◎ Zhigu Trend Pro (ID: zgtrendPlus) | Rao the driver
Now Sino-US relations depend on Musk.
As long as you open your mobile phone computer, whether it is a graphic platform such as Moments, Weibo, Zhihu, Toutiao, or short video platforms such as Douyin, B station, Kuaishou, etc., you can brush Musk's dynamics, and Baidu has even opened up an "event line":
"Musk's private jet landed in Beijing",
"State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang meets Musk",
"Musk is willing to continue to expand his business in China",
"Musk's first stop in China visited Crab Island",
"Musk meets with Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL",
"What did Musk eat on his first day in Beijing",
"Musk's visit to China drove Tesla's stock price soaring",
"Minister of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong meets Musk",
"Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao meets Musk",
……
It can be said that everywhere Musk goes, there are big scenes. He is even more popular on the Chinese Internet than many foreign heads of state.
Why does Musk meet three ministers in one day? What is the main purpose of his tenth visit to China? What big move will he make in China in the future?
Chinese Min's old friend "Musk"
This is Musk's tenth visit to China. The Chinese side also gave Musk enough face.
Let's start with a few tidbits first. Musk's dinner yesterday was eaten at the high-end club "Washington Club". In order to welcome distinguished guests, the Washington Club has designed a menu with a high amount of "horses".
The cover is quite exquisite, with two horses occupying most of the position, with the English "TESLA" at the top and the Chinese characters "One Horse First" and the English "Extraordinary" below. The Chinese character "horse" and the initial E of Extraordinary correspond to Musk's Chinese and English initials.
The inside page of the menu is printed with a large letter "E", and a rainbow fart is taken in both Chinese and English: horse-Extraordinary, which has an extraordinary image of a healthy posture and a daily journey in both Chinese and foreign cultures. Since its establishment, Tesla has been like a dark horse, standing out from a number of traditional car companies and making a splash. Chinese often say that the horse is successful, and I wish Tesla a dream and a long way on the road to electrification.
It is not only Musk who opens this menu, but also Chinese entrepreneurs such as Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL. CATL is the world's largest manufacturer of power batteries and a Tier 1 supplier of Tesla Motors.
Not only the Chinese business community, but also government officials have welcomed Musk's arrival.
As soon as Musk's private jet landed, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning expressed his welcome:
China has always welcomed business people from all countries, including Mr. Musk, to visit China to better understand China and promote mutually beneficial cooperation. China has also firmly promoted high-level opening up and is committed to creating a market-oriented, rule-of-law and international business environment. We are happy to see foreign enterprises investing in China, deeply cultivating the Chinese market, and sharing development opportunities.
Before Musk's luggage was put away, he went straight to the Crab Island Resort near the airport to receive a separate meeting with State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
Qin Gang previously served as China's ambassador to the United States (July 2021 to January 2023), visited Tesla's California factory, experienced Tesla's driverless car, and sang "Double Reed" with Musk.
In October last year, the Financial Times threw Musk a very pointed question "how to see the Chinese Taiwan issue". Musk's answer was:
My suggestion... It would be the creation of a reasonable and workable special administrative region for Taiwan, but it may not satisfy everyone. I think that, in fact, they are likely to make more lenient arrangements than Hong Kong.
As a business predator and "top Internet celebrity" with global influence, Musk's statement is undoubtedly very correct.
Vote for me with wood peach, and repay it with Qiong Yao. Qin Gang, who was promoted to state councilor and foreign minister, not only met with Musk alone (his first private meeting with entrepreneurs since this year), but also pulled Tesla Motors to the height of friendly Sino-US relations:
China will continue to unswervingly promote high-level opening-up and strive to create a better market-oriented, rule-of-law and international business environment for enterprises from all over the world, including Tesla. China's development is an opportunity for the world. A healthy, stable and constructive China-US relationship is beneficial to both China and the United States and the world. Taking Tesla Motors as a metaphor, to develop Sino-US relations, we need to put ourselves on the steering wheel and move in the right direction of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation proposed by President Xi Jinping; "Apply the brakes" in time to avoid "dangerous driving"; Be good at "stepping on the accelerator" and promote mutually beneficial cooperation.
Of course, the consciousness of "Comrade Musk" is also very high:
Chinese people are diligent and wise, and China's development achievements are a matter of course. The interests of the United States and China are intertwined, just as conjoined babies are inseparable from each other. Tesla opposes "decoupling and chain breaking" and is willing to continue to expand its business in China and share China's development opportunities.
Not only Qin Gang, Musk has been quite popular in China's government and enterprise for two terms.
