bookbashuk #469 - Acquisition of carbon fiber technology
#469 - Acquisition of carbon fiber technology
Having settled the matter of the second-generation fighter jet,
Ren Zhong returned to the main world.
In Jincheng, Ren Zhong was discussing new product development with Liang Xiaofeng of Yunlong Motors.
"Our Lynx all-terrain vehicle is going to use carbon fiber?" Liang Xiaofeng asked, somewhat surprised upon hearing Ren Zhong's idea. "Carbon fiber is a bit redundant for our cars, negating our original, very obvious cost-performance advantage."
Currently, the Lynx is selling quite well in Black Africa. As everyone knows, many roads in Black Africa are not much different from not being built at all. In North Africa, in the homeland of Colonel Gaddafi, things are lively right now. As a cheap and good new vehicle, the Lynx, priced at just over 100,000, is selling like hotcakes.
Pickups like the Toyota Tundra, with similar functionality, were once all the rage and essential vehicles for North African guerrillas. However, after the Lynx was introduced, which adapted to a wider range of terrains, had stronger capabilities, and was cheaper, the Toyota Tundra immediately became a thing of the past, completely lacking the cost-effectiveness of the Lynx.
Yunlong in Nigeria assembles this car and ships over 10,000 units a year, making it a definite small hit.
Liang Xiaofeng didn't understand why Ren Zhong wanted to bother with this. Carbon fiber is much more expensive than steel. Ordinary carbon fiber used in car bodies is 4-5 times more expensive. A car body made entirely of carbon fiber could cost 50,000 to 60,000! In contrast, a steel car body costs about 10,000.
This would add an extra 40,000 to 50,000 in costs.
In Liang Xiaofeng's opinion, this was not worth the effort.
It would lose the Lynx's cost-performance advantage.
"Old Liang, you need to have some ambition," Ren Zhong said with a smile, not directly refuting him. "Look, our Lynx is selling well now, but have you ever thought that, no matter what, it's still a low-end product? It's hard for us to break through and upgrade our brand, right?"
"Look, we're mainly targeting the guerrilla market now, which seems pretty good, but these markets themselves are unstable, and the rate of replacement won't be very fast. After all, guerrillas don't have much surplus to keep replacing vehicles."
"If we want to create a high-end product, we ultimately have to take the path of differentiation, right? How do we achieve this differentiation? Can we still optimize the product in terms of the main structure? 4 wheels, 6 wheels, or 8 wheels, we can increase the number of tires to increase the vehicle's load capacity and off-road capability."
"But what do ordinary consumers need? When they buy a car, it's not just for practical function. If they just want practicality, they can directly buy our Yunlong agricultural vehicle, which is durable, reliable, and can withstand overloading. It's a veritable workhorse."
"But real individual consumers may need a car that has both intrinsic strength and extrinsic appeal."
"We have to satisfy their yearning for high-end products. Engine displacement is one aspect, interior modification is another, and the car body's gimmick is definitely a very important consideration."
Ren Zhong spoke eloquently, having thoroughly researched these aspects, so he spoke with great insight.
"Look at the internationally renowned sports cars, many of which use carbon fiber to reduce weight. The concept of a carbon fiber car is equivalent to the concept of high-end. So we need to introduce carbon fiber to make the car body, ensuring that there is enough of a gimmick to enhance our brand value and product price."
"The Lynx will still maintain its original production method, but after the carbon fiber and interior upgrades, the new all-terrain vehicle will be renamed the 'Lynx Luxury All-Terrain Vehicle.' The price will increase by 50,000, competing with the Toyota Tundra in the 200,000-300,000 market. I think we have a very good chance of replacing it."
"It feels a bit unreliable, but you're the boss, so you have the final say. Anyway, we can afford to have one model fail now," Liang Xiaofeng said, not agreeing very much, but not objecting either.
In any case, he still had the awareness of an employee. Ren Zhong held the majority of the company's shares. As long as the boss's ideas weren't too outrageous, he would do it!
However, Liang Xiaofeng soon realized that Ren Zhong's determination was not simply to create a carbon fiber car body, but to start making the carbon fiber himself from the front-end materials!
He directly contacted the Coal Chemistry Institute in Jin Province to buy the polyacrylonitrile-based hollow carbon fiber production technology, invested several hundred million to build a new carbon fiber factory, and spent hundreds of millions annually to help the research institute overcome new carbon fiber technology challenges.
