Development Roadmap

With the work handed off, Xu Yifan had basically finished everything that fell to him.

Back in his office, he settled onto the sofa in the reception area and gave a relaxed order.

"Secretary Lin, make me a cup of tea!"

"Of course, boss."

The pretty secretary soon brought over a freshly brewed cup and set it on the small table beside him.

"All right, go get some rest. And close the door behind you." Xu Yifan waved her away.

The pretty secretary left and closed the factory manager's office door.

She then went into the finance office next door, where a desk had been set aside for her.

Lin Wanxia generally had very little to do. She spent most of each day at that desk.

She didn't need to handle much of the company's business. Most of the time, she acted as a messenger or ran errands.

Seated at her desk, she watched the finance staff bustle about in response to Xu Yifan's orders. In a voice so quiet only she could hear, Lin Wanxia murmured to herself.

"I feel like I'm just a pretty ornament..."

But if she was only there as a pretty ornament, then after two or three months on the job, why hadn't her handsome boss—who was around her age—made a single inappropriate move?

"That's the really outrageous part!" Her pretty features tightened with indignation.

"Ever since I was in school, I've always been the class beauty or the school beauty."

After her indignation came a touch of helpless amusement. "When I applied for the job, I was worried about workplace harassment.

What a joke. I don't even get the chance to be harassed!"

He was handsome, rich, and undoubtedly a nouveau riche young master. More importantly, he seemed incredibly capable. He might not have acted before, but when he did, he brought a failing factory back to life.

If she could marry him, she'd be marrying into a wealthy family!

Calling him a prince charming wasn't an exaggeration!

"I can tell he looks at me when I dress up."

With a sigh, Lin Wanxia switched on her computer and settled in to watch her shows.

She had feelings for him, but he felt nothing for her.

Next door, Xu Yifan had no idea what his secretary was thinking. He leisurely sipped his tea and considered the company's affairs.

Of course, even if he had known what she was thinking, he would only have smiled indifferently.

His secretary was exactly his type, and seeing her every day was a treat.

But work and personal life needed to stay separate. Having been given a second life, he wasn't going to think about romance or marriage until he'd had his fill of life!

After leisurely finishing his tea, he lay back on the sofa. His thoughts had already settled into place.

He knew what problems the company was facing and how to solve them.

The Human Resources Department was swamped, but even after hiring more staff, the factory could produce only sixty or seventy Jiuzhou Minis a day.

With the market practically wide open, that still left a huge gap in supply.

"Just sixty or seventy sold a day, a little over two thousand a month..."

Xu Yifan laughed at his own thought, feeling faintly wistful.

Since when had an annual sales figure of around twenty thousand become something he could mention so casually?

Twenty thousand a year didn't make a model a bestseller, but it certainly wasn't obscure, either. It put it somewhere in the middle.

It couldn't compare with the bestselling models that sold tens of thousands every month, but it would be enough to keep a small factory like this comfortably afloat.

The only reason they had such an enormous advantage was that they were in a different market, one as yet untouched.

The major car brands hadn't set their sights on this niche, where there wasn't much profit to be made.

For joint-venture carmakers, why bother making these cheap Old Man Happy vehicles?

They could use that time to build a proper joint-venture car, sell it on the market, and easily make tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands—in profit!

Just look at how, more than a decade later, expensive joint-venture models had their prices slashed. Discounts of fifty or sixty thousand, even seventy or eighty thousand, were everywhere. Some cars were discounted by well over a hundred thousand!

Luxury brands aside, some had their prices cut by a hundred or two hundred thousand.

Even French brands, once so popular that buyers fought to get their hands on their cars, could sell the C6 for 120,000 and the C3XR for just over 50,000.

Some of those massive price cuts were certainly due to government and corporate subsidies, but the subsidies covered only part of the discount.

If a car could sell for half its original price, and other joint-venture brands could cut their prices by tens of thousands, it was clear just how enormous their profit margins were.

That was why so many joint-venture brands had flooded into the Huaxia market. They came to make money—piles of it, practically like robbing a bank!

The whole market was like a giant blood bag, with joint-venture brands all feeding from it. The domestic brands could only pick up a few scraps.

Combustion-engine cars were where the main battle was being fought, and joint-venture brands held an overwhelming advantage.

Why would they bother with the Old Man Happy market? It was barely worth a mosquito's leg.

Or perhaps their markets were different, and they simply hadn't noticed this niche?

Either way, it gave Jiuzhou Automobile Factory a huge opportunity.

The market was wide open, with almost no serious competitors.

If they could capture the entire Old Man Happy market, then even if the profit on each unit was low, the market as a whole was worth tens of millions. It would still bring in a huge amount of money.

Once they had built a good reputation and taken over the Old Man Happy market, they could move aggressively into the new-energy vehicle sector and crush traditional joint-venture cars, imports, and even domestic brands!

Growing stronger one step at a time would be far better than going straight into a head-on fight with the joint-venture brands.

Naturally, Xu Yifan could only do this because he knew how the car market would change over the next decade or more, and had the System to support him.

With combustion-engine cars dominating the market, most ordinary companies lacked the foresight to plan for the future.

BYD had it. It started out with a poor reputation for combustion-engine cars, built up its battery technology, then switched tracks and surged ahead in the new-energy vehicle sector, eventually becoming the strongest new-energy carmaker of the future.

Tesla had it, too. That was how a little-known factory soared to become a leading brand in high-end electric vehicles, even matching BYD for a time.

The Daxia government had the foresight to plan for the future as well, which was why it introduced a series of subsidies related to new-energy vehicles.

Some carmakers exploited the subsidies, but the policies also revitalized the market and nurtured a host of supporting businesses, including battery companies.

Without the System's help, it wouldn't necessarily be easy for Xu Yifan to follow this path.

Capturing a market with tens of millions of vehicles on the road was beyond the capabilities of Jiuzhou Automobile Factory as it stood.

At a production rate of around twenty thousand vehicles a year, it would take a thousand years to meet demand for a market of tens of millions.

That didn't even account for the wave of people replacing their cars every ten years or so.

Xu Yifan had already considered the options.

Either build more production lines or find someone else to manufacture the cars.

Building production lines was possible, but Jiuzhou Automobile Factory couldn't expand its capacity quickly in its current state.

It would take tens of billions in investment, and the company had nowhere near that kind of money. Training skilled workers would also take a long time.

Even at Jiuzhou Automobile Factory now, where they were hiring a large number of workers and pairing experienced employees with newly trained ones—

The veterans handled the complicated tasks, while the new hires learned on the job with simpler ones. Even so, it would probably take a week before production started to show any real improvement.

Xu Yifan couldn't wait around for things to develop that slowly. That left only one option: outsource production!

They needed unique core patents and technological advantages to distinguish themselves from the brands that came later and stay competitive.

"In that case, we need to have our own core technology."

Seated on the sofa, Xu Yifan settled on what the factory should focus on next. With a thought, he summoned the System panel.

For Jiuzhou Automobile to grow, it still needed its own core technology—something that set it apart from other companies.

[Super Factory System: Level 1]

[Funds: 3.08 million]

[Buildings: Production Workshop Level 1, Research and Development Center Level 1, Battery Research and Development Center Level 1, Employee Dormitory Level 1, Cafeteria Level 1, Warehouse Level 1, Office Building Level 2.]

[Employees: 156 (Satisfaction: 64%)]

[Product: Jiuzhou Mini (Old Man Happy) (Average Production Technology) (Average Product Quality) (Annual Output: Over 20,000)]

[Technology: None (A garbage company without any core technology of its own!)]