A Crucial Asset!

Chen Mo's purpose in acquiring this company was simply to take his first step in development in the real world, not to build an intelligence organization, so there were no strict requirements.

Chen Mo only needs to pay attention to keeping the technology confidential and preventing its leakage, and Chen Mo naturally had already made plans in this regard.

This small car company, acquired by Chen Mo, has only over 120 employees. Most of its major car parts, including engines and transmissions, are sourced from various auto parts suppliers and then assembled in its own factory.

The company produces more than 2,000 cars a year, mainly targeting the low-to-mid-end market, with an average selling price of around $24,000. After deducting production costs and employee wages and other expenses, the annual profit is at most a few million dollars. When sales are poor, it is easy to incur losses.

The company was already barely surviving, and the previous boss's desperate attempt finally exhausted its vitality.

However, none of these were problems in Chen Mo's eyes. What he needed was a company with the capability to design and produce complete vehicles. Whether he could produce all the parts himself was not important at all.

Let alone such a small company, even other well-known large automobile companies rely on parts suppliers to purchase many parts.

It's important to understand that a car has over 10,000 individual parts. No single car company could possibly produce all of these numerous and diverse parts in-house. The industries, technologies, and equipment involved are simply too vast and complex for a single company to handle.

Automobile manufacturing is a very large industry, involving the casting, forging, processing, and treatment of steel materials; plastic injection molding and surface treatment; tire manufacturing; paint spraying; glass processing; interior fabric production; and the production of various supporting special parts, valves, pumps, motors, instruments, wires, and other spare parts. All automobile manufacturers, regardless of size, rely on these various automobile parts suppliers.

The differences in strength between companies mainly lie in their mastery of core automotive technologies and their ability to independently produce core components.

Among the most important components are the engine, transmission, and chassis. Major automobile companies have their own brands of independently developed engines, transmissions, and chassis. Other core components such as transmission systems, steering systems, and braking systems are also mostly produced in-house.

Although the small company that Chen Mo acquired does not yet have the ability to produce all major core components independently, it has good technology in chassis and suspension systems. The chassis of the vehicles produced by the company are not purchased from outside, but are independently researched and manufactured by the company, and the company's design department is also quite capable.

They currently mainly produce medium and large pickup trucks and SUVs, and can also modify pickup trucks in various ways to meet customer needs, transforming them into a variety of special-purpose vehicles such as RVs, trailers, tractors, and engineering vehicles.

Thanks to the company's independently developed and manufactured chassis and suspension system, which have good performance, coupled with the Ford engine purchased from external suppliers, the vehicle's shock absorption, handling, power and off-road capabilities are all quite good. However, compared with established pickup truck brands such as Ford, Dodge and Chevrolet, there is still a certain gap. Moreover, its manufacturing cost is much higher, so its competitiveness in the market is not great.

However, the company has certain strengths in automobile design and manufacturing, chassis and suspension systems, as well as the design and production of some parts. As long as other technologies can keep up, coupled with sufficient financial support, it is fully capable of producing cars with excellent performance that are no weaker than established companies, and may even be more powerful.

What Chen Mo has in abundance is technology and funding.

HYDRA possesses considerable technological reserves in the automotive field. Not to mention now, even the massive HYDRA bulletproof off-road vehicle that Chen Mo drove in the Captain America universe back then had a level of technology that was no less than that of today's top-of-the-line cars. In fact, even major car companies today might not be able to manufacture it.

As for funding, that's not a problem at all. The items auctioned before were only the lowest value among the many valuable items Chen Mo carried in his space. If needed, the rest could be auctioned off several more times, and the prices would only be higher.

However, Chen Mo has no plans to auction again in the short term. Although the two billion US dollars he currently has is not much, it is enough to meet Chen Mo's needs for a considerable period of time. In the future, with his construction and development, the company's own profits will naturally increase significantly, and he will not need to keep investing money into it.

Before deciding to acquire the company, Chen Mo had J.A.R.V.I.S. conduct a comprehensive and systematic analysis of every employee in the company, and each person's personality, abilities and other aspects were clearly investigated and analyzed.

Most of the employees were quite capable. The reason the company was on the verge of bankruptcy was due to the boss's stubbornness and insufficient funds. The company itself did not have any major problems in terms of research and development, design, production, technology, management, sales channels, etc., and many of the employees were actually very capable.

The company's R&D department has successfully developed a variety of car chassis, and its technical level is in the middle to upper range in the industry. The development of other key core components such as engines and transmissions is also underway. However, due to insufficient manpower and funds, no results have been achieved. The original boss even once planned to close the R&D department, which was spending money but had not achieved any results other than chassis.

If it weren't for the final decision to develop a new model and open up the market, which required the R&D department to improve the existing chassis system and develop a new chassis with more powerful performance, the R&D department would have been shut down long ago.

The company's design department has the capability to independently design new car models. All the car models that the company currently produces are designed and put into production independently by the design department. Even vehicle modifications are designed by the company's design department based on customer requirements.

The company's production department is also excellent. Whether it's parts manufacturing or vehicle assembly, most of the workers and technicians have good skills and work attitudes. As a result, the quality of the pickup trucks and SUVs they produced was also good. This is an important reason why they hadn't gone bankrupt despite not having made much progress before.

After Chen Mo takes over, these outstanding talents and employees will become an important asset to his development plan.