In the early days of reform and opening up, a large number of businessmen with business acumen emerged in China. Some businessmen keep pace with the times and, with the support of the state's policies, continue to become bigger and stronger; some businessmen take it step by step, constantly study and operate their own industries, and accumulate a lot of property; some dare to be the first, focus on some novel industries, and eventually get rich overnight.
After these businessmen have made money, most of them have begun to enjoy their lives, which is also understandable. After all, in the 80s of the last century, it was not easy to eat and drink without worry, and it was not easy to have a stable job, and becoming a "ten thousand yuan household" was the goal that most families struggled for a lifetime.
But there is a businessman who, after earning tens of millions of assets, is not greedy for pleasure, but invests all the money earned in the research and development of new energy vehicles, which has to be said to be very admirable. This person is the protagonist we are going to talk about today, Ye Wengui.
Ye Wengui was born in 1950 in a merchant family in Jinxiang, Cangnan County, Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province. Ye Wengui's grandfather Ye Wangzeng was a famous silversmith, who accumulated a lot of wealth in his early years of business, and Ye Wengui's second uncle was even more incredible, he once opened a bicycle factory in Shanghai, and was a well-known big boss in Shanghai at that time.
The relatively favorable family environment made Ye Wengui's life in his youth quite moist. I don't know whether it is due to the inheritance of family genes or the influence of the generational business environment, Ye Wengui also showed his outstanding intelligence during this period. At that time, the adults in the village and the teachers in the school all praised Ye Wengui.
When Ye Wengui was still studying, he developed an eight-pipe radio to bring to the school, and after the power was turned on, the sound on the radio really came out, which had a great shock to the students who were studying together at the school at that time. Even after many years, when the former classmates talked about Ye Wengui again, they were very unforgettable about his invention of the radio.
At the end of the 2060s, the "going up the mountain and going to the countryside" movement was vigorously carried out in China. That year, Ye Wengui was just 19 years old, and he also went to Qitaihe City, Heilongjiang Province, as a student of the Zhiqing Insertion Team. There were more than a dozen Zhiqing like Ye Wengui, and their lives were very hard, they all lived in thatched huts more than two meters high, and they were in tatters. Coupled with the fact that the winter weather in the northeast is very cold, in the harsh natural conditions and living conditions, Ye Wengui and others have to stimulate their greatest potential to change their living environment.
At this time, Ye Wengui gradually revealed his talent as a businessman. Because Ye Wengui and others went near the mining area, mineral trading and ore mining were carried out every day. Ye Wengui inquired from the local mining bureau that the coal shovel handles used in the mining area were all purchased from other places, and there was no local factory that produced coal shovel handles. Therefore, Ye Wengui smelled business opportunities from them and felt that this would be a good opportunity to make money.
After a brief thought, Ye Wengui immediately contacted nine Zhiqing who went with him to join the team, and reached a secret agreement with the production team, each of whom paid two yuan a day to the production team, so as to buy free time and not to do farm work. Together, they set up the first local shovel handle factory, which produced a profit of up to 800 yuan per day. Ye Wengui also replaced the thatched house with a height of more than 2 meters into four large tile houses in the second year of the factory, becoming a local rich man. For Ye Wengui, this business was just a small test of the cattle knife, and the companions who cooperated with him to set up a factory at that time would not think that many years later Ye Wengui would become a prominent figure in entrepreneurship.
In today's Jinxiang, the name Ye Wengui is relatively unfamiliar to most local people, but in the ears of the older generation of Wenzhou merchants, the name Ye Wengui can be said to be thunderous.
In the early 1980s, Ye Wengui had long since ended his life in Qitaihe City, Heilongjiang Province. At this time, Jinxiang presented a thriving scene in industrial production, with a population of only about 20,000 in the town, but there were more than 2,000 family factories, most of which were producing small commodities such as aluminum nameplates and plastic products, which were sold throughout the country. All this stems from Ye Wengui's exemplary and leading role.
Ye Wengui, who returned to Jinxiang, knows that entrepreneurship is his way out. Therefore, he gathered some relatives and friends to set up a factory together, not to produce the hot products at that time, but to produce raw materials for hot products. Guided by Ye Wengui's unique business ideas, the factory was naturally successful.
According to Ye Wengui's friend recalled, at that time, the country's various materials were very scarce, ye Wengui purchased a large number of waste products for recycling and processing. Therefore, compared with other factories, the raw materials produced by Ye Wengui are more inexpensive and cost-effective, and everyone buys them at his place.
Soon after the establishment of the factory, Ye Wengui recovered all the principal, and with the small profits of the factory, he also accumulated a large amount of funds, which was also the first money Ye Wengui earned after returning to his hometown. But with the explosion of factory business, some shareholders who are eager to achieve success can't sit still, and they want to use the money they earn to spend points and improve their quality of life, which is also beyond reproach.
