Chapter 1242 – Technology breakthrough
“Old Li, you say we can start producing high CC engines? Hahaha… great! That’s terrific!”
Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group had been developing new engines. It had been working with Bing City Aviation all this while. As the company’s profits increased, their investments into R&D also increases. Their technologies improved faster.
A few years ago, Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group can produce high CC engines. Still, the cost is almost double of other major automobile manufacturers. This means they can only be competitive in China and not overseas.
Songjiang Motors have two popular models overseas. One of them is Oriental Deer, and the other is Little Genie. Olympics, which is selling well in China, is not selling well overseas other than East Europe.
Europeans and Americans prefer cars with large displacement, especially SUVs. Toyota 4500 SUV had created history with its strong and cheap engines. Among the big SUV, this model had created a name for itself. Now, Toyota made a new breakthrough by developing a cheaper 4700 CC engine.
But that does not mean other major automobile manufacturers do not have bigger CC engines. Volkswagen, Ford, etc., have the technologies for 4800 CC engines and work on 6000 CC engines. But it is used in luxury and sports cars, unlike Toyota, which uses it on mid to low range cars.
The technology is not perfect, and mass production will increase the cost and loses competitiveness. Toyota is good at controlling their cost, and the retail prices of their vehicles are kept low. This allowed them to gain a big market share of the high CC SUVs market.
With just the 4500 model, Toyota had gained a foothold in China and was not suppressed by Songjiang and Volkswagen.
But FAW had proposed to Toyota to ask them to go into a joint venture with this model since they have the 4700 model. But Toyota rejected. They can get higher profits by selling this model themselves and protect their own technology.
If FAW learned the production technologies of this engine, Toyota must continue with their joint venture forever. Joint ventures are more beneficial to the Chinese manufacturers, and Toyota does not want to see this happening.
If it wasn’t to penetrate the Chinese market, Toyota would never go into a joint venture with Chinese manufacturers. All these are because of the changes brought upon by Songjiang Motors.
Toyota’s current target is to continue increasing its brand awareness in China. They foresee they can take over the Chinese automobile market in the future. When that happens, Toyota will become the World’s No. 1 Automobile manufacturer.
…….
The new engine developed by Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group is copying Volkswagen V series engines, and its inspiration is from aircraft engines.
Early in the twenty century, someone had used a W12 plane’s engine to build a 24 liters engine car, and it shocks the world. That’s right. It’s 24L and not 2.4L.
Bing City Aviation has the W series engine technologies but had never considered using it in an automobile. They are still developing the V series engines.
V6 is successful, but they faced difficulties with the V8 engine. Although they can produce it, the cost is much higher than Volkswagen.
So, Feng Yu suggested combining two V6 engines to create a w12 engine.
This reminded Bing City Aviation’s engineers about the W12 engines in their factory. This engine is an obsolete aircraft engine.
But if they upgraded the technologies and used them in automobiles, it will be great.
First, they need to minimize the engine’s size and lower the output to below 6L. Although higher CC will increase its power, it will be too fuel-consuming.
The engineers even thought about creating a W8 engine with their V4 engines. This will surely be smaller than V8 engines.
If the engine is too big, it cannot be fitted with a 4-wheel drive and can only use it on the rear-drive. But if the engine is smaller, all these problems will be solved.
4-wheel drive cars have better control, and SUVs’ performance will be improved. They had developed this engine for the new model of Oriental Deer.
The breakthrough this time is the W8 engine. It is a 4L engine and is China’s first domestically developed 4L engine.
“Is this engine performance stable? Can it be upgraded?” Feng Yu asked excitedly.
With this engine, the Oriental Deer off-road performance will improve significantly. With their superior branding and price advantages, they can easily defeat Toyota.
Songjiang can also produce a mid-range SUV for the Western markets with this engine. Many people like high CC off-roads vehicles there.
“No problem. Our research center can build W10 and W12 engines now. But we feel there’s no need for W10 engines. We can increase the number of cylinders, and each cylinder output will be 600CC. This way, the W8 engine can reach 4.8L.”
“Very good. How big is our gap with those overseas advance engines?” Feng Yu asked.
“If we use it in ordinary cars and SUV vehicles, we are about ten years behind them. But if we include sportscars and the technologies in their research centers, we are at least thirty years behind them. I heard Ferrari’s V8 engine has reached 8L output now.”
A cylinder with 1L capacity and the engine can be fitted into a small sportscar. This shows how powerful their technologies are. Suppose Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group is to build a V8 engine. In that case, it will be at least double Ferrari’s engine size. How is it going to fit on a car?
The uses of such high CC engines are limited and are mostly used in sportscars. But in China, the road conditions restricted the development of sportscars. Songjiang Motors had introduced a sportscar and have only average sales. Imported sports cars are also not selling well due to the high duties.
There’s someone in Shanghai who had followed Feng Yu’s former footsteps by importing overseas second-hand sportscars and refurbish them before selling them.
But all these are not important. Although the profits of sportscars are high, ordinary cars and SUVs have higher sales. However, Songjiang Motors will also not give up on sportscars.
Songjiang Motors’ SUV is the most popular overseas, and they must maintain it. As for sportscar, they are not exported out of China yet.
“So, our saloon cars and SUVs gap with those major overseas manufacturers is getting smaller. Good. Introduce the higher CC SUVs immediately, and also launch our newest model of high-end saloon cars. For sportscar, you can also introduce a new model, including the rest of the models. We must suppress those foreign brands again!”
