On the plane, Li Mu planned the overall path of the electric vehicle project for Elon Musk.

In the first step, Li Mu and he jointly invested 50 million US dollars in a ratio of 7:3 to establish a new energy vehicle company, and part of the 50 million US dollars was used to acquire the R&D team he was following up.

The team's next key public relations direction is the related technology of lithium battery pack, followed by drive motor technology, and then peripheral supporting technology;

Second, Elon Musk needs to set up a team specializing in automobile research and development, while starting to design the framework, chassis, safety and aerodynamics of new energy vehicles, and at the same time have an in-depth understanding of several private automobile companies in China to prepare for the next acquisition;

There are two options for acquisition, one is to directly acquire domestic automobile companies, and the other is to acquire the production line of automobile companies, the former requires a relatively large amount of funds, if the funds are abundant at that time, there is no problem, if the funds are not so generous, choose to acquire the production line, many domestic car companies are not having a good time now, the production capacity can not be fully opened, several production lines squeeze it, it is not impossible to vacate a production line to realize, for Li Mu's new energy vehicle project, there is a low-end production line, it is much better than everything from scratch;

Third, Li Mu specifically asked Elon Musk to give up his blind pursuit of forced style when operating the new energy vehicle project, not to build a new energy vehicle with a unit price of 100,000 US dollars as soon as he came up, and to build such an expensive thing.

Elon Musk can't understand the concept of building a car on four wheels and a sofa, he thinks that the car is the same as the launch vehicle, it is the crystallization of modern industrial achievements, and there are too many places to work hard to build a good car, so he said to Li Mu: "Mr. Li, I hope that our future new energy vehicles are an excellent, outstanding and even epoch-making product, it may even accelerate from 0 to 60 miles in 3.5 seconds, its power is strong, quiet driving, Intelligent and futuristic ......"

Li Mu asked him: "Do you know which is the most profitable automobile company in the world?"

"Yes. Elon Musk said: "Toyota. ”

Li Mu nodded and asked him: "Why is Toyota the most profitable? In this year's enterprise rankings, his operating income is lower than that of GM and Ford, but the net profit is dozens of times that of GM, and Ford's net profit is even negative.

Elon Musk smiled slightly and said: "Mr. Li, the operation of the entire Toyota group is more flexible and smooth than other automobile companies, and it is efficient, and the capture of market demand is also very accurate, and for consumers, the product has a high degree of fit." ”

Li Mu asked him rhetorically: "Do you think you want to build a 100,000-dollar electric car to accurately capture the market demand, and do you have a high degree of fit with consumers?"

"This ......"

Elon Musk is a little speechless, but he is still reluctant to adopt Li Mu's statement in his heart, he understands what Li Mu means, it is nothing more than to lower his figure, lower the threshold, and then sell the new energy vehicles with low thresholds to the world, which may indeed make new energy vehicles have more audiences, but it still lacks the sense of earth-shattering impact, if the product is not good enough, it will lose a lot of motivation for him.

Li Mu also saw his mood, and said lightly: "I don't object to the idea that you want to build a top new energy sports car, you can let this team move towards this goal in the future, after all, it is always good to have a higher specification of technical accumulation, and we can be backward compatible at any time, but you can't pin the future of the enterprise on a product that is not grounded enough, so in the choice of the main model, you must reduce the positioning, and use more production capacity to manufacture cheaper goods in batches." ”

Elon Musk nodded and said, "Okay Mr. Li, I understand what you mean." ”

Li Mu knew that he understood what he meant, but he didn't know if he agreed with his point of view, but whatever he did, let him put the stall up first, if he insisted on taking the old road that Tesla had walked in his life in the future, then he would definitely not allow it.

Subsequently, Li Mu diverted the topic and reminded him: "Since you have decided to do new energy, you have to catch many things in advance now, otherwise it will be easy for others to choke your throat in the future." ”

Elon Musk subconsciously asked, "What do you mean?"

"Battery. Li Mu said: "I don't know what you said about the team, how powerful the battery pack and battery management technology research and development, I only know that the capacity of an 18650 battery is only two or three thousand milliamperes, if you want to have a range of hundreds of kilometers, then I'm afraid at least a few thousand such batteries, right?"

