I want to be emperor

Chapter 1137: Relying on the military and starving to death

Luo Zhixue's personal intervention allowed the tank designers of the defense companies to quickly find their direction and set their sights on full-tracked tanks instead of nondescript half-track or wheeled tanks.

However, things like half-tracks and wheeled artillery and armored vehicles have not been abandoned. Each weapons company still has project teams responsible for these projects, but the priority has been lowered. They are mainly carrying out technical reserves to prepare for the future.

After all, the land warfare weapons the army needs are not just armored vehicles equipped with machine guns and tanks equipped with artillery. In the future, more types of motor vehicles will definitely be needed.

According to Luo Zhixue's later experience...half-track vehicles also have certain application value. They can be used as light armored vehicles or as vehicles to tow artillery. This type of vehicle was widely used in World War II. .

Both the German army and the US military have developed and equipped half-track vehicles on a large scale... At this time point in the original time and space of World War II, half-track vehicles still had relatively large advantages, not only maintaining the complex terrain passing performance of tracked vehicles, but also maintaining It has the characteristics of low cost of wheeled vehicles, the engine and transmission structure, and the same driving style as wheeled vehicles.

It can be said that it combines the advantages of these two vehicles at the same time... but it also has the disadvantages of both vehicles. As a result, the half-tracked off-road vehicle is not as good as the full-track vehicle, and the road driving is not as good as the wheeled vehicle. At the same time, the craftsmanship, cost, and subsequent maintenance and repairs are all inferior. More complex than wheeled vehicles.

Therefore, after the war, the performance of wheeled vehicles further developed, especially after the central tire inflation technology and independent suspension technology matured and were applied. Wheeled vehicles completely replaced half-track vehicles and became the main carrier of various armored vehicles. Such as armored vehicles, infantry fighting vehicles, wheeled self-propelled artillery, wheeled vehicle-mounted mortars, etc.

In terms of the current technical level of the Dachu Empire, half-tracked vehicles are actually quite good... After all, the current tracked walking structure is still relatively primitive, complex, costly, and prone to many faults, which is what tanks need. use.

As for wheeled vehicles, the off-road performance is still too poor... At least the various wheeled vehicles currently equipped by the Chu Army, if viewed from the perspective of future generations, their off-road performance is actually not very good.

Therefore, it would actually be good if we could build a half-track vehicle... But the technical difficulty of this thing is not low. The Jiangnan Weapons Company has been tossing the old stuff, and it is just a paper design for the time being.

Hebei Weapons Company has not given up on the so-called wheeled artillery combat vehicle project... it has just given up on developing this thing on the chassis of the 320 armored vehicle.

Because they found that the performance of the 320 chassis was too poor to support a 320mm artillery... even a short-barreled mm howitzer. At the same time, although the off-road performance of the chassis was very good in the contemporary era, it had limitations. Still very big.

They wanted to redesign it on a chassis with a larger body, more power, and stronger off-road performance.

It's just that this kind of project to design a new chassis for large motor vehicles is not that easy... because there is currently no suitable wheeled vehicle chassis for them to use, and Hebei Arms Company itself lacks the technology to develop such a chassis. ability.

The one who has this technical capability is their strategic partner Tangshan Automobile Company... But Tangshan Automobile Company will not spend a lot of manpower and material resources to develop a brand new chassis for a mere military order.

The previous 320 chassis was not developed specifically for the military, but the Tangshan Automobile Company itself had a corresponding heavy-duty truck project. To put it bluntly, the chassis used by the 320 armored vehicle was actually the chassis of the Tangshan Automobile Company's heavy-duty truck project. , Hebei Arms Company just took the chassis and modified it.

As for the larger heavy-duty truck project, Tangshan Automobile Company has not yet conducted research and development... Research and development is useless. The engine technology these days is only at this level. If you want to design a truck with a larger load, there is no suitable power available.

Even if there is suitable power and such a heavy truck is built, it will be difficult to compete with tractors in terms of competitiveness!