Since Ren Zhong did not seek exclusive intellectual property rights in the main world, their research cooperation was warmly welcomed by the research institute, which authorized Yunlong New Materials, under Ren Zhong's banner, to use its T300, T700, and T800 grade carbon fiber product production processes.
Furthermore, the institute sent an expert team to assist Yunlong New Materials' factory with the construction and debugging of the production line. Ren Zhong recorded these processes and organized all the information electronically, obtaining complete production process technology data.
According to Ren Zhong's plan for Yunlong New Materials, first, through Yunlong Motors' orders, Yunlong New Materials could receive material orders worth over 100 million annually from Yunlong Motors for the production of the Lynx all-terrain vehicle.
At the same time, after Yunlong New Materials began mass production, the sales team began to enter other carbon fiber production and application markets. Since Ren Zhong's goal was to achieve the development of this technology, Yunlong Carbon Fiber's sales prices were relatively favorable. The sales team could use the excellent cost-performance ratio to aggressively target the bicycle, golf, and other automotive companies' markets. On the one hand, the price was low, and on the other hand, with the Coal Chemistry Institute's prestigious reputation, Ren Zhong expected Yunlong New Materials to be competitive. After entering the mass production stage, Yunlong New Materials had a high chance of continuously winning new orders.
According to this development trend, Ren Zhong felt that it wouldn't be long before Yunlong New Materials could break even again after the sales scale reached 300 to 500 million, not counting the nearly 200 million invested in research and development and intellectual property procurement.
Anyway, Ren Zhong could afford to invest this money, so when selling the products, Ren Zhong didn't consider amortizing the research and development costs, but mainly calculated the sales costs by back-calculating from the production and sales of the products. In this way, the competitiveness immediately increased.
The technologies now in hand are mature T300, T700, and T800 grade carbon fiber products. These have been applied in the main world for many years, and the markets that have been developed are relatively broad. Taking samples to promote them would not be a difficult task for the newly established Yunlong New Materials.
However, these sales-related matters are all secondary. What is important is that Ren Zhong is not making money for the main world, but after obtaining the carbon fiber technology, he immediately improved the carbon fiber technology of Dongda in the Bright Sword world by several decades! He will take the lead in applying it to aerospace, striving for technological advantages in aerospace products.
After obtaining the technology from the main world, Dawn New Materials in the Bright Sword world quickly emerged, rebuilding several identical production lines in the Bright Sword world according to the production line equipment of the main world to prepare for large-scale mass production!
This time, they didn't apply for patents on specific processes. Instead, they strictly kept the technical details of the carbon fiber production process secret. The factory was designated as a Level 1 confidential unit, located near the oil refinery in the very secure Laobian District 51 Industrial Zone, ensuring the technology wouldn't spread.
They only released a few vague, principle-based technology patents. Ren Zhong had no intention of quickly revealing the introduction of this major technology to the main world, giving his competitors ideas. He carefully studied the development pace of the main world and preemptively applied for patents on several key technologies that they might be about to break through. For example, in 1959 in the main world, scientists at the Parmar Technology Center invented the preparation technology for high-performance rayon-based carbon fiber. Also, Baken's discovery of graphite whiskers in 1960, and in 1961, Akio Shindo of the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology successfully produced PAN-based carbon fiber with a modulus of 140GPa in the laboratory.
Although these patents had some inspirational significance, as basic carbon fiber patents, their practical feasibility was very low, and there was no possibility of commercial industrial production in the short term. These patents, together with the acrylonitrile precursor fiber technology, which was registered early on, formed a solid moat of carbon fiber patents! This combination protected Dongda's priority rights to carbon fiber products for at least 20 years.
Therefore, as far as carbon fiber was concerned, Ren Zhong saw the actions in the main world as a smokescreen, paving the way for him to obtain the real technology. Ren Zhong didn't really care whether Yunlong New Materials made money or lost money in the future. What he really wanted to do was promote the application of carbon fiber technology in the Bright Sword world!
The first priority was its application in Dongda's aerospace sector.
With qualified carbon fiber, carbon fiber composite seats would be 35% lighter than ordinary aluminum seats. In addition, replacing the aluminum alloy in the wings with carbon fiber composites on a large scale on the CAC-120 could reduce its weight by about 2,000 kilograms on the existing basis. If this weight reduction were converted into fuel, it could fly for about another hour, which is more than 800 kilometers.
