Chapter 385 Luxury Car Outlook
On October 10, Fang Hexuan put aside the group's affairs and appeared at the automobile factory in Nanshan District, Shenzhen.

The main purpose of this inspection is to express our condolences to the BYD factory from the management to the grassroots workers.

Because these people have really been working hard to maintain production in the past two months. They have put in a lot of effort and have worked hard for a long time. If the big boss doesn't come down to comfort them, it would be a huge blow to their morale.

There is no need for him to bring anything to distribute to everyone. BYD has not lacked any of the bonuses and subsidies. Otherwise, where would the richest man put his face?
In addition to material things, everyone also needs the motivation of "being recognized after hard work". This spiritual need can only be met by Fang Hexuan, the chairman of the group.

The reason why BYD employees have such simple ideas has a lot to do with the fact that the company treats them as human beings.

Nowadays, people in other provinces may not be very clear about this due to lack of information, but who in some corner of Guangdong Province doesn’t know that BYD companies are harder to get into than state-owned enterprises, and that the treatment is much better?
Although the treatment here does not include supporting employees for life, in terms of salary, food, training, insurance and entertainment, even the best state-owned enterprises dare not compete with BYD.

Many LDs in Guangdong Province often use their connections to introduce their relatives and friends into BYD in order to get a job with Hong Kong capital.

Although Fang Hexuan plans to downplay BYD's Hong Kong investment identity in the future, he can't stop the mainlanders from buying into it!

Even as the richest man in Hong Kong, he sometimes cannot refuse certain requests.

In desperation, BYD simply set up a "Strategic Support Department" internally and placed those who came in through connections in this department.

Their main job is to help BYD maintain relationships with various parties in the local area and province, or to solve minor troubles for the company.

Fang Hexuan’s requirement for BYD is to operate with integrity and not engage in any crooked practices.

But this does not mean that BYD has to act aloof or boss people around. The scale involved often requires these people to lubricate and buffer.

In a word, BYD's appearance in Shenzhen not only adds luster to the special economic zone, but also sets an example for many factories in the mainland (especially private ones) - productivity cannot be created by relying on desperate exploitation.

As a result, many years later, many mainland automobile companies have deep resentment towards BYD, because this bastard set the standards too high.

Fang Hexuan gave a commendation speech in the factory auditorium in the morning, had lunch in the cafeteria with ordinary employees at noon, and after a one-hour break, he moved to the BMW factory next door in the afternoon.

That’s right, another purpose of his visit to Shenzhen this time was to see the construction progress of the BMW factory.

The civil engineering works of the two factories were completed at about the same time, but compared with BYD, the installation and commissioning of equipment inside the BMW factory took a year and a half later.

In other words, if this factory wants to make all its equipment qualified for trial production, it will take until March next year.

The reason why it was so late was also because Fang Hexuan had no foundation in car manufacturing.

He was able to take great pains to ensure BYD's smooth mass production and launch on the market because BYD's products are aimed at mass consumers and the technical requirements for them are not that high.

But if you want to sell luxury cars that are on par with Mercedes-Benz and BMW, the requirements put forward by the target consumers will not be a little bit higher.

Knowing his own shortcomings, Fang Hexuan decided to wait until BYD officially goes into mass production before including the BMW factory in the plan.

At the very least, with BYD's group of skilled workers and middle-level management personnel who master specific processes, can BMW avoid many detours?
BMW CEO Schemer was so excited when he showed his boss around the workshops. Over the past two years, he had watched BYD get on track step by step, but his own factory was stagnant. Even Fang Hexuan in Hong Kong had heard about his anxiety and urgency.

He had followed Mr. Fang from Germany's Mercedes-Benz to Hong Kong and then to Shenzhen. His ambitions were incomprehensible to his German colleagues who had once laughed at him.

Schermer was born into a family of car enthusiasts. His grandfather was an automobile worker and his father was a middle-level technical manager at Volkswagen. By his generation, they had already developed a deep understanding of the automotive industry.

He joined Mercedes-Benz right after graduating from university and worked there for nearly 20 years, rising from a grassroots draftsman to vice president of the German headquarters. It was a difficult but also a successful journey.

Now, he is particularly looking forward to the birth of a world-class luxury car brand in his own hands. Although he knows that this is very difficult, he always believes in the blueprint once drawn by the boss.

After all, although the factory was never completed, Shemer often visited Shenzhen to inspect BYD, and he witnessed how fast this emerging city, which was originally just a small fishing village, was developing.

Moreover, in the process of working with the Chinese, he determined that this people was not much inferior to his own Germanic people.

Therefore, he increasingly felt that the boss's bold statement that China would become the world's second largest GDP in at most 30 years was possible.

After all, a hardworking and studious race, just like West Germany stood up from the ruins of World War II, why can't it rise again?

The more he realizes this, the more he believes that BMW will be able to grow into a high-end brand that can compete with Mercedes-Benz and BMW in the future by relying on the Chinese market.

After visiting several large workshops, the group entered the conference room of the administrative building.

Fang Hexuan was drinking tea when Shemer had someone put a thick stack of drawings on the conference table in front of him.

He was not surprised at all. After all, this was a plan he had discussed with Shemel a long time ago.

After spreading the top drawing on the conference table and looking at it carefully, Fang Hexuan nodded with satisfaction.

It’s not that the vehicle model on the drawing is exactly what I want, but at least the design style is indeed in line with my requirements.

Although the brand name plagiarizes the Chinese name of BMW in the Chinese-speaking world, the style and design cannot be imitated from this company.

After all, BMW's front face family design has long been finalized, and the double kidney grille was introduced as early as 1933. Later, it was only through this general framework that minor evolutions and improvements were made.

As we all know, high-end luxury brands pay attention to historical heritage, which means that the design style must be consistent. This is reflected in the appearance, that is, it is necessary to determine a common family feature. The most obvious thing is that the front grille design must be very recognizable.

Therefore, after thinking about it for a long time, Fang Hexuan still felt that the family front face of Audi in later generations was most suitable for BMW cars.

There are two main reasons:
First, Audi has not yet truly embarked on the path of high-end branding. At least its iconic exaggerated "inverted trapezoidal face" has not yet appeared, and it would not be confirmed until the mid-90s.

Second, Audi's "inverted trapezoidal" family front face can evolve and be fine-tuned into different design styles, and its exaggerated grille space is also suitable for placing BMW's "Horse Stepping on Flying Swallow" logo on it.

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(End of this chapter)