hundred years of traditional industries and low tech industries, and the components of mobile phones are high-tech," he said.

In his eyes, making cars is only Pediatrics, and mobile phone parts are hard to get rid of. BYD is a piece of cake.

In January 23, 2003, BYD announced the signing of the takeover agreement with Xi'an Qinchuan Automobile Co., Ltd.

Wang Chuanfu, who was in charge of Qin Chuan, announced to BYD that he was going to build a car.

At that time, this move was strongly repugnant by the capital market, and Wang Chuanfu was regarded as "madman" by fund managers everywhere.

Some investors even threatened Wang Chuanfu on the phone: "we have to throw BYD stock until we die."

Sure enough, in January 24th, when the Hong Kong stock opened, BYD's

In order to fulfill his promise, Wang Chuanfu decided to invest 100 million yuan to develop a new car, the internal code name is 316, the official name is F2.

After the successful R & D of the new car, Wang Chuanfu was very excited, and immediately summoned BYD dealers in the whole country to Shanghai for review.

Unexpectedly, dealers were very disappointed with the new car. Some people even told Wang Chuanfu directly: "Wang, you must not go on sale, or you will smash your brand."

That night, Wang Chuanfu made a decision at the high-level meeting of the company: 316 forever seal up and redevelop.

At that time, there were objections at the top of the company because the development cost of hundreds of millions of Yuan should not be wasted.

But Wang Chuanfu said, "don't come out to see people if you don't do well.

BYD's first car can only succeed without fail. "

In the time of developing new models, BYD lost year after year because it only sold the old models.

Shareholders have sold shares to BYD, so that BYD's shareholding power has been as high as 99%.

Wang Chuanfu persisted for two years in a curse.

In order to develop new cars, he even scratched his Mercedes Benz and tested them as technicians.

In April 2005, BYD finally launched a new F3, priced between 73 thousand and 800 yuan and 99 thousand and 800 yuan, the main middle and low end market.

Because of its appearance in imitation of TOYOTA's classic "corolla", this car is called the "cottage version of the corolla".

Controversial, at the same time, F3 also effectively attracted the attention of the market, listing only 20 months, on the sale of 100 thousand vehicles, become the fastest breakthrough 100 thousand sales of independent brand cars.

In 2006, BYD turned a profit.

How far can "new energy" cars go?

After the success of the traditional car industry, Wang Chuanfu also wanted to produce electric cars.

He started to build batteries, hoping to turn the electric power into the main driving force of future automobiles.

In 2008, BYD used the concept of "new energy" to attract Buffett to become a shareholder, which greatly enhanced the brand awareness of enterprises.

In December of the same year, BYD released an epoch hybrid F3DM.

However, the sale of this kind of electric vehicle with high hopes is not satisfactory.

In the past six months, only about 100 cars were sold and mainly purchased by the Shenzhen municipal government and Hongkong consumers.

In the same period, the world's most mature new energy vehicle, the TOYOTA Prius, sold nearly 75 thousand cars in the US.

Industry experts analyzed that charging costs had a direct impact.

Wang Chuanfu chose to set up headquarters in North America in Losangeles, perhaps in order to solve the above problems in overseas markets.

On the one hand, Losangeles is known as the "capital of cars" in the United States, and has more than 22 large automotive design centers. Almost all the world's first-line car brands have set up headquarters here. On the other hand, California has nearly 60% of the solar energy market in the United States, which will promote BYD's new energy vehicle.

Because the headquarters of North America, which is about to be established, is only responsible for the sale without the establishment of factories. Therefore, the multimedia evaluation of the move is "more publicity brand effect and no real value".

BYD now sells not cars, but the concept of "new energy".

Analysts pointed out that at present, BYD's factory capacity simply can not meet the needs of new technology and expansion strategy.

The newly built Changsha new plant and the two Xi'an plant will not be able to contribute to production capacity until 2011. The existing Xi'an and Shenzhen Pingshan factories are also referred to as "bottlenecks in production".

"The body ran fast, but the soul did not catch up", and BYD continued to move forward in the controversy.