However, Ye Wengui also wanted to continue to expand his career, feeling that their approach was not good, which would make the company not develop. For this matter, Ye Wengui also discussed with all the investors for more than half a year. In the end, two-thirds of the people agreed to divide the money they earned and use it to build houses or other consumption.
Ye Wengui wants to make the business bigger, while other shareholders want heavy cash, and this discord in business concepts has also led Ye Wengui to part ways with them. Ye Wengui later said: "He would rather not make money than work with short-sighted and narrow-minded people." ”
A few months later, Ye Wengui opened a PVC film production plant, similar to the aluminum plate processing plant, which processed the recycled scrap material, which greatly reduced the production cost. Usually at a price of 1,000 yuan a ton, and then processed and then sold at a price of 2600 yuan, Ye Wengui's pvc film is in short supply in the market.
According to Ye Wengui's own recollection, when the PVC film factory is at its best, people on the demand side will bribe their production team leaders with one cigarette after another to make some private transactions.
At that time, the pvc film factory could harvest a day of pure profits of up to 20,000 yuan, and the workers also joked that the machine printed not PVC film, more like printing money.
The direct reason why the PVC film produced by Ye Wengui's factory can be so marketed is that it is cheap, and the quality and performance are compared with those produced by other manufacturers. Therefore, Ye Wengui's factory was able to laugh to the end under the siege of such a strong social competitiveness and state-owned enterprises at that time.
In the following years, Ye Wengui successively opened five factories. At that time, the overall business environment in Wenzhou also flourished under Ye Wengui's entrepreneurial saying that "unfinished money, unfinished factories". Wenzhou people at that time praised Ye Wengui as a "great new type of entrepreneur."
Ye Wengui, with his business acumen and social influence, was also elected as the deputy mayor of Jinxiang District in 1984. The self-employed became officials, which was a very hot news at the time.
However, Ye Wengui did not voluntarily come to be the deputy district chief. In local meetings, Ye Wengui generally does not participate, or he will leave the scene after listening to a sentence or two after participating. Ye Wengui himself said that he was not an official. Allowing individual entrepreneurs to enter government agencies was originally a national initiative in Wenzhou's employment system, but it ended with Ye Wengui's quiet resignation three months later.
In 1986, Ye Wengui's deeds were published in the People's Daily, and the newspaper of the day devoted half a page to introducing Ye Wengui's entrepreneurial story. The slogan "We need more Ye Wengui" was also once circulated at the time. Later, with the approval of the Chinese Min Min Bank, Ye Wengui's Jinxiang Material Packaging Factory also issued shares, becoming one of the earliest private companies in China to issue shares.
Ye Wengui was one of the 100 outstanding entrepreneurs newly selected by the state at that time, but he had no intention of going to receive the award, because a new plan was constantly emerging in his mind. This plan also made Ye Wengui's already wonderful life more and more legendary.
During that time period, Ye Wengui, the most famous entrepreneur in Wenzhou, gradually disappeared from people's sight. In the next few years, Ye Wengui put all his energy and money into researching new energy cars.
Regarding the study of new energy vehicles, Ye Wengui recalled: I wanted to make a car to play with, according to the economic strength at that time, any high-end car on the market could afford to buy, and it was more interesting to make a car by myself; gasoline cars would have pollution, while electric vehicles would not pollute.
After having an unswerving goal, Ye Wengui began to act. He first invited experts related to automobile manufacturing to Wenzhou to discuss the details of the development of electric cars, and then rented a factory and purchased a large number of parts needed to build cars. After everything was ready, Ye Wengui began his dream of building a car.
Ye Wengui invited a lot of engineering and technical personnel to draw pictures for the model of the electric car every day. For the convenience of these technicians and the research and development of cars, Ye Wengui rented eight houses in Wenzhou. Therefore, Ye Wengui's dream of electric vehicles began in Jinxiang, but the dream was implemented in Wenzhou City.
More than thirty years ago in Wenzhou, private enterprises and private economy has been very mature, the streets and alleys have a called "Fiat" taxi, which is a backlog of products from Eastern Europe, wenzhou businessmen at that time often take this kind of taxi, the business to the world. But they did not know that Ye Wengui, who had caused a sensation, was "living in seclusion" in the downtown area, fulfilling dreams that did not sound practical.
One day in February 1989, Ye Wengui's first electric car was officially driven on the highway of Wenzhou City, and although the shape was very simple, no pedestrians noticed its difference. It took only more than 6 months from the beginning of the development of this tram to the road, and Ye Wengui named it "Ye Feng Zero Car". The success of the development of this electric vehicle also made Ye Wengui happy, and also gave Ye Wengui the confidence to continue to develop electric cars.