On his eighth visit to China (January 2019), he drove Tesla directly into Ziguang Pavilion. For the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China more than 70 years ago, foreigners have driven into Zhongnanhai.
During his ninth visit to China (January 2020), he also had a lively conversation with the then Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and confirmed the expansion plan of the Shanghai Gigafactory.
Speaking of which, we have to mention Musk's relationship with Shanghai.
Shanghai Gigafactory: A mysterious force from China
Without the help of the Shanghai Gigafactory, it would be difficult for Musk to become the world's richest man in 2021.
Before the establishment of the Shanghai Gigafactory, the production and assembly of Tesla vehicles was mainly completed by the Fremont Gigafactory in California. The Fremont factory has not met Musk's expectations in terms of production efficiency and production costs.
The Fremont factory is not "original goods", but "third-hand goods". It was affiliated with GM from 1962 to 1982 and Toyota from 1984 to 2009. In 2010, Tesla acquired and remodeled the factory, and it was not until 2015 that the 100,000th vehicle rolled off the assembly line.
In 2016 and 2017, Tesla, which prides itself on being a "global pioneer of new energy vehicles", actually lost to the "traditional car company" Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance and BAIC Group in terms of sales.
The 2018 annual report shows that China, as Tesla's second largest consumer market, actually lost 15.4% of sales revenue compared with 2017.
To solve these problems, it is necessary to set up factories in China. After repeated negotiations, Musk finally decided to locate the Chinese factory in Shanghai.
On January 6, 2019, Tesla's Shanghai factory broke ground; On September 26, 2019, the main body of the plant was completed; In October, the company obtained production certification and started production of the Model 3. On December 30 of the same year, the Model 3 produced by the plant officially began to be delivered.
The construction speed of Tesla's Shanghai factory is too fast, "started that year, completed that year, put into production that year", which is the first time in the history of a century-old automobile development. To this end, Musk flew to Shanghai to celebrate and danced a "striptease" in front of fans.
In the first year of mass production (2020), the Shanghai Gigafactory delivered 250,000 vehicles, accounting for about half of Tesla's total global production. At that time, the output of China's "new car-making forces" was less than this amount.
China helped Tesla open the production ceiling, and also let the capital market see Tesla's investment potential, so all kinds of people began to frantically increase their positions in Tesla, resulting in Tesla's market value skyrocketing. On January 7, 2021, Tesla's stock price soared to a record high, surpassing Facebook in market capitalization for the first time. Meanwhile, Musk surpassed Amazon's Jeff Bezos to become the world's richest man.
The staff team of the Shanghai Gigafactory does not rest on the merits, but continues to improve production technology and management level, pushing the mass production capacity to the extreme: in 2021, 450,000 vehicles were delivered; In 2022, 750,000 units were delivered.
Now, the Shanghai Gigafactory has broken its own production record, rolling off the production line every 45 seconds. The mass production capacity of one plant in Shanghai exceeds that of three plants in California, Texas and Berlin combined.
The great success of the Shanghai Gigafactory has a lot to do with its leader, Zhu Xiaotong.
According to the description of "China Business Tao Strategy", Zhu Xiaotong works almost 24 hours a day, and is still answering messages at three or four o'clock in the morning. The most frightening thing is that at six or seven o'clock the next morning, you can still go back in seconds, as if you didn't sleep.
In the spring of 2022, the epidemic in Shanghai caused the Tesla factory to suspend production for a short time. In order to restore production capacity as soon as possible, Zhu Xiaotong did the same thing as his boss Musk: he slept in the factory for two months! During this period, he ate and lived with the workers, and did not leave half a step.
The leaders are so rolled, are the employees still embarrassed to touch the fish? Therefore, Tesla Shanghai has become the most wolf team in the automotive industry.
In order to replicate the Shanghai experience, Zhu Xiaotong also brought the "Shanghai Iron Army" to the Austin, Texas, and Fremont, California factories.
In just over a month, Zhu Xiaotong increased the weekly production of Model Y in Austin, Texas, from 1,000 to 3,000.
At the Fremont plant in California, Tesla's Cybertruck pickup project was delayed for a long time for various reasons. The arrival of Zhu Xiaotong's team made the project see the hope of putting into production.
Tesla is said to be planning to build the world's largest gigafactory in Mexico. Regarding the construction schedule of the factory, Zhu Xiaotong replied as follows: The Shanghai factory has only taken 9 months, and I want to break this record in Mexico.
Maybe you think Zhu Xiaotong is too crazy, but Musk just likes such people. In 2022, Musk promoted Zhu Xiaotong to senior vice president of Tesla's automotive business. This is the highest position ever held by a Chinese person at Tesla.
