I asked you to save a bankrupt factory and you became the richest man in the world.

Chapter 392 085-086: The idea of ​​this car is awesome! (5000 words)
Gao Huaijun looked at the eager eyes of the executives below and smiled.

He did not continue speaking, but turned to the next page of the sketch.

This was the alternative design plan for Han that he discussed with Egg some time ago.

The all-new Dragon Face design features a more stretched grille shape and daytime running light modifications similar to the Han.

The smooth lines on the side and the perfect body proportions.

The straight waistline runs from the headlights to the rear side doors, thereby enhancing the solidity of the slender body.

As for the fold lines in the lower part of the car body, they express a certain muscular texture without losing the youthful temperament that an A-class car should have.

It looks like a high-end car.

This is. . . .

Is Boss Gao trying to turn Gao Ling Song into Gao Ling Han?
"There is actually a certain customer group between A-class cars and B-class cars. They want the quality of B-class cars, but they are short of money!"

“I call them A+ customers.”

“In fact, do more than 80% of our Gaoling Song customers actually like to buy the second-highest and highest-end products?”

As he spoke, Gao Huaijun looked at Wang Fengying who was standing beside him.

Wang Fengying nodded.

Indeed, Hillhouse Song has now gone through two iterations, and the purchasing customer base has indeed undergone very big changes.

When Hillhouse Song first launched the product, the customer base that purchased it basically bought the low-end version. Now they are gradually moving towards the high-end version. In fact, this is a process in which customers' purchasing power is gradually increasing.

Of course, there is also the reason that Hillhouse's brand power is increasing. Some consumers who used to buy Toyota, Honda, and other large and medium-sized foreign joint venture car brands have switched to buying the high-end version of Hillhouse Song.

“So, I think the era of quasi-B-class cars is about to arrive!”

“If an A+-class A-class car appears on the market at a suitable price, do you think customers will buy it?”

Gao Huaijun said with a laugh.

The executives present suddenly realized.

Gao Huaijun's idea is equivalent to quasi-B-class car size + new architecture + excellent styling.

The size of this car has reached 4830x1900x1495mm, with a wheelbase of 2790mm.

The original Hillhouse Song has dimensions of 4740/1770/1480 mm and a wheelbase of 2670 mm.

Basically, the length and width are about ten centimeters larger.

For an A-class car, this is definitely a treat!
Although Gao Huaijun was not clear about the product path of BYD Qin L in the future, he analyzed the market and accidentally entered the A+ market, which was previously ignored by automobile manufacturers.

When customers buy a car, many of them want a sense of comfort.

In this era, Japanese-style aunt clothes are not cheap and their comfort level is extremely poor.

The body size of Corolla is 4635 mm long, 1780 mm wide, 1455 mm high, and has a wheelbase of 2700 mm.

From this we can see that, not to mention compared with the latest model of Hillhouse Song that is currently under development, even compared with the first generation Hillhouse Song, the length is ten centimeters smaller.

This car must be so crowded!
Why do they dare to play like this?

Dare to downgrade configuration unscrupulously?

On the surface, the reason why joint venture cars can be unscrupulously reduced in configuration after entering the country is because there are some lack of relevant domestic laws and regulations or standards.

In reality, your domestic cars cannot compete with others, and even if they reduce their specifications, they still cannot beat them.

That feeling is as despairing as the Chinese national football team not even being able to qualify for the World Cup.

After hearing what Gao Huaijun said, the executives present were stunned at first, and then they suddenly realized.

What the hell!

It turns out that the product can be played like this!
Using a more spacious B-class car to fight an A-class car feels like a completely misplaced dimensionality reduction attack.

"That's not enough!"

“We need to be more ambitious with this product.”

"Compared with the rear torsion beam non-independent suspension of the Gaoling Song, the new Gaoling Song needs to be replaced with the rear multi-link suspension that is currently under pre-research."

"Boss Wang and Director Egg need to follow up on this matter!"

"Such a suspension configuration will undoubtedly bring a better driving feel to the Gaoling Song."