At the same time, the world's major automobile manufacturers are also carrying out the research and development of electric vehicles, and problems such as poor endurance and short life have been plaguing automotive experts in various countries. Therefore, experts from all over the world have thought of developing a car that is powered by a mixture of electricity and gasoline. Ye Wengui, who is far away in Wenzhou, China, also thought of this.
Therefore, Ye Wengui flew to the United States to investigate electric vehicle technology, and made a model of the second generation of cars the following year. Compared with the first generation, the second generation of cars will be a breakthrough in the powertrain that is ahead of the world's technological level at that time. In the search for various parts needed to manufacture cars, it also brought Ye Wengui a lot of trouble. After all, many special parts can not be bought on the market, and in desperation, Ye Wengui had to make these parts by himself.
At that time, experts from well-known universities and research institutes in China had visited Ye Wengui's factory to guide him in the development of hybrid cars. Among these people, some of them were invited by Ye Wengui with great expense, and some came after hearing about Ye Wengui's deeds. However, in that era, self-made cars was undoubtedly a very "money-burning" thing.
Finally, Huangtian paid off, and the hybrid sedan developed by Ye Wengui achieved unprecedented success. The car not only runs on electricity, but is also powered by a gasoline engine. Looking around the world, the emergence of this car can be said to be unparalleled in the world, so that many countries with developed automobile industries are beyond their reach. At that time, the car was also rated as a national product, which was a major achievement in scientific research.
But at this time, the harsh reality pulled Ye Wengui back from the journey of his dreams, and he had no money. Although Ye Wengui's several small factories are also in operation at this time, he can no longer take out the extra cash in his hand to continue to maintain the research and development of electric vehicles.
In desperation, Ye Wengui could only sell the industries in his hands, and when the private economy was booming at that time, everything from factories to real estate was sold by Ye Wengui one by one. In fact, Ye Wengui has several opportunities to get investment from others, but due to Ye Wengui's insistence on some concepts of his car, he finally disappeared.
In the subsequent time, Ye Wengui is also constantly improving his hybrid electric car, so that its various performances are constantly optimized. However, this electric vehicle has never been able to enter the market as a commodity, and there are two main reasons for this. On the one hand, it was not needed by the market at that time, when cars were not popular in every household, let alone electric cars, and only a few people could afford to buy cars. On the other hand, there is a problem of funds, if you want to achieve mass production of the car, you must at least invest hundreds of millions of dollars, and for Ye Wengui, who was already overstretched at that time, this is also the most fundamental practical problem.
In 1995, Ye Wengui may have been a little tired because he had been chasing for too long in his car-making dream, and finally stopped building cars. This time spent all the wealth he accumulated in the first half of his life, and also used up the blood in his heart, the story finally had an ending, and Ye Wengui also ended with regret.
For Ye Wengui's "electric car dream", some media have written that his ideas are too idealistic, and in the specific operation process, he is divorced from the actual situation, he puts himself in the situation of The Don QuiTche De Fighting Windmill, and failure is inevitable. Most of Ye Wengui's friends also thought that his behavior was too crazy and too advanced. But in any case, Ye Wengui is also the first person to develop new energy cars in China, and has successfully developed electric cars and hybrid cars.
For the matter of building a car, Ye Wengui also said in the face of the camera later: Tens of millions of assets are nothing for research cars, and many people are standing in the perspective of doing business, thinking that I should have a return on investment when I invest so much. But this thing is not easy to compare, and I think I have succeeded.
Indeed, on the road of chasing his dreams, the pay and return have never been proportional, and for Ye Wengui, he has done most of what he wants to do.
Ye Wengui's son was influenced by his father and successfully admitted to the Department of Automotive Engineering of Tsinghua University, and now he has long graduated, continuing his father Ye Wengui's dream of an electric car. His son believes that scientific research and the market are two different things, and the success of scientific research does not mean that the market will be successful.
Then, Ye Wengui, who had lived a leisurely life at home for more than ten years, suddenly received an invitation from major automobile manufacturing companies, hoping that he could share the research and development technology of new energy vehicles and invest in the production of new energy cars. However, at that time, Ye Wengui was nearly a year old, and in the face of the research and development of new energy cars, he had more than enough heart and insufficient strength.
In 2017, Ye Wengui, who was once known as the "first able person in Wenzhou", died of ineffective medical treatment at the age of 68.
Ye Wengui's efforts and achievements deserve all of us to respect, and China also needs more people like Ye Wengui who "dare to be the first". Although the market at that time could not provide a suitable growth environment for electric cars, today, electric cars have become "fragrant food" and are sought after by automobile manufacturing industries around the world. We should also learn from Ye Wengui's spirit, not only covet temporary pleasures, but also focus our limited time and energy on what we think is meaningful. Have the courage to jump out of the current fixed circle and have your own independent thinking about life. I hope that everyone can continue to chase their dreams under the premise of living their own lives.