I want to be emperor

Chapter 1048 The despicable Li Dynamic Company

In New Sweden (Philadelphia), Luo Zhixue saw agricultural production that could rarely be seen elsewhere in contemporary times!

A large area of ​​wide and flat land, with many streams and rivers between the lands!

Luo Zhixue also personally inspected the soil of these farmlands. They were all dark and fertile land. Even if no chemical fertilizers or bird droppings were applied to such land, the strength of the land itself was enough to ensure a certain amount of harvest.

Standing up, loosening his fingers to let the soil scatter, Luo Zhixue looked up at the endless farmland in the distance: "What a great place!"

There was also the co-organizing minister on the side, Qian Hongpeng, the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, replied: "All this is due to your Majesty's foresight, and he made a strategy to seize America long ago!"

"This land is as fertile as the Northeastern Plains and the Eastern European Plains!"

"And such places are not just a small area, but are all over the Americas, especially North America!"

"According to preliminary estimates by my colleagues at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, at least 3.5 million square kilometers of agricultural and livestock land can be developed in the three provinces of North America alone!"

"At the same time, the developable area of ​​cultivated land in these three provinces is also very large. It is conservatively estimated that 2.5 billion acres of land can be developed. This amount is equivalent to the entire East Asia region!"

"At the same time, most of the arable land in the two provinces of North America is flat, has abundant water resources, and has moderate and pleasant temperatures, making it very suitable for agricultural development!"

"Especially the southern parts of the two provinces in North America and the northwestern part of the Mexican province have unique conditions. If used to develop agriculture, even this area alone can meet the needs of our country's 700 million people!"

"I am so lucky to have found such a treasured land!"

Luo Zhixue nodded while listening: "Such a good place cannot be wasted. Make good use of it. We need to intensify our efforts in agricultural construction in the Americas!"

"At the same time, measures must be taken according to local conditions. The population in the Americas is relatively small, but there is too much land. What should we do? We must find ways to increase the per capita cultivated area and increase per capita food production!"

"The farming model that combined horse plowing and steam engine tractors that was promoted in North America was very good. However, the times are advancing, and agricultural technology continues to advance. Nowadays, the northeastern region of East Asia and Eastern Europe have adopted gasoline engine tractors as power. This region in the Americas Mechanical planting equipment must also keep up with the times!"

Gasoline engines have been around for some time, and Tangshan Machinery Company has also introduced gasoline tractors to the market, integrating various agricultural equipment, such as harvesters, plows, etc.

These gasoline tractor equipment have been used in North China, Northeast China, Eastern Europe and other regions, but Luo Zhixue has not seen this situation in the Americas.

Obviously, the distance between the Americas and the mainland still leads to a lag in technology application.

So Luo Zhixue just said it smoothly!

After all, gasoline tractors have great advantages over steam engine tractors and horses. They can effectively reduce costs, increase per capita planting area, further increase per capita grain production, and ultimately supply more grain to the empire.

That's why Luo Zhixue mentioned this gasoline tractor on this occasion...

That is to say, the people from Tangshan Machinery Company are not here, otherwise they would definitely be ecstatic... To exaggerate, Luo Zhixue's words are enough to increase their gasoline tractor sales several times...

Because of what Luo Zhixue said, you can't even think of it simply as an advertisement for their gasoline tractors... but rather as Luo Zhixue directly using administrative means to promote it.

In order to cater to the above, local officials such as governors in the Americas and even other directly governed territories must have repeatedly pondered Luo Zhixue's words, even if the local conditions are not suitable for mechanized agriculture, or there is no money to do so. Subsidies and the like, but they will make some appearances to show that they are always following the pace of the emperor.

And even if it's just a show... the orders for gasoline tractors in the territories under direct jurisdiction around the world will be astronomical!

Most of these orders will go to Tangshan Machinery Company... because so far, only Tangshan Machinery Company can mass-produce electronic ignition gasoline engines.

As for the other two major competitors, although Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company has also introduced their own gasoline engine to the market, it still uses heat pipe ignition... Although they have made very in-depth improvements to their own heat pipe ignition technology, the ignition efficiency is compared to the first generation. It has improved a lot, but it is still not comparable to electronic ignition.

Therefore, the market acceptance is not very high... In order to sell gasoline engines equipped with heat pipe ignition, Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company had no choice but to lower the selling price.

It's also a gasoline engine... and other technologies such as cylinders are similar. Just because of the difference in ignition mode, the price of Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company's gasoline engine is only about 60% of the electronic ignition gasoline engine of the same specification.

This has also led to the fact that Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company has also been working hard on electronic ignition gasoline engines in recent years. It has made some significant progress and has built a prototype. However, it still has the defects of high failure rate and low ignition success rate. There is still some distance to go before mass production.