There are even rumors that Zhu Xiaotong will succeed Musk as Tesla's CEO in the future.
Of course, Musk also understands that without the help of the Shanghai municipal government, Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory cannot complete the "impossible task".
Before his visit to China this year, Musk gave a big gift to Shanghai. In April this year, Tesla announced that it would build a second energy storage super factory in Shanghai's Lingang New Area.
The factory initially plans to produce 10,000 commercial energy storage batteries per year, with an energy storage scale of nearly 40GWh. After the project is put into operation, it will add hundreds of billions of industrial output value to Shanghai.
Tesla's contribution to China is no less than that of BYD
Compared with the new industrial output value, Tesla's greater contribution to China is to drive the upgrading and transformation of China's manufacturing industry.
The latest news, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong met with Musk in Beijing, and the two sides exchanged views on the development of new energy vehicles and intelligent networked vehicles. Hinting at it, officials have recognized Tesla's special contribution.
When Tesla entered China as a wholly foreign-owned, it caused a huge commotion in the Chinese automotive industry. The industry exclaimed "Catfish is coming".
Looking back on these years, what exactly has this "catfish" brought? Let's hear from insiders.
In an interview with "Outlook" weekly, Lotus Group CEO Feng Qingfeng said: Before the arrival of Tesla, traditional car companies lacked confidence in the prospects of new energy, insufficient investment, and many companies relied too much on subsidies, resulting in weak technological innovation, low product strength, and bleak market response. The arrival of Tesla has reshaped market cognition, not only driving the rise of new forces, but also forcing traditional car companies to increase their transformation efforts, catalyzing the full outbreak of the new energy market in recent years.
Feng Qingfeng also mentioned automobile exports: from a global perspective, domestic Tesla occupies a huge share of the mainland's new energy passenger vehicle exports, which can be said to play a demonstration role for new energy vehicles made in China to go overseas. (Supplementary data: From January to April 2023, the Shanghai Gigafactory exported 127779 Tesla units, a year-on-year increase of 73%)
Jiang Hui, COO of Feifan Automobile, believes that Tesla has brought not only the traditional automobile revolution, but also the creation of a business ecology based on electrification and intelligence, and the improvement of user experience, including the construction of a direct operation model and the layout of the charging ecological network.
Jiang Hui also mentioned China's new energy industry chain, he emphasized: Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory continues to improve the localization rate of parts, promote the technological progress and chain integrity of China's new energy vehicle supply chain, so that Chinese brands including SkyFan will benefit from it.
The statements of the two automotive executives are very reasonable. In a sense, Tesla's contribution to China's new energy industry is no less than that of BYD.
Tesla supports hundreds of suppliers in China, including dozens of listed companies alone. Shareholders refer to these companies as "Tesla concept stocks." According to flush data, today (May 31), there are three Tesla concept stocks up the limit.
In the face of Tesla's "catfish" challenge, various car companies have made their own special moves. Among them, two car companies (Xu Jiayin's Hengchi Automobile, Jia Yueting's Faraday Future Automobile) also came to join in the excitement, which is worthy of recognition (shi) zhen (jin) research (tu) research (cao).
On May 30, the "Hengchi" public account issued an article emphasizing "Hengchi Automobile's advanced modern production line and scientific enterprise management mode". There is a high-praise comment below the news: Dry the debt to 1.898 trillion, Xu Jiayin redefined "scientific management".
On the other side of the ocean, Xu Jiayin's good friend Jia Yueting is also doing things.
On May 31, Faraday Future held the "FF 91 & Faraday Future 2.0 Final Launch" event. Jia Yueting announced at the meeting that Faraday Future's first production car, FF91, will enter the delivery stage, FF 91 2.0 version is priced at 309,000 US dollars (equivalent to about 2.195 million yuan), and can also be booked in China, with a deposit of 50,000 yuan. (The colleague sitting next door to me looked at his deposit balance and said with a sad face: I don't even have the qualifications to suffocate for my dreams)
Perhaps, Xu Jiayin and Jia Yueting, who "pointed coldly at thousands of husbands", are the men who are most misunderstood by the world.
Resources:
1, "Musk's visit to China, he is the busiest Chinese behind the scenes", Chinese business Tao strategy, Zhang Jingbo
2. "What did Musk eat on his first day in Beijing?" The menu contains "horses" in a very high amount", The Paper
3. What does Tesla bring to China's new energy automobile industry? , Lookout, Zhou Rui, Shang Qianming