My Age of Investment

  Chapter 729 The Death of Gearbox (two in one)

  "Dalun, come to the company, we have encountered a tricky thing."

Not long after    hung up Li Lu's call, Xia Jingxing received a call from Eberhard, whose tone was faintly anxious and angry.

  Xia Jingxing frowned, something happened to Tesla?

   "What's wrong? The battery exploded? Is anyone injured?"

   "No, it's more serious than that. I can't explain it in a few words on the phone. Come on!"

  More serious than a battery exploded?

  Xia Jingxing was really a little panicked, and hurriedly asked: "What the **** is going on? Tell me now!"

Eberhard on the other end of the phone was silent for more than ten seconds, and then like a kid who made a mistake, he hesitated: "Um...Roadster mass production... has encountered a little problem... delivery may be delayed. ."

  Xia Jingxing slapped his forehead. He has been paying attention to Facebook and oil pipes recently. If he didn't pay attention, Tesla created such a big surprise for him.

  "Didn't you promise me? Absolutely on time, quality and quantity delivery?"

  Xia Jingxing held the phone with a bit of excitement, and yelled: "Now, what do we use to explain to customers, and others shouldn't treat us as a liar or a company with no integrity?

  I’m telling you, the bad news of delayed delivery, once it spreads widely, Roadster’s reservations will definitely be greatly affected, and you may not even be able to sell a car again! "

   After screaming, Xia Jingxing's chest kept rising and falling, and he was evaluating the various effects of this incident on Tesla.

  Building a car is not an easy task.

   Tesla now plays the role of an electric car pioneer. From technology to supply chain, everything is immature, and Tesla has to figure out its own solutions.

  NIO, Xiaopeng, the founders of several new car-building forces are all Tesla owners. When they start their businesses, the upstream and downstream supporting industrial chain of electric vehicles needs to be improved a lot, which is equivalent to crossing the river by touching Tesla.

  At this time, they did not have a reference object, as if walking in the dark, stepping on the pit is very normal.

  In fact, he was not as angry as he showed, but he deliberately created some pressure on Eberhard.

  He, a major shareholder, has always been very tolerant of Tesla, and he always helps with advice and advice from time to time.

  People often say that a loving father is often defeated, so he can't spoil the management team too much.

  Delivery time, Eberhard himself promised him.

  Now that something goes wrong, you must take the responsibility.

Eberhard’s personality has always been strong, but now he knows that he is wrong, and he has become a docile little cat. I'm looking for you, just to solve the problem quickly. The situation is urgent and there is no delay!"

   "Okay, I see, I'll be at the company in a while."

  Xia Jingxing hung up the phone coldly, got up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, and looked at the Silicon Valley outside the park, which was connected to the park.

  There are very few high-rise buildings in Silicon Valley. They are all two or three-story buildings. The single-story building has a large area and looks like a factory building. It is surrounded by various flowers and trees. The living environment is quite good.

  After thinking for a while, Xia Jingxing looked back, called Liu Xiaoduo and Zhang Chenguang, and drove to the newly relocated campus of Tesla.

After Tesla completed $40 million in Series C financing last year, considering the increasingly arduous R&D tasks and the growing size of the engineering team, Tesla re-leased a small three-story office park with an area of ​​about 10,000 square meters. .

  After a while, the car arrived at Tesla’s new office park.

  It was a three-story office building with a concave shape and a large T-shaped Tesla logo on the transparent glass exterior wall.

  The open space in front of the building is used as a parking lot, where rows of cars are parked.

  There are lemon trees planted around the park, as well as some green belts and grasslands.

  As far as we have seen so far, Tesla has become more and more of a big company, and it is no longer like the previous small workshops.

  After the car stopped, Zhang Chenguang got out of the car and pulled the door, holding on to the roof, Xia Jingxing walked out of the car slowly.

  At a glance, he saw Eberhard, Tarpenning, Straubel, Bodicevsky, Lanes and other middle and senior management teams waiting for him at the door of the company.

  A few people are all wearing dark blue Polo fir, with a "T" logo on the chest.

The symbol    represents a pole protruding from the rotor of the engine, and the second line above represents the stator.

