The car giant started by marrying the daughter of the king

Chapter 353 Heavyweight Model Planning

The temperature in Shenzhen in October is still relatively high, not much different from summer.

The delegation from the Polytechnic Special Vehicle Factory came to exchange ideas, and of course they were not just discussing gearboxes.

However, as the most core project, after the gearbox was finalized, subsequent discussions became much easier.

After sending them away, a particularly important meeting was held within BMW.

When Zheng Haiming came to inspect before, Jiang Hui had already said that BMW would establish BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Land Rover and Chitu brands to operate various types of models.

However, apart from the BMW Light and Mercedes-Benz sedan, there are no specific plans for other products.

This situation certainly cannot continue forever.

"Director, our sales team has analyzed the domestic and international situations and believes that if the factory wants to make a breakthrough in the overseas market, the best way may be to develop an epoch-making pickup truck and allow it to enter the Middle East and African markets to compete with international giants such as Toyota."

"Relatively speaking, these markets are not very mature, and competition is not that fierce. Consumers do not have many models to choose from, but the prices are relatively high."

"If we can develop competitive pickup truck products, it is entirely possible to export several thousand vehicles per month."

Chen Chenxing was the first to stand up and express his opinion.

BMW has encountered Waterloo in overseas markets, and Mercedes-Benz cars will most likely not perform very well in overseas markets either.

In order to break this situation, we naturally need to consider other models.

"Pickup trucks may not have much of a market in China, but it is different on the world stage, especially in America, where they are very popular among consumers."

"If we can really develop an excellent pickup truck product, we may even be able to enter the American market."

Hou Guoming is also a person who often goes abroad for inspection. He has some understanding of pickup trucks, which are relatively unfamiliar to Chinese people.

He even personally experienced Ford's pickup truck during his last trip to America.

"Foreign pickup trucks use engines with larger 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 model."

Jiang Hui naturally would not object to the pickup truck product supported by both Chen Chenxing and Hou Guoming.

However, in his impression, foreign pickup trucks seem to have larger displacement.

The engines currently developed by BMW seem to be a little insufficient.

"I see that the Toyota Hilux, which is selling well, is equipped with an engine displacement of 2.4L and 3.0L. Due to the impact of the oil crisis, it is selling quite well."

"On the contrary, sales of large-displacement pickup trucks from General Motors and Ford Motor have declined."

“So I think in the early stages, can we consider learning from Toyota’s development path?”

Fang Huihui has the strongest international vision in the BMW Group. After all, she grew up in Hong Kong.

Many times, when she makes decisions, she would refer to the practices in Japan, as she feels that they are more valuable for reference.

This time is no exception.

"Mr. Fang is right. I think it is enough to launch 2.5L and 3.5L pickups in the early stage. After the V8 engine planned by Director Jiang is successfully developed, we should be able to launch a larger-displacement pickup in time."

"However, overseas, many pickup trucks are equipped with diesel engines. Our research in this area is still relatively weak, so we may need to consider developing diesel engine technology at the same time."

"For example, we will launch 2.5L diesel engines and 3.5L diesel engines in the future."

Hou Guoming still has some skills. At that time, no domestic passenger car used diesel engines, all of them used gasoline engines.

In most people's minds, only trucks use diesel engines.

But in the international market, the situation is different.

Diesel engines are actually quite popular.

"Alright, 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 people to personally design the appearance of the pickup truck."

"1984 is coming to an end soon. Time waits for no one. In order to launch our pickup truck products before the end of 1986, we will have to work hard for a while."

The current automobile industry is not as competitive as it is in later generations. It usually takes three to four years to develop a new car model. Jiang Hui has compressed the time to about two years, which is already exaggerated.

Of course, compared with the development of a new electric car in about a year in later generations, that was much slower.

By taking advantage of its special advantages and quickly compressing the time when developing the appearance and selecting the configuration of early models, BMW's new model development schedule is much faster than that of international auto giants.

"As Mr. Fang just mentioned, Toyota's Hilux, we compared it with some other pickup trucks in the industry and felt that it might be more appropriate to use it as a standard to develop our own pickup trucks."

"We will combine the industry benchmarking with some specific configuration requirements and formally report to the factory in the near future."

Chen Chenxing was in a good mood when he saw that his proposal was adopted.

"Director, since we have developed a pickup truck, can we consider developing an off-road vehicle based on the pickup truck?"

"Off-road vehicles are also very popular in markets such as the United States and Africa, and the competition is relatively less fierce."

Hou Guoming is a designer. He thinks that in order to make full use of the design experience of pickup trucks and maximize the development costs, he can develop another car model at the same time.

The development work of the Mercedes-Benz sedan has been almost completed, and what remains is more of a tinkering job.

The R&D center has more manpower to develop new models.

If the pickup truck and the SUV use the same platform, then although the 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 to complete the development of both models.

This is definitely a scene that Hou Guoming would be very happy to see.

Compared with the sales of international auto giants, the sales of all China's auto manufacturers combined are not enough.

He is not very young anymore and he urgently hopes that BMW can become the pride of China.

"I support Director Hou's proposal. When we expand overseas markets in the future, we cannot rely on just one Land Rover pickup truck. It would be best if we also have off-road vehicles to cooperate with it." "Only if we have at least two products can we better open up the market in some places."

