While Han Hao was still planting trees on the barren mountain, the German government, thousands of miles away, officially approved Zhonghua Group's application to acquire ZF's CVT transmission business unit.

Prior to this, an expert committee commissioned by the German government had disassembled and analyzed the prototype car from China, combined with the CVT data submitted by the Chunghwa Group, and finally confirmed that the Chinese had mastered the CVT technology.

At the same time, it is admitted that the sale of ZF's CVT project will not bring harm to the technical safety of Germany and even the EU.

"The management has reached an agreement with the union that the sale will not result in any illegal layoffs of workers, and that Chunghwa Group will comply with German law to properly resettle employees. ”

ZF's executives emphasized this in the first sentence of an interview with reporters.

In European mergers and acquisitions, trade unions are a hurdle that cannot be bypassed, and Zhonghua Group has promised to retain a CVT R&D center in Germany. This German branch will become a point of Zhonghua Group's global R&D strength, which can achieve real-time access through the Internet and form a large-scale R&D network.

"I'm very happy to continue to do what I do well in Germany, knowing that the CVT sector is basically dominated by Japanese brands. Once I lose my job, it will be very difficult for me to find a new suitable job in my country. Now that the Chung Hwa Group is coming in, I think it's a very good start. ”

So said an ordinary employee of the department being sold.

With a purchase price of 520 million US dollars, Zhonghua Group finally acquired ZF's CVT and learned a lot of experience in mergers and acquisitions in western developed countries.

Hiring a specialized PR firm to lobby unions, the government, and banks specializing in mergers and acquisitions can make things move faster.

ZF's CVT plant in Hujiang will be transferred to the Chunghwa Group, and the company will continue to produce CVT transmissions for 1.8-liter high-power engines. On the other hand, the Scud CVT produced by the Chunghwa Group is used in 1.6L and below models. ZF allows Chung Wah to use its own brand to suspend this generation of CVT transmissions for a period of 10 years.

The above things are not the most valuable, the key is to get all the core information of ZF's CVT department and a large number of R&D personnel, with which the second-generation CVT will be born faster and keep up with the international mainstream pace.

Although mainstream automakers are taking the AT as a hot spot for next-generation competition, CVT is still a big deal for the Chinese market.

"Finally, there is good news that the Germans are really inefficient. In the future, in the independent automobile brand, our Zhonghua Group will take the lead in the field of automatic transmissions. ”

Through the satellite phone, Han Hao learned the good news for the first time, which made him usher in a good mood. When other domestic independent brands are still based on MT manual transmission, Zhonghua Group's products can be used on a large scale CVT, so it is more difficult for them to catch up with such dislocation competition.

"This CVT alone can give us an extra 300,000 sales a year. As long as we control the price of CVT within 5000-8000 yuan compared with MT, many consumers will not hesitate to choose automatic transmission. ”

For this successful merger and acquisition, Han Hao is full of confidence.

In continental Europe, MT manual transmissions are popular, while in North America, the world's largest market, it is the world of automatic transmissions, although China is still dominated by MT, but automatic transmissions are still an unstoppable trend.

In the foreseeable future, it should be Zhonghua Group that will lead the Chinese auto market into a new era of automatic transmission.

When Han Hao took time off to take a vacation, there were still many people working overtime in the China Automotive Research Institute.

The turbocharging team led by Xue Jianbin has been busy developing the turbocharged engine of Zhonghua Group for more than 4 years.

Originally, it was thought that as long as the self-aspirated 1.8L Pangu engine was added, a qualified turbocharged engine could be assembled.

Unexpectedly, in order to make such a turbine engine stable for a long time, Xue Jianbin and his team spent a total of four years to overcome many problems.

The design scheme has been changed again and again, and the existing scheme has changed beyond recognition compared to the initial drawings.

First, the turbine is easy to overheat and burn out, then the engine detonation occurs when the turbine is started, and then the carbon deposition is too fast and causes the cylinder to burst...... It was not easy to solve these problems, and finally found that we had to wait for the breakthrough of direct injection technology in the cylinder.

Among so many automobile manufacturers in the world, it is unique to launch turbocharging technology for large-scale commercial use, and Xue Jianbin is very impressed by Volkswagen's engine technology.

It can be said that the turbocharging technology of the Chunghwa Group has embarked on the road of reverse development of Volkswagen engines in search of reference materials as a last resort.

While the Chunghwa Group is still studying and researching Volkswagen's first-generation turbocharging technology, Volkswagen has announced that it will officially highlight the second-generation EA888 turbocharged engine next year.

"This generation of turbocharging technology has a lot of congenital flaws, and we know that there are a lot of problems from the reverse copying process. Although we can imitate our own turbocharging technology after solving the problem of in-cylinder direct injection, there are still great hidden dangers if we want to be commercialized on a large scale.

Therefore, I propose to wait for the second generation of Volkswagen's EA888 production machine to come out, and then we will tear it down and analyze it, readjust the existing thinking, and keep up with the pace of the new generation of products. ”

Although he didn't want to admit defeat, Xue Jianbin still stopped the benchmarking research based on Volkswagen's first-generation technology based on reason, and asked his subordinates to do some basic work and devote all their strength to assisting in the research and development of in-cylinder direct injection technology.