  The logo design of the car logo is arc-shaped, with the top protruding outwards, which looks similar to the cross-section of an electric engine. In fact, the cross-section of the electric motor is graphically represented.

   "Daren, long time no see!"

  Eberhard rushed forward, laughed and hugged Xia Jingxing, then pointed to the office building behind him, and started to introduce.

  "The environment here is not bad, right? We recruit new employees easier than before."

  Xia Jingxing guessed that Eberhard should be someone who does not want to make trouble with the delayed delivery, so as not to shake the military spirit, so he changed the topic when he came up.

He also understood Eberhard’s approach and consideration, so he nodded very cooperatively like a okay person, "Yes, the previous workshop was like a black workshop, and the employees were scared when they came to interview. , I thought I was interviewing an auto repair shop."

  Hearing this, everyone laughed.

  Eberhard breathed a sigh of relief. Just now he was very afraid that Darren would start to criticize him when he got out of the car. In addition to exposing the company's problems and shaking the military spirit, it also eroded his prestige, and the team would not be able to lead him in the future.

  Xia Jingxing was very aware of these unspoken rules of the office, so he did not criticize Eberhard in front of his subordinates.

  "Daren, go, I will show you around our new office."

  Eberhard enthusiastically led the way and led Xia Jingxing and his group to visit the new office building.

  The first floor was partitioned and transformed into several large workshops with different functions, including disassembly of car parts, battery assembly, car performance testing, and so on.

  Although it is not a high-level workshop, compared to the messy workshop before, the clean and tidy environment in front of you will still make people feel a qualitative leap.

  The second floor is an open office area. The 150 people of the whole company are all concentrated here. The rows of workstations are all densely packed with people. Everyone is working hard facing the computer.

  Part of the third floor is vacant, and the other part is the gym, recreation room, recreation area and so on.

  Tesla used to be complained by neighbors because of workshop noise, explosion and fire, etc., which made engineers miserable.

  Now that I have an independent park, I don’t have to worry about these problems anymore, I can do research and development wholeheartedly, and I don’t care about it.

  In addition, Eberhard once also gave feedback to Xia Jingxing, saying that unidentified people often ran to the door of Tesla's workshop, sneaky, and looked quite suspicious.

  The original office park is concentrated with many companies, which is a mixed bag, which is not conducive to protecting the company’s important information.

  Considering all the inconveniences, Tesla simply relented and leased the current office park.

  According to common sense, Tesla, which has no more than 100 employees and a mere tens of millions of dollars in its account, is not qualified to be so arrogant.

  Especially Tesla has not yet officially delivered the car and has been at a loss. It should do everything possible to save money.

  It was Xia Jingxing's strong support of the management team on the board of directors that contributed to this relocation plan.

   led Xia Jingxing and his group through the three floors, and everyone else left. Eberhard took Xia Jingxing and Liu Xiaoduo to an independent office on the second floor.

As soon as he closed the door, Eberhard put his smile away, his face became extremely heavy and said: "Dalun, this time it was my mistake. I underestimated the difficulty of making electric cars, which led to this dilemma today. If you want to punish, just punish me alone."

  Xia Jingxing sat on the seat, holding a cup of coffee, lowered her head and stirred it gently with a silver spoon, without looking at Eberhard’s face, as if he did not exist.

   Liu Xiaoduo sat quietly, watching his nose and his mouth without making any noise.

  The atmosphere in the room suddenly became embarrassing.

  Eberhard sighed, "Hey, Darren, no matter how you punish you, I will never complain!"

  Xia Jing took a sip of coffee and gently put the cup on the table, "This coffee is okay, but it tastes good, but it tastes almost meaningful."

Eberhard instantly understood the off-string sound. Although he felt suffocated in his heart, he still suppressed his anger and exhaled a long suffocation. He said: "Daren, things have happened now, I think apart from chasing In addition to the responsibility, the most important thing is to consider how to remedy it.

  I am also a Tesla shareholder, and I am also annoyed by the bad news of delayed delivery. "

  Xia Jingxing glanced at Eberhard, did not answer the other party’s words, and said lightly: "Let’s talk about the specific problem first!"

  Eberhard nodded and said slowly: “As a super sports car comparable to Porsche and Ferrari, TeslaRoadster has very high requirements for high-performance acceleration.