Chen Chenxing and Hou Guoming are old acquaintances, and they certainly support his views both publicly and privately.

These suggestions are beneficial to the company and are well thought out. Jiang Hui agreed immediately and added, "This is a very good idea. When we design our parts from the beginning, we need to consider the issue of platform sharing to minimize development costs and parts production costs."

"It would be great if some parts used in Mercedes-Benz cars could be shared with Land Rover pickup trucks or SUVs."

For car manufacturers, the investment in developing a new model is huge.

The best way to reduce development costs is to use a platform, which can save a lot of time and money.

Auto giants around the world have already started down this path, but it is just the beginning. The degree of commonality among different models cannot be compared with that of later generations.

It would be best if BMW could take this into full consideration from the beginning.

"It shouldn't be a big problem. Our R&D center is always recruiting people, and we have poached some retired engineers from Japan. There are also some college students in China who are willing to come and work with us."

"But overall, the manpower is still quite tight. By promoting sharing, the development 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 that Jiang Hui mentioned.

He had vaguely thought about this before, but he had never thought about it so thoroughly.

Now after Jiang Hui's guidance, he immediately understood.

"In this case, the next focus of our company is to develop the 3.5L engine and two new Land Rover models."

"Nanshan Transmission's 4AT automatic transmission must also be developed as soon as possible to enable our transmission technology to 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.

4AT变速箱于1939年被研发成功，而在2020年时市场中还有新车配备4AT，比如现代瑞纳，4AT服役周期已经接近80年。

Early 4AT automatic transmissions were exclusive to luxury cars, such as the 1968 Mercedes-Benz 280SE Coupe, which was equipped with a 4AT transmission as the top luxury car at the time.

Of course, 4AT has gradually begun to enter the mid-size sedan field. 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 have been upgraded from 2014AT to 4AT until 6.

It is conceivable how important the 4AT gearbox is in this era.

If Nanshan Transmission does not develop its own 4AT as soon as possible, it will greatly affect the competitiveness of its cars in the international market.

As for whether there will be any patent disputes when developing this gearbox and selling it on the international market, that is completely unnecessary.

After all, the 1939AT automatic transmission was already available in 4, and all the patents had expired long ago.

Nanshan Transmission only needs to find a 4AT with more advanced performance to refer to for development, and Jiang Hui doesn't even need to come up with any special design plan.

He only needs to point out some material selection and process arrangements that he could not grasp during the disassembly and benchmarking, and the progress can be greatly improved.

Of course, the TCU part is a difficult point, and Jiang Hui definitely needs to lead everyone to make a breakthrough as soon as possible.

Once these major directions were determined at the meeting, all departments naturally took quick action.

Ji Xia, who had already confirmed that he would go to work at Nanshan Transmission, also came to Nanshan Transmission accompanied by Ji Hua to start his internship in advance.

"Director Jiang, Xiao Xia has some basic knowledge in gearbox design. I will learn from you in the future."

Ji Hua has known Jiang Hui for many years, and he feels more at ease leaving his son to Jiang Hui.

"Today's college students are the chosen ones of heaven, and various ministries and commissions are vying for them. It is definitely a good thing that our juniors are willing to come to Nanshan Transmission for development."

"We have not only successfully developed the 5MT manual transmission, but are also focusing on tackling the 4AT automatic transmission technology. In the future, we will definitely be the first company in China to produce automatic transmissions."

"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."

"Foreign 4AT is already very mature and even has a history of several decades, but there is no factory in China that can produce it. This situation must be changed as soon as possible."

"In the future, we will quickly launch 4AT and 5AT automatic transmissions based on the experience of 6AT to fully meet the needs of BMW cars."

"Especially since BMW has planned some new products and is going to enter the international market in the future, it will not work if the gearbox technology is very backward."

Jiang Hui attaches great importance to the gearbox.

Before the advent of the electric vehicle era, the importance of the three major components of traditional fuel vehicles is unquestionable.

If any of the engine, gearbox and chassis is not done well, it is impossible to produce a good car.

As for chassis technology, Jiang Hui is quite confident that the R&D personnel at Nanshan Technology and BMW can improve on their own and he just needs to give them some guidance.

However, if those people were to rely on themselves to research the engine and transmission technology, it would take who knows how long it would take.

As a young automobile company, if BMW wants to make a name for itself in the international automobile market, it must have some special selling points.

Each automobile giant generally has its own historical heritage, which BMW cannot compare with.

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 level of development of the parts industry.

For example, airbags and various electrical equipment, these also require time to accumulate.

However, Jiang Hui is confident that he can come up with some new ideas for things like the gear position of the gearbox and the displacement of the engine.

For example, no car company currently uses 5AT or 6AT automatic transmissions. If BMW's products can be the first to be equipped with this type of transmission, it will definitely be a very good publicity gimmick.

Another example is engine displacement. Domestic passenger cars generally have small and medium displacement. BMW has developed several large-displacement engines, which definitely gives it a commanding position in the domestic market.

Combined with some automobile publicity strategies, Jiang Hui plans to continuously bring various impacts to the world automobile industry and make BMW cars quickly famous.

(End of this chapter)