"Not skimping on creating a sense of luxury is the key to Hillhouse Song's breakthrough and creation of hit products."

“In addition, Gaolingsong also needs to pay more attention to the texture decoration in the interior.”

As he spoke, Gao Huaijun continued to turn to the page of interior description.

"The new car's cabin design lines are more restrained than the original version, adhering to the principle of simplicity to avoid unnecessary details."

"Secondly, we don't need to make the dashboard three-dimensional separately, but can integrate it into a whole piece of piano lacquer trim, forming an embracing design with the doors on both sides."

"Remember, we have to nail the design of this premium car."

"The suspension configuration has been upgraded, the vehicle size has evolved, the interior and exterior design has been improved, and there is also a pure electric battery design."

“This is not just an ordinary iteration, this is a completely new product!”

At the end, Gao Huaijun spoke in a sonorous and powerful voice.

At this time, the executives of Hillhouse Vehicles were deeply shocked.

Compared with the original version of Hillhouse Song, this version of Hillhouse Song PLUS has undergone a clearly visible transformation.

On one hand, Hillhouse Capital's Song is getting stronger, while on the other hand, the three major Japanese brands such as Corolla and Sylphy produced by the joint venture, as well as various A-class cars of Dazhong, are all visibly declining.

Under such circumstances, it is natural for Hillhouse Song PLUS to achieve higher sales than the original A-class car.

However, this is likely to cause a significant degree of conflict with Gao Linghan’s original positioning.

Because while the new Hillhouse Song PLUS is snatching away foreign A-class car customers, it is also snatching away customers that originally belonged to Hillhouse Han.

The trend of homogeneous competition is inevitable!
When Egger brought this up, Gao Huaijun frowned and said, "The Gaoling Han is a medium-to-large car. It is longer and wider than the Gaoling Song PLUS in terms of size. Its wheelbase is 120mm longer, so it has a clear advantage in space."

"Besides, why don't you go back and think carefully about the improvement of the next generation of Gao Linghan? What's the point of throwing the problem to me?"

"This car of Gaoling Song is for the incremental market. You need to have a good grasp of the remaining market and don't take it for granted!"

When everyone heard this, they couldn't help but twitch their lips slightly.

After Gao Huaijun said this, they couldn't accept it!

However, if the new Hillhouse Song can break through in the A-class car market, then partially sacrificing the B-class car market is actually no big deal.

At this moment, all of them looked at Gao Huaijun with admiration.

Dare to think what others dare not think.

The concept of A+ class car models has been thought about by other people, but no one has ever been so bold as to directly make a B-class car and snatch the customers of A-class and B-class cars.

The core logic of this car is still the large space and large size that customers like most.

Just like Li Xiang ONE, which is the benchmark of Hillhouse Capital.

The products are ordinary, but the large size, big refrigerator, and big color TV really hit the Chinese people's G point!
Who wouldn't want to buy a bigger car?

I made an appointment with a girl, and we went on a hillside, in the wild, quietly, just enough to experience the feeling of looseness and tightness.

You actually told me that the back seat is too small and I can’t lie down, so I can only open the door and stand on the ground?

If it is summer and your thighs are covered with a bunch of bites, what a cool sight it would be!
Wouldn't that be extremely embarrassing?
Why try to survive in the cracks when you can control the things yourself?

but. . .

It's more comfortable in the cracks, isn't it?
In the eyes of this group of executives, Gao Huaijun is not only a technical master, but also a marketing tycoon.

He really has very unique insights into how to enter the market accurately.

With such a boss leading the way, they instantly became more confident in the Hillhouse Song PLUS product.

After the meeting, Gao Huaijun immediately thought of Andrew Ng.

In this day and age, especially in China, Hillhouse Group has made certain achievements in artificial intelligence technology.

The core team is the artificial intelligence cluster mathematics PhD led by Andrew Ng!
In China, Hillhouse's research and development level in artificial intelligence is basically stronger than the sum of all other research institutes and universities.

