This Qingming Festival, BYD released a bombshell to "stop the production of fuel vehicles and fully focus on new energy.". It pioneered the global automotive industry.
28 years ago, Wang Chuanfu went to the sea to start a business, leading BYD from a mobile phone battery manufacturer, to an automobile manufacturer, to a new energy vehicle giant, and successfully achieved a triple jump.
Go to the sea to make batteries
Everything THAT BYD has today is wang Chuanfu's starting from scratch.
In 1966, Wang Chuanfu was born into a family of carpenters in Wuwei, Anhui. There are 8 brothers and sisters, and he is the seventh oldest. Although my parents have always been diligent and earnest, the days of supporting such a large family have always been tight.
The weather is unpredictable. When Wang Chuanfu was 13 years old, his father died, and the burden of the whole family was on his mother.
Several sisters married one after another, and the younger sister was sent to someone else's house for foster care.
After a long period of overwork, in the year of Wang Chuanfu's examination, his mother also passed away.
Looking at the destitute home and thinking about the misfortunes from childhood to adulthood, Wang Chuanfu decided to drop out of school and go out to work to reduce the burden on the family.
But this idea was exchanged for two loud slaps from his brother Wang Chuanfang.
With the full support of his brother and sister-in-law, in 1983, 17-year-old Wang Chuanfu was admitted to Central South University with the first place in the school. Four years later, he was escorted to beijing non-ferrous metal research institute for graduate school, and stayed on to teach at the end of his studies.
If he follows the established trajectory of life, he will become a brilliant researcher and scholar.
The year 1993 was another major turning point in Wang Chuanfu's life.
The research institute wants to set up a battery company in Shenzhen, and Wang Chuanfu has been specializing in battery research, so he was appointed as the general manager and went to Shenzhen to build a company.
At that time, Shenzhen was full of vitality, and high-rise buildings rose almost overnight, full of business opportunities.
Wang Chuanfu noticed that many rich people used 20,000 or 30,000 big brothers, and a nickel-cadmium battery in it cost thousands of yuan.
Japan is a big producer of this kind of battery, but due to environmental considerations, it has given up this huge industry.
Wang Chuanfu has a premonition that there will be a big gap in the supply of nickel-cadmium batteries in the short term, which is a huge opportunity. He reported his ideas to the institute, but did not receive a positive answer.
So he made a bold decision and resigned and went to sea.
In 1994, BYD was established in Buji, Shenzhen. No one would have thought that a small workshop with only more than 20 people would become a global battery giant in the future.
At the beginning of his business, Wang Chuanfu arranged for his brother Wang Chuanfang to enter the company, and now he is the deputy general manager of the company, holding 8.825 million shares of BYD, worth more than 2 billion yuan.
Blindfolded cars
In the early days, BYD's batteries were mainly matched for mobile phones, and in the heyday, every three mobile phones in the world, one was installed with BYD batteries.
In 2002, BYD was listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, moving towards capitalization and taking a new step.
At this time, Wang Chuanfu took precautions and began to worry about the prospects of the enterprise. In his view, the mobile phone battery industry market capacity is small, even if all is covered by BYD, the ceiling is easy to see.
He has his eye on the booming Chinese auto market.
At that time, Li Shufu, a "car maniac", had led Geely to run through the theory of "four wheels, a steering wheel, an engine, and two sofas", becoming the first private enterprise to obtain car manufacturing qualifications.
Wei Jianjun, the "second generation of the rich", was ordered to put down the identity of a clumsy disciple and has been in charge of the family business Great Wall Motors for more than ten years.
BYD's entry into the automotive industry is completely from scratch. In 2003, it acquired the loss-making enterprise Xi'an Qinchuan Automobile Company and borrowed a ship to go to sea.
No one is optimistic about BYD's car. Batteries and cars, wind and horses and cattle are not matched.
Some Hong Kong investors called Wang Chuanfu and threatened: "If you build a car, we will sell your stock and throw it to death." ”
Such as Li Shufu's arrogance, Wang Chuanfu also released harsh words, "Cars, in the final analysis, are a pile of steel." He was dismissive of even the patent barriers that the outside world feared.
In his cognition, the automobile industry has a history of one hundred years, the real technology patents are very few, and the vast majority of general technologies can be used, which can greatly shorten the development cycle.
He sincerely invited Lian Yubo, a well-known domestic automobile design expert, to lead the way, recruited a group of newly graduated college students, and established a research and development center in Shanghai.
Like Geely, BYD's car construction also began with the dismantling of the car. From tens of thousands of yuan of domestic cars to millions of imported Mercedes-Benz, they have been dismantled by technicians.
However, bydir's in-house development of the first product code-named 316 was not successful. The company has invested over 100 million yuan in this car, but dealers think that this car is ugly and is not optimistic about the market prospects. Wang Chuanfu made a decisive decision, redeveloped a car, and permanently sealed the 316.
Until F3 was introduced to the market, BYD cars became a hit. This car looks like a Toyota Corolla from any point of view. But it completely circumvented Toyota's patented technology and left no handle on the Japanese auto giant.
After the success of F3, BYD accelerated the speed of pushing new cars, and the F3-R hatchback imitated Buick Kaiyue and also became a market bestseller.
In public, Wang Chuanfu did not deny that in the era of fuel vehicles, BYD followed the route, in other words, "imitation". This is a path that many Chinese car companies have taken in the early stage of development.
Abandon fuel vehicles
Wang Chuanfu seems to have long thought that fuel vehicles are only the foundation of BYD in the automotive field, and he will focus on new energy with a longer-term goal. He knows that batteries are the core of new energy vehicles and the core competitiveness of BYD.
Since 2003, the company has formed a team of 500 people to carry out automotive battery research and development, investing more than 1 billion yuan. "I believe that new energy vehicles will definitely be taken seriously, and if we wait until that day to start research and development, it will be too late." In a public speech, Wang Chuanfu said.
F3DM is the first new energy vehicle launched by BYD, which is a dual-mode electric vehicle, with its own research and development of iron batteries as the core power, and has obtained more than 600 patents such as electric steering and electric transmission. The car can be charged with a household power supply, and can travel 100 kilometers at a time, which can only meet the daily short commute.
With the continuous upgrading of new energy vehicle technology and the improvement of battery technology, BYD's 20 years of accumulation have finally exploded in the rapid growth period of energy vehicles.
In the past 2021, BYD has sold 603,800 new energy vehicles, an increase of 218.30% year-on-year; of which 593,700 new energy passenger cars, an increase of 231.60% year-on-year, ranking first in the sales list of new energy vehicles, Qin and Han models have both advanced into the top five. However, fuel vehicles fell 42.54% year-on-year to 237,300 units.
Since the beginning of this year, the company's new energy vehicle sector has still maintained a strong growth momentum. In the first three months, 286,300 new energy vehicles were sold, an increase of 422.97% year-on-year. However, only 5,049 fuel vehicles were sold in the same period, down nearly 90% year-on-year.
It was not until April 3 that BYD publicly announced that it would stop the production of fuel vehicles from March and fully focus on pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, and the outside world suddenly realized.