"We have to lay a good foundation to build more things on top of this, and if we want to climb to the sky, we can only keep eating deflated. In the previous R&D process, too much useless work was done, and a lot of time was wasted on making up lessons. Therefore, we must learn all the basics and then find a way to be on par with the top students. ”

He didn't get turbocharging technology for more than 4 years, which made Xue Jianbin abandon his previous idea of having a hot brain.

Among the world's top ten automobile manufacturers, only Volkswagen has commercialized turbocharging technology, which shows how difficult it is.

Fortunately, Han Hao gave him and his team enough patience and did not take it as a temporary success or failure.

"Today's detour is to make tomorrow more shortcuts, although the engine did not come out, but turbocharging technology has achieved a lot of breakthroughs. ”

From the process of developing CVT, Han Hao knew that even if the core technology was copied, it would not be copied for a while and a half, and it would be copied successfully. He continued to give great support to the other party, and various resources of people, money, and materials continued to be supplied.

After the breakthrough in CVT technology, the next hot spot of Zhonghua Group is turbocharged engines.

Today, it is the day when the engine department gathers the strength of the company to jointly build the test machine of R&D in-cylinder direct injection technology.

As the technical backbone of the third-generation Pangu engine and the obstacle of turbocharging technology, in-cylinder direct injection has been a key research project of the China Research Institute in the past year.

"Prepare to ignite, count down to 3, 2, 1!"

With the countdown passphrase, the Engineer pressed the ignition button.

The high-pressure fuel injector provided by Bosch can be seen from the real-time image transmitted to the screen from the high-temperature camera in the combustion chamber of the cylinder, and the high-speed fuel injection starts at the moment when the piston compression stroke reaches its peak point and before the spark plug ignites.

The mixture formed by gasoline and air ignites immediately in case of fire, and realizes layered combustion in the cylinder, resulting in a higher energy conversion rate.

"Perfect!"

When an engineer saw this scene, he couldn't help but clench his fists and let out a sigh of admiration.

For the picture in front of them, he and his colleagues don't know how many days of overtime, but fortunately they are fulfilling their mission today.

Initially, the test has been successful, and the specially improved pistons and combustion chambers have withstood the test, and the engine power has been significantly improved from the output data.

However, after 45 minutes of combustion, carbon deposits began to occur on the valves, and the sensors installed on it gave an alarm, the ECU work efficiency decreased, and the disadvantages of direct injection technology in the cylinder soon appeared.

Despite this, during the two-hour test run, the engine equipped with the in-cylinder direct injection device successfully completed the task, marking the beginning of the new field of in-cylinder direct injection of Zhonghua Group's independent engine.

Judging from the effect of today's test, Zhonghua Group has taken the right direction of the direct injection technology in the cylinder, and more details need to be further improved, and it is expected that satisfactory results can be obtained after half a year.

In the automobile industry, there is such a saying: diamond year, nine silver, ten bronze and five day.

That is to say, if you sell a car in a year, you should seize several major festivals to complete more than half of the year's tasks.

The Year of Diamond is the year of the year, which means that the best car sales were sold before the year. People have just paid bonuses, have saved up after working hard all year round, and have face in order to buy a new car for the New Year, at this time, both merchants and consumers are trading at a fixed price. Merchants don't put any discounts, and consumers don't bother to bargain.

Golden September and Silver Ten, Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day two consecutive holidays, dealers are used to promotions at this time, but also to complete the annual task to do a wave of sprints. This stage is the golden period for selling cars, and many manufacturers rely on gold and silver to move volume.

Copper May Day is a small May Day holiday. The consumer demand accumulated before the Chinese New Year has been released, and the two months after the New Year are the off-season for car sales. At this time, the May Day holiday is the most critical period for manufacturers to complete the task in the first half of the year, and dealers often start large-scale year-round promotional activities.

On May Day this year, the major automobile 4S stores were also crowded with customers who came to see the car.

In addition to traveling, looking at buildings and cars has become a new leisure way for many Chinese people.

In the 4S store of China Motor, there is a group of people around the small SUV "Song" that has not been on the market for a long time.

"This car is okay, it looks too small, this car is tall and big, suitable for a young woman like me!"

A young woman wearing sunglasses said to her husband.

"100,000 pieces landed, or CVT automatic transmission, this car can be! Look at the workmanship is not much different from the Volkswagen level, and the configuration is more abundant, as well as the ESP system. When you go out, you don't buy it from the public, so how do you look at domestic cars now?"

The man next to him obviously understands cars, and said after seeing the advertising board on the side.

"I didn't go to the scene to see it, I really couldn't imagine that a domestic car could be so beautiful, Volkswagen's POLO is not as good-looking as this car, and it is 30,000 yuan. Zhonghua Automobile is also a domestic famous brand, and it is not a shame to buy and drive. ”

The same type of sedan may not be able to beat the joint venture brand, but the domestic SUV can make consumers quickly surrender and can directly compete with the joint venture brand car.