Thousands of mathematics PhDs, most of whom are from top 985 universities, this is not something an ordinary company can do.

However, no matter how strong you are, in Gao Huaijun's eyes, the team is still not strong enough and is still a long way from being put on the road. In addition, the AI ​​team now has a big task on hand, such as AI empowerment for cars, as well as various AI mutual sensing projects on mobile phones, not to mention the task of building the underlying large model of Gaoling, which has already started. After a few projects, this already weak R&D team has been thinned.

Shortage of people! Shortage of people! Still shortage of people!

This is what Andrew Ng urges Gao Huaijun to do every day.

Naturally, Hillhouse’s HR department started recruiting PhDs in mathematics every day. . .

It has even reached the point where some people with a strong mathematical foundation and a PhD in physics or a Master’s in mathematics are required to do so!
This also led to the fact that some Chinese investment banks were no match for Hillhouse Group in attracting quantitative finance practitioners.

The fact that a high-tech company is competing with investment banks for talent is going crazy. This in itself shows the flagship role of Hillhouse's artificial intelligence team in China.

However, no matter how short-staffed they were, Gao Huaijun still asked Andrew Ng to prepare to connect with Hillhouse's vehicle team to first refine some of the functions of artificial intelligence and conduct in-depth research and development on the precision of radar scanning technology.

In Hillhouse's previous vehicle products, the preliminary intelligent driving was not mature. Whether it was automatic parking, lane keeping assist, adaptive cruise control, etc., there were occasional rollovers.

Although this is just the prototype of intelligent driving.

In most scenarios, Hillhouse's intelligent driving can fully judge and execute a series of actions based on simple instructions, including target priority.

But Gao Huaijun, who pursues perfection, cannot tolerate this situation!

So in this situation, Gao Huaijun asked Andrew Ng's team to carry out the complete research and development of L1 to empower Hillhouse's vehicle models.

And this L1 is a complete product.

Named: Eye of God!

As an intelligent driving assistance system, the Eye of God can cover all scenarios of intelligent driving. For example, on highways and expressways covered by the function, the highway NOA can realize follow-up navigation, using sensors such as lidar, cameras, millimeter-wave radar, and integrating vehicle status data to make comprehensive decisions on tasks such as on- and off-ramps, changing lanes and overtaking.

The Eye of God also uses three more millimeter-wave radars.

This is another difficult task for Hillhouse's cost control.

This is actually a very difficult task for Hillhouse at this stage.

But Gao Huaijun couldn't care less.

ALL IN!

It’s ALL IN!

Now that Hillhouse Technology has gone public, Hillhouse Vehicle still does not have a flagship product. It can no longer wait until after 2021 to explode rapidly like BYD in the future.

Hillhouse’s new A-class car, Hillhouse Song PLUS, is the guarantee for Hillhouse’s takeoff.

No matter how difficult it is, you have to carry on.

It is now the beginning of 2015, and there are still four years until 2019!

Hillhouse Capital is now a fringe company among the Fortune 500, and the size of future medium-sized companies will be only slightly larger than Hillhouse Capital today.

It can be said that Hillhouse is actually already within the vision of some powerful being!

Thinking of this, amidst Andrew Ng's tired voice, the phone was answered, even though it was already eleven o'clock in the morning.

"Mr. Wu, you haven't slept yet!" Gao Huaijun smiled slightly.

There is no boss who doesn’t like his employees to work overtime.

It's like you like to slack off at work.

"I can't sleep!"

"Hillhouse is now faced with an overwhelming amount of tasks."

"The key is that there is no suitable template for the task you gave us in the United States. It's like starting from scratch. We are all under a lot of pressure!"

Andrew Ng picked up the iced American coffee in his hand and said with a wry smile.

He now felt the rich aroma of iced Americano flowing in his blood.

I don’t know if it’s worth it to stay up all night long!
However, when he thought about how others called him the godfather of artificial intelligence, his blood boiled again.

He will never get this title in his entire life in college.

Because there are not so many math PhDs available to him in the university.

