Wang Zuguang you may not know, but the PHS that swept an era is certainly known to many people. The man who single-handedly created the PHS miracle is now telling a story of cross-border car building.
On May 26, Wang Zuguang officially launched the new energy vehicle manufacturing platform - Rongda Intelligent Manufacturing, and Investment and enterprise leaders such as Xue Manzi, Li Kaifu, Xu Xiaoping, Cai Wensheng, Zhou Hongyi, and Gou Taiming have stood for them.
1
Father of PHS
Such entrepreneurship is not the first time for Wang Zuguang.
As early as twenty years ago, as one of the earliest batch of returnees in China, Wang Zuguang, Together with Xue Manzi and Lu Hongliang, carried out the first venture.
At that time, communication technology was still quite backward. Wang Zuguang, full of enthusiasm for serving the motherland, resolutely resigned from his position at the famous Bell Labs in the United States and decided to return to China to start a business.
With the technology he accumulated overseas, Wang Zuguang established a joint venture with the Zhejiang Telecom Administration to establish Zhejiang Yutong Telecom Co., Ltd., which is committed to the research and development and production of digital loop equipment.
2
Old boy's dream of building a car
Unlike most people who are obsessed with fame, Wang Zuguang is particularly indifferent to fame and fortune. After PHS became famous, the "Old Boys Group" received a huge return on UT's project. Xue Manzi, a shrewd investor, left UT soon after going public and made a profit, allegedly making at least $120 million. In 2000, due to differences in business philosophy, Wang Zuguang resigned from his position at UTStarcom and performed a drama of success and retirement.
In 2006, Wang Zuguang returned to China again and established Zhongchai Machinery Co., Ltd., which is engaged in the manufacture of non-motorized transmissions for agricultural vehicles, forklifts, tractors and so on. At that time, because of the Iraq War, the international oil price once exceeded $100.
High oil prices prompted European and American countries to explore new models of vehicle energy, and in China, a large number of new car manufacturers began to emerge after 2003. This batch of new car-making forces has attracted the attention of Wang Zuguang, who hopes to seize the industry opportunity of the new energy vehicle supply chain and replicate the success in the telecommunications industry.
When most people are busy building luxury sports cars and high-end passenger cars, Wang Zuguang, who started a business again, has taken a different path, based on new energy logistics vehicles, because he clearly sees the market demand for new energy logistics vehicles: high quality, low cost, can pull goods, maintenance-free, in layman's terms is "cost-effective".
3
Opportunities for logistics vehicles
For a long time after that, Wang Zuguang did not find a suitable acquisition target. So he expanded his vision to the world.
In 2014, in France, the hometown of electric vehicles, Wang Zuguang discovered an electric logistics vehicle with great advantages in lightweight, load capacity and economic utility. It didn't take long for the car's manufacturer, Sitl-Brandt Motors, to face bankruptcy and restructuring due to operational and supply chain problems.
At that time, China's automobile industry had abundant production capacity but lacked electric vehicle technology, "Why can't we build an automobile manufacturing platform to achieve resource complementarity?" Wang Zuguang immediately decided to buy the company. But it cost 8 million euros to acquire the company, and the seller demanded that the money be in place the next day.
At a critical moment, Wang Zuguang first thought of asking for help from his friends of the Chinese Angel Society, and he immediately called Yang Xiangyang and others. Due to the time difference, it was late at night in China, but Yang Xiangyang, Lu Hongliang and others still collected 8 million euros for Wang Zuguang overnight.
Because of this company, the old partners who played the world together in UTStarcom came together again. On May 27, Xue Manzi, who has the title of "Best Angel Man", posted a group photo of UTStarcom's "Three Musketeers" on his Weibo.
4
"Gnaw on the bone again"
Of course, the road to car building is not a smooth road, because the automobile industry has heavy assets, large investment funds, long investment period, and strict industry protection, so the industry is very inefficient, the change is very slow, unlike mobile phones, or some other Internet companies, there are groups of people pouring in at any time. Before the waveguide mobile phone, Chunlan air conditioning and other companies have fallen on the way to enter the automobile industry. The road of new energy vehicles is not as easy as imagined.
Nowadays, wang zuguang's industry status quo is: even if foreign technology is introduced, the automotive industry will face the dilemma of continuous updating and iteration of technology and gradually increasing costs, and whether Wang Zuguang's Rongda intelligent manufacturing platform can give stable support to enterprises is still unknown.
For Wang Zuguang, this may be the last adventure of his business career. Even so, "Tomorrow the tooth is going to fall out, then gnaw the bone again." Wang Zuguang said.