That’s right, in addition to horse-drawn carriages, the biggest competitors of trucks these days are also their own brother tractors...

For example, the current best-selling Type 15 truck has a standard load capacity of 1.5 tons. However, if you are ruthless and expect the road to be good, it is not impossible to load two or three tons of cargo on it. Anyway, the body and tires are Can withstand it...

It's just that the engine and braking system can't withstand it... So if you overload it like this, you will not be able to go fast on flat roads, you won't be able to go uphill, and you may not be able to brake when you go downhill...

But...since everyone has spent a lot of money to buy one-five trucks, and the usage scenarios of contemporary civilian one-five trucks are basically in areas with good roads such as cities and suburbs, so overloading is common.

However, even one or five trucks like this can hardly be said to dominate the market competition. Let alone the traditional heavy-duty four-wheel carriages. Many things cannot be replaced just by saying you are good. This requires a process...

In addition, in many areas, especially in application scenarios such as suburban areas, rural areas, and construction sites, the competitiveness of one- to five-truck trucks is eroded by tractors...

Tractors these days are not just used for agriculture, they are also important transportation vehicles.

A series of small tractors developed and produced by Songhe Automobile Company can be seen in many places, especially their transportation models. Their annual output of a series of small tractors exceeds 50,000 units, and this small tractor has a rear With a single compartment, it can haul more cargo than any other light or medium-sized truck. It also has stronger climbing ability and is able to crawl on dirt roads, but the speed is a bit slow.

The most important thing is, this thing is cheap!

Generally, it only costs a few hundred Chu Yuan. A cheap small-horsepower tractor only costs one or two hundred Chu Yuan. It is very cheap!

In terms of large-scale land cargo transportation these days, except for places like cities with special environments and good roads, trucks are actually not as good as tractors in other usage environments...

An ordinary tractor can easily pull a carriage loaded with several tons of goods. If it is a high-power crawler tractor, it can even pull ten or twenty tons of goods.

The heavy artillery tractors in the contemporary military are not trucks, but a large number of tractors, including wheeled tractors, but there are also full-track tractors that have appeared in the past two years.

Among them, the Liao 100 full-tracked large tractor developed and produced by Liaodong Automobile Company has become the darling of the military's new generation of heavy artillery tractors. This thing can easily maneuver a ten-ton heavy artillery. If the heavy artillery is equipped with The frame is also equipped with appropriate wide iron wheels, which can even move forward on various complex and even muddy roads.

Pulling a ten-ton cannon is actually nothing. After all, the previous large wheeled tractors also had the ability to tow a ten-ton heavy artillery. However, this kind of towing can only be done when the road conditions are good. No matter what, the front must be dry. In the case of dirt roads...don't count on dirt roads.

Today's full-tracked large tractors can maneuver ten-ton heavy artillery on complex terrain and muddy roads...

The gap between the two is huge!

Otherwise, the Army would not have ordered more than ten units at the speed of light when the agricultural machinery company affiliated to Liaodong Automobile Company launched its new flagship Liao-100 tractor on the market at the end of last year, and then used it for various tests. After testing, hundreds of orders were placed.

I just found this thing to be quite useful!

Liaodong Automobile Company has Liao 100 series full-track tractors. The other two automobile companies, Songhe Automobile Company and Tangshan Automobile Company, also have their own full-track tractor projects, but they are not as famous and their performance is slightly worse. …

As for the other two car companies, Lee Dynamics and North American Motors, they have no similar projects.

It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s that I can’t do it.

The fully tracked traveling mechanism is also patented. These three car companies have laid out their plans too early and conducted patent exchanges in the early years, so they all have patents, but the other two do not have this thing.

So... in the short term, whether it is a full-track tractor or a further tank project, it will have nothing to do with Lee Power Company and North American Motors.

Several special vehicle companies under the National Defense Automobile Company have cooperated with the three major automobile companies to introduce full-tracked chassis and design tanks based on this.