This would easily push the CAC-120's maximum range to 3,800 kilometers, basically crossing the 3,500-kilometer range segment without making any design changes. This would give the future modification and optimization of this aircraft a completely new starting point.
If the wing layout was adjusted and the area increased, the CAC-120 could easily be upgraded to a larger model with 150 seats based on the existing aero engines! After all, calculating at 90 kilograms per passenger, adding 30 passengers would only increase the load by about 3 tons, and a slight adjustment to the wing layout and landing gear structure would meet the requirements of the new model.
This was Ren Zhong's greatest motivation for investing heavily in the main world to acquire mature T700 and T800 aerospace-grade carbon fiber production technology.
This technology is crucial for the next step in the development of the aviation industry.
Not only in aircraft, but also in rockets, the impact is even greater. For every 1 kilogram reduction in the weight of a spacecraft, the launch vehicle can be reduced by 500 kilograms, which is a huge change.
It can provide unlimited possibilities for further improvements in space launches and long-range ballistic missiles!
In the main world, the price of conventional carbon fiber ranges from about $30 to $150 per kilogram, while the price of high-performance carbon fiber can even be as high as $1,200.
This is because there are three main reasons why carbon fiber production is expensive in the main world:
1. Expensive raw materials: Modern carbon fiber raw materials mainly come from polymer organic compounds and petroleum extracts. Under normal circumstances, 2-2.2 tons of precursor fiber are required to burn 1 ton of carbon fiber, costing about 40,000 to 60,000 tons, which is 4-5 times the cost of steel.
2. Expensive electricity: The main processing technology of carbon fiber is heat treatment, which requires a lot of electricity. Electricity costs account for 25%-30% of the carbon fiber production cost, making it a veritable electricity-intensive industry.
3. Expensive process: Because it is a multidisciplinary product, the R\u0026D cost of carbon fiber is extremely high, and the production process also involves various chemical catalytic reactions. The entire process is long and complex. As a high-tech product, many companies have strict protection measures for their processes and formulas, so the entry threshold is quite high.
However, for Ren Zhong's foundation in the Bright Sword world, these reasons can be greatly alleviated. First of all, the raw materials are also made by himself. The precursor fiber has been mass-produced on a large scale as early as a few years ago, and the cost is too different compared to the main world.
Secondly, in terms of electricity costs, coal in the main world is much more expensive than in the Bright Sword world. The coal in the Bright Sword world does not go through the middleman coal bosses to earn the price difference. In addition, the labor and transportation costs in the Bright Sword world are much lower than in the main world, and there is no impact from taxes such as mineral resource taxes in the intermediate links. One ton of coal now costs less than 100 yuan. Although the current coal-fired power generation efficiency is much lower than in the main world, requiring 400 grams of coal to generate one kilowatt-hour of electricity, which is far from the current average level of less than 300 grams in the main world. However, when converted into cost, the coal consumption per kilowatt-hour is only 4 cents, and the coal-fired power cost is only 15 cents including all aspects of cost.
In addition, transmission and distribution will not exceed 30 cents, which is much lower than the daily cost in the main world, so the cost of electricity will be reduced a lot.
In terms of investment in process equipment, the prices in the Bright Sword world are also much lower than in the main world, especially the real estate cost. Now the Bright Sword world is providing land at a cost of 0, so the cost of building a factory is less than a quarter of that in the main world!
In addition, there are no implicit costs such as patent amortization in the main world, so the cost of carbon fiber in the Bright Sword world can be about one-third of that in the main world.
In this way, even with large-scale application of carbon fiber, the cost increase for large items such as airliners and rockets is controllable. Calculated on the basis of full application on the CAC-120 airliner, it will require more than 3,000 kilograms, and the increased cost will be about 150,000 US dollars.
However, the resulting performance increase is enough to offset the impact of this price.
Of course, for the A300 cooperation project, the price of this carbon fiber is not the 150,000 US dollars sold locally, it must be doubled at least. Anyway, the A300 project cooperation is a two-assembly center model. If both parties can produce the components, then each will establish a procurement supply chain, as long as the costs on both sides are roughly the same.
Although this loose cooperation increases the cost, it is temporarily the best solution. (End of this chapter)