Elon Musk nodded and said: "That's right, Mr. Li, under normal circumstances, we need at least 7,000 batteries to ensure a range of 400 kilometers." ”

Li Mu sighed: "You sell a car, others will sell 7,000 batteries, if they earn you 1 dollar per battery, then you sell a car, it is equivalent to helping battery manufacturers earn 7,000 dollars, we can make 7,000 dollars from selling a car is still unknown, if most of the net profit in the future is intercepted by them, then we will lose all the initiative, you have to be prepared for this problem, don't be choked by the upstream raw material supply enterprises when the time comes." ”

Elon Musk said: "Many companies have the technology of 18650 batteries, but there is a slight gap in product performance and quality control, and this market cannot form a monopoly, so I think we will still have a negotiating advantage in front of battery companies in the future." ”

Li Mu shook his head secretly when he heard this.

Although Elon Musk is known as the Iron Man of Silicon Valley in reality, this guy is really not rigorous enough, although he has a long-term vision, but relatively, there are many loopholes and negligence scary.

Not taking into account the problem of production capacity in advance is a major flaw in Tesla's last life, and the cost of batteries accounts for too high a proportion of the cost of the whole vehicle, which is a big dead end for Tesla. It is too late to build a super battery factory, at that time, new energy vehicles have sprung up all over the world, major automobile companies have announced that they will stop the production of fuel vehicles in the near future, and governments around the world have also stated that they will ban the sale of fuel vehicles in their own countries in the future.

Li Mu sighed in his heart, Elon Musk did not foresee that batteries would become a major core pain point of new energy projects, which really made Li Mu a little disappointed, and so on more than ten years later, when new energy vehicles spread all over the world, not to mention the price of batteries, even the prices of lithium and cobalt, the key raw materials of lithium batteries, will rise by leaps and bounds.

Power with more than 100,000 tons of lithium, hundreds of thousands of tons of cobalt, especially cobalt, the proportion of use in lithium batteries is not much lower than lithium, and cobalt is much more scarce than lithium, China's large land area, according to the data released by the West, China's cobalt reserves account for 1% of the world, when the new energy era comes, who has mastered cobalt, who is the father of the entire new energy industry.

Thinking of this, Li Mu's heart moved, the rapid development of lithium batteries will take at least a few years, and cobalt and lithium related industries should now be in a trough or flat period as a whole, if you can use a few years to lay out the global cobalt mines, lithium mines, and supporting production and smelting, then when the new energy era comes, the market value of these industries will increase at least ten times or even dozens of times, which in itself is a package of profits, and the profit margin is extremely high.

More importantly, with these core resources, Li Mu can be from the upstream of the battery industry of electric vehicles, down the neck of the battery industry, if these companies dare to pretend to force themselves to immediately plunder their profits from the source, force them to comply, and even when they can lay out the lithium battery production industry, they can penetrate the upstream and downstream of the battery industry.

Once they can penetrate the upstream and downstream, forming their own closed loop that is not affected by the end, and when the lithium battery raw materials skyrocket, they can not only ensure that their new energy vehicle costs have more flexible space, but also directly rely on their own control of upstream resources, to smash the wool of other lithium battery manufacturers, and maximize the market growth brought about by the outbreak of the new energy industry.

So, after the plane landed and the arranged convoy sent Li Mu and his party to the hotel on Harvard, Li Mu hurriedly called Li Ziwei to his room and said to her: "Ziwei, give you an important task, you can do it seriously during this time." ”

Li Ziwei hurriedly said: "Mr. Li, please speak." ”

Li Mudao: "Through the shell company that has no direct contact with us in the periphery, I will invite a well-known international commercial survey company to help me investigate the entire market situation of the lithium battery industry, as well as the mining, production and processing of various key raw materials of lithium batteries behind it, I want to detail the proven reserves and mining difficulty of each element in various countries around the world, the current mining situation, and the specific whereabouts of these minerals after mining, such as which countries to go to, Which companies processed and refined it, and which companies it sold to. ”

Li Ziwei quickly recorded with a pen, nodded and said, "I have written it down, Mr. Li, are there anything else?"

Li Mu thought for a while and said: "Lithium ore and cobalt ore should be paid attention to, I want to know the market trend of these two ores in the world, and whose hands these two ore industries are mainly concentrated in, whether it is possible to win it, and if so, how much money is needed!"