What's interesting is...the five special vehicle companies affiliated to the five major defense companies all approached Liaodong Automobile Company for strategic cooperation immediately.

The reason is very simple, because the Liaodong Automobile Company's Liao 100 series tractors have reached the pinnacle in all aspects of performance indicators, and the military is also familiar with this tractor. After all, the artillery force has ordered hundreds of them. The order... Although it has not been delivered yet, I have used more than ten units for testing before and have very high evaluations of this tractor. Therefore, the five major special vehicle companies also unanimously want to use the chassis of this tractor for transformation.

And Liaodong Automobile Company refuses no one who comes... Anyway, cooperation with one company is cooperation, and cooperation with five companies is also cooperation... Anyway, no matter what you so-called defense companies do, you just need to buy chassis from us.

Anyway, I just sell chassis... You guys can play whatever you like.

So I happily pulled out the Liao 100 tractor and cooperated with these special vehicle companies... Of course, this cooperation was limited to handing them some technical information, and then dispatching a small number of engineers to provide some solutions. As for subsequent modifications, We will not be involved in the design integration of the tank project.

It's not that people look down on the military... but that they look down on the military's orders from the bottom of their hearts.

It can only hold orders for a few hundred chassis...less than one month's output of their new factory.

The new crawler tractor factory they established in Lushun has a designed annual production capacity of more than 10,000 units... To be honest, even if the military purchases 500 tanks a year, the military will have to purchase 20 to 30 tanks in a row. Years are needed to digest the annual output of their new factory...

Just one year's production.

Relying on military orders, tens of thousands of employees of their Liaodong Automobile Company will starve to death, and a group of shareholders behind them will suffer huge losses, and even lead to unprecedented huge investment losses for pension funds in many provinces...

So... cooperation with the military on tank projects, cooperation with defense companies, military tank orders... people don't take it to heart at all...

Anyway, our tractors are here. You buy the chassis and go over there. You can do whatever you want with it. We won’t interfere and we don’t bother to interfere.

If you have this spare time, you might as well develop the 80 series tractor...

After the flagship model of Liao 100 tractor was launched, it has been enthusiastically sought after by the market. Many large farms have placed large orders. At the same time, they have also given feedback that this new flagship tractor is good, but it is also a bit expensive. Is it okay? Transfer the technology to small-tonnage tractors.

For example, their Liao 80 series, this series of tractors used to be the main sales model of their Liaohe tractors, and they are also models with relatively high market acceptance in terms of price.

Therefore, in order to further open up the market for full-track tractors, a large amount of manpower and material resources are being concentrated on technical research, trying to transfer some of the advanced technologies of the flagship 100 model to the lower-level 80 series, and preparing to launch a new 80 series crawler tractor.

But technology decentralization is not that easy... because you must first ensure that costs are reduced so that the selling price can be reduced. If the selling price cannot be reduced, then the so-called technology decentralization is meaningless.

It has always been very difficult to reduce the cost of new technologies. Even if you reduce the performance of some technologies and make them into monkey versions, it is still difficult. Many things can be reduced if you want!

However, it is also necessary to reduce costs and apply new technologies to the 80 series tractors that are compact... The 100 series tractors are good, but they are too expensive. They can only be used by large farms, medium and large agricultural development companies, or have Only companies with special transportation needs, such as forestry companies that develop timber, will purchase.

The Liao 100 series tractors alone cannot absorb the annual production capacity of tens of thousands of new crawler tractors... Therefore, they urgently need to transfer the new technology to the mass-produced 80 series tractors, so that the 80 series tractors can To become a real market killer, it will not only seize orders for crawler tractors from the other two companies, but also seize orders for wheel tractors.

Only in this way can we support the normal operation of the new crawler tractor factory and bring huge profits.

As for the production capacity of tens of thousands of units, once it is fully developed, the higher selling price of its crawler tractors and huge profits... The management of Liaodong Automobile Company will drool just thinking about it. This thing is comparable to their half-dead car and truck business. It’s much better, and if it’s done well, it’s possible to rival their tricycle business.