  At this time, ordinary electric vehicles without multi-stage gearboxes obviously cannot meet the needs of Roadster. Because asynchronous motors have low power output efficiency at low speeds, it is logical to introduce two-stage gearboxes.

  But the problem is that there is no precedent in the industry for how to do systematic research and development between the high-voltage and high-power electronic control system and the gearbox coordination. "

  Xia Jingxing scratched his head, he suddenly remembered a question, does Tesla have a gearbox?

  The answer is yes.

  It’s just that Tesla’s gearbox and fuel car’s gearbox are two different things.

  Tesla uses a gearbox with a single gear ratio, not the gearbox that can be changed in multiple speed ratios as people usually say.

  This is because electric motors have three major advantages compared to internal combustion engines. 1. The peak torque can be reached after starting rotation; 2. The torque platform is very wide; 3. The speed is high.

  This means that even without a gearbox, the motor can output relatively strong power at low speeds, and at the same time basically meet the legal speed limit through a fixed speed ratio.

Therefore, in the case of meeting basic driving requirements and not pursuing extreme speed, adding a multi-stage gearbox to an electric vehicle will not only not significantly improve performance like an internal combustion engine, but considering the efficiency loss of the gearbox itself, it may not necessarily reduce energy consumption and increase battery life. .

  Considering the issue of space layout, the possible increase of failed component units, and the most important cost consideration, not using a multi-stage gearbox may be a better choice for ordinary electric vehicles.

   So, it is right to say that Tesla does not have a gearbox, because its gearbox is a different kind.

  Eberhard is now talking about the development of a secondary gearbox for Tesla, which evokes the dusty memory of Xia Jingxing.

When Tesla mass-produced the first car Roadster, it took a lot of detours and even commissioned a gearbox supplier to develop a two-speed gearbox. However, the prototype of the gearbox developed was almost scrapped after only 40 seconds. .

  In this way, dragged down by the secondary gearbox, the first model was unable to be mass-produced for a long time, and the launch plan was even postponed for a while.

  Finally, Musk decided to cancel the plan to install a two-stage gearbox and switch to an asynchronous motor with a single-speed gearbox.

  But because of this, he missed the best time to play and almost made Tesla die.

  Can a two-stage gearbox be used? Can do it!

  But the current Tesla certainly can't play.

  As the most core component of a car, in the hearts of many car friends, the gearbox is one of the important reasons that can directly determine the quality of a car and whether it is worth buying.

  In the automobile manufacturing industry, it is generally believed that automatic gearboxes have the highest technical content and the most complex structure among auto parts, and there is no one.

  Previous life Rabbit vigorously engaged in new energy vehicles and subsidized hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition to petroleum strategic considerations, the most important reason is to want to overtake in corners.

  Cars are a century-old industry. Rabbits built cars decades later than others. The technical catch-up is too desperate.

  I thought that the automobile consumer market could be opened up in exchange for technology, but it turned out to be lonely.

If you think about it, you can only engage in new energy vehicles to overtake the automobile industry as a powerful country.

  To be honest, Xia Jingxing also wants to build a two-speed gearbox, but with the current wealth, technical accumulation and time relationship, he is not allowed to use this force.

  Like the Porsche Taycan, it is equipped with a 2AT gearbox.

   What is the strength of the two-speed gearbox? Strong re-acceleration ability under high-speed conditions, that is, the re-acceleration ability of more than 100 steps.

At   100 acceleration, the single-speed gearbox is no worse than the two-speed gearbox.

  In addition, without considering the gearbox, electric vehicles can also consider increasing the motor power to make up for the lack of acceleration and extreme speed capabilities.

  This is equivalent to opening two windows for an electric car. In terms of improving performance, you can strive for excellence on the gearbox, or simply increase the motor power directly.

  Of course, there will be many problems if you directly increase the power of the motor, such as high energy consumption, heating of the motor, reduced cruising range and so on.

  "Who is our current gearbox supplier?" Xia Jingxing looked at Eberhard.

  "Xtrac, UK, a company specializing in the development of race gears."

  Xia Jingxing knocked on the table, "Take me to the workshop to have a look, let me know the situation first."

  (End of this chapter)