A large team of thousands of people!
And he is a PhD in mathematics at the 985 level.

There is no team in North America that can compare!
Yes any!
More importantly, the blazing funds burning by Hillhouse Capital's artificial intelligence were so much that it made him feel numb.

When it’s late at night and everyone is asleep, I’m always reflecting on myself: Is Hillhouse Artificial Intelligence really worth that much money?
“Pressure is a good thing.”

"Hillhouse Artificial Intelligence is the backbone of Hillhouse. I am 'ALL IN AI'!"

Gao Huaijun said half-jokingly.

“Please don’t say, ‘ALL IN AI’. It will put a lot of pressure on me,” said Andrew Ng with a wry smile.

For this reason, he felt that Gao Huaijun had more confidence in artificial intelligence than he did.

His former colleagues all joked with him that this was a good start for him.

"Let's not waste any more time. I want to know, are there any difficulties in the research and development of the Eye of God now?" Gao Huaijun restrained his smile and asked in a deep voice.

"This new model combines the basic algorithms of BEV+Transformer. We are also re-planning and rewriting the core code. The difficulty is real."

"It integrates vehicle-level real-time data. In addition to common sensor data such as cameras and radars, the Eye of God system also integrates vehicle-level data such as wheel speed, steering, and tire pressure, allowing the vehicle to receive a wider range of signals, thereby making more comprehensive and accurate perceptions and judgments, providing more references for the next step of execution."

"This has certain advantages for the vehicle itself, and for assisted driving functions such as high-speed navigation (high-speed navigation assisted driving), automatic parking assistance (APA), close valet parking (AVP), and automatic emergency braking (AEB)."

"However, there are too many functions to be developed, and our current team is obviously not enough. The core difficulty is still the lack of people, and we really don't have enough time."

"We have almost fully developed the resources in China. We may need to spend a little money to further develop overseas and see if we can attract some Chinese and Asian talents back to China."

"There are still too few people working in the field of artificial intelligence."

Andrew Ng couldn't help but sigh.

Hillhouse has gone so deep into the field of intelligent driving, and the details involved are also very specific, and there are considerable blind spots in many areas.

This is unprecedented difficulty, not to mention Hillhouse Capital. Even for companies like BBA and Toyota Motors, this is an unprecedented difficulty.

Andrew Ng and his team are starting from scratch!
You can imagine how difficult it is.

To put it bluntly, the development of intelligent driving is a "gold-guzzling pit" and without strong capital, it is impossible to survive to the end.

The level of money burning here is no less than that of chips.

Those piles of mathematics PhDs cannot be asked to join the work just by offering a piece of cake.

"Electrification is the first half of new energy vehicles, and intelligence is the second half."

"So now I attach great importance to both of you!"

"I will probably go to the Magic City tomorrow morning to discuss with you the research and development of the Eye of God."

"I have asked the Finance Department to allocate a sum of money from Hillhouse Technology's financing to Hillhouse Artificial Intelligence. The initial plan is 100 billion yuan!"

"In the era of intelligent cars, only giants have enough resources to invest, and it is difficult for ordinary companies to survive in the "more competitive" market. And such giants, except Hillhouse, no other company has entered for the time being."

"So, let's just start with some fun."

Gao Huaijun said lightly.

"What the hell!" Andrew Ng's heart was shocked.

100 billion yuan?

Or should we just start by playing around?
Andrew Ng felt that his three views were shattered.

On the basis of such a huge investment, all of Hillhouse Technology’s financing money was invested.

Gao Huaijun will not give up until he achieves his goal!

Now Andrew Ng was very excited, and all his previous fatigue was swept away.

Hillhouse's current investment in artificial intelligence is in the tens of billions of Huayuan.

This is just the start of the race. In the future...

Do we have to join forces with other giants to make investments worth hundreds of billions of dollars?
He had a feeling that his soul was leaving his body and moving behind him.

I feel a little dizzy.

For the first time, I felt the terrifying power of capital tycoons.

(End of this chapter)