Make money from these models, and then have enough profit support to continue research and development and promote expensive passenger car projects... The passenger car project is the core project of their car company.

Even if the passenger car project is losing money every year, they are gritting their teeth and holding on. They have no intention of giving up the passenger car project and completely transforming into tractors and three-wheelers.

This also led to Chengshun's 51st year and their unprecedented huge losses in the passenger car business. This year, their passenger car business lost about 2.2 million yuan...

But even so, Liaodong Automobile Company still maintains high investment in research and development every year, and continues to invest in the construction of passenger car project production lines to improve the upstream and downstream industrial chains...

This is actually the main reason for losses. Huge losses do not mean that making cars does not make money. On the contrary, these days, we have our own core technologies, including engines, gearboxes, chassis and other subsystems, and are also gradually improving other subsystems such as The five major automobile companies with industrial layouts such as tires and automotive glass are actually very profitable selling cars, with very high profit margins.

But no matter how profitable cars are, they can't sustain their current investment of millions of dollars in R&D every year, coupled with the same huge investment in production line construction, as well as investments in various industrial chains...

The younger brother among the five major automobile companies, the North American Automobile Company's annual investment in a Songjiang Automobile R&D center alone exceeds 5 million yuan... It's an exaggeration.

So strictly speaking, the losses incurred by the five major automobile companies are basically paper losses... and are not losses in the true sense, especially in the passenger car project.

Taking a step back, if Liaodong Automobile Company stops such large-scale R&D investment, it will turn losses into profits in minutes, and the profits will be very huge...

But once it announces that it will stop investing in research and development, its market value will also experience an avalanche.

Even if you continue to do research and development, even if you suffer a temporary loss, as long as the research and development has results, the capital market will still be optimistic about you and will continue to invest money in you. They do not ask you to turn over and become the boss. It is also good to continue to be the second, third, fourth, and fifth. Anyway, the car market The potential is big enough to support many car companies...

But not R&D? It's over, everyone will run away... Because in such a fiercely competitive automobile industry, once it stops investing in R&D, the automobile company will lose its future, and a automobile company that loses its future is worthless.

Even Wuhan Anlong Automobile Company, a third-party assembly car company that plays with car shells and produces boat-shaped models, has also established a so-called R&D center with hundreds of R&D engineers dedicated to developing new and various new technologies... Core technologies, such as engines and gearboxes, are naturally out of the question, but it is possible to build a car shell, modify the chassis, and develop some small technologies to increase the selling points of their assembled cars.

Not to mention, they have a lot of clever ideas. Although none of the core technologies are in-house, they are all purchased from other people's homes... But the cars they assemble are serious high-end cars, and the prices are not cheap, and there are many The rich and powerful also like the sci-fi luxury feel of their vehicles, so the sales are actually okay...

And this so-called sci-fi feeling also requires investment in research and development... The turn signal and brake light systems developed by Anlong Automobile Company also invested a lot of money in research and development, which is not just a matter of just saying a few words. .

Therefore, Liaodong Automobile Company would rather rely on other projects to support blood transfusion, but also maintain huge investment in research and development, production line construction, and industrial chain investment in the passenger car business.

In short, we will continue to fight with the other four car companies...

Unfortunately, the same is true for the other four car companies, so the fierce competition in the automotive industry will continue!

And what consequences will this bring?

Fierce competition will bring about cars with better performance and lower prices...

Cars with further mature performance and further reduced prices will transform from a toy for wealthy people and a production tool for operators to a travel tool for ordinary families.

Cars will truly enter the homes of ordinary people!

And this, in turn... is the reason why the competition among the five major automobile companies is so fierce and they have to fight to the death: once a car becomes a family car for ordinary people, it will be so huge that one can only imagine it for a second. It’s such a huge industry that everyone can’t help but salivate!

(End of this chapter)