Optimistically, it will take at least fifty years before Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company can come up with a mature and reliable mass-produced electronic ignition gasoline engine.

In addition, Liaodong Machinery Company, one of the three major internal combustion engine companies, has also been focusing on electronic ignition gasoline engines in recent years, and they do not have the mature and reliable heat pipe ignition mode currently available like Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company.

They don't even have reliable heat pipe ignition technology... There's no way, Hekou Machinery Company was too thief when it applied for the patent, leaving no obvious loopholes at all. It's difficult for the other two companies and even other regions to ignite heat pipes. achieved a breakthrough.

Therefore, Liaodong Machinery Company had no choice but to concentrate all its efforts on electronic ignition. However, the early progress was not smooth in order to reverse the situation.

They introduced strategic investment two years ago from Tianjin Machinery Company, Songjiang Heavy Machinery Company, Li's Power Company, Northeast Mining Company, Xuzhou Electric and many other large domestic enterprises.

The strategic investment introduced not only brought them more than 800,000 yuan in cash... but also brought a lot of technical support from major strategic investment companies... These technical supports are not directly related to internal combustion engine technology. Instead, it provides many parts and even raw materials.

To put it bluntly, when Liaodong Machinery Company fell behind in the research and development of gasoline engines, it felt that it could not handle it on its own, so it began to introduce other companies and roped in a large number of companies to work together.

Because the gasoline engine is actually a highly integrated industrial product that requires a lot of parts, and the performance of these parts is also difficult to achieve.

Especially the most core component, which is the electronic ignition system... Liaodong Machinery Company lacked research in the electrical field before and wanted to develop a high-frequency, high-voltage, high-temperature, etc. product on its own. Under the current technical conditions, The electronic ignition system is almost at the limit of criticality... to be honest they can't figure it out. This is why Xuzhou Electric was introduced.

The reason why Xuzhou Electric entered the game was also to get involved... because Xuzhou Electric's two major competitors, namely Yingtian Mechanical and Electrical and Songjiang Electric, had already entered the game.

Tangshan Machinery Company’s electronic ignition system uses customized parts supplied by Yingtian Mechanical and Electrical Company. Of course, these parts are actually Tangshan Machinery Company’s patented products. Yingtian Mechanical and Electrical Company is actually more like a OEM manufacturers have no way to sell these patented products.

Songjiang Electric Company has entered into strategic cooperation with Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company to jointly develop electronic ignition systems.

Two of the three major electrical companies have already entered the game. Naturally, Xuzhou Electric will not fall behind, so there is nothing to choose from at this time. They can only choose Liaodong Machinery Company, the remaining one of the three major internal combustion engine companies... Although Liaodong Machinery Company has fallen seriously behind in the field of new gasoline engines and cannot keep up with the pace of the other two companies.

However, no matter what, we are one of the three major internal combustion engine companies, not talking about technology... only talking about patents.

Liaodong Machinery Company is one of the only three companies in China that can produce and sell complete gasoline engines, and uses core patented technologies in gasoline engines such as electronic ignition technology, four-stroke technology, and carburetors.

The above-mentioned patented technologies actually belong to the three major internal combustion engine companies. However, no one could develop an internal combustion engine alone at that time, so basic patents had to be cross-licensed, and finally all three major internal combustion engine companies could use the above patents.

But...except for these three major internal combustion engine companies, no other company can use these patents...The famous Lee Iron and Steel Company, which is not short of money and people, their subsidiary Lee's Power Company has been struggling for many years and so far it is still There is no way around these core fundamental patents.

According to their core engineers... it is possible to bypass one or two patents, but trying to bypass a whole set of basic patents for gasoline engines is almost like a dream!

When you really get around it, the result will no longer be a gasoline engine...

As for the solution?

Yes... wait, patents are time-limited, most of them are fifteen years... Just wait until the fifteen-year patent period has passed... But there are also many problems, because there are quite a few gasoline engine patents, especially recently The applied technologies are patented only in recent years.

And technology is constantly improving... After the fifteen-year patent period ends, people will have already used better and more advanced technology, but that thing still has patent restrictions.

Just waiting for someone else's patent to expire is unreliable.

Therefore, Lee's Power Company's approach is to conduct research and development on its own and strive to keep up with the subsequent development of gasoline engines. At the same time, it accumulates patented technologies and can directly use the better patented technologies developed after the basic patents are in place.

At the same time, Li's Power Company still lowered its head, proactively giving money to others and even providing some of the gasoline engine technology it developed for itself, just in exchange for an opportunity to invest in Liaodong Machinery Company... Of course, their purpose was not to acquire these shares. Instead, they used their status as shareholders to influence Liaodong Machinery Company and let the company license some of their gasoline engine patents to Li's Power Company.

Not to mention, Li's Power, who was willing to spend money and pay the price, really made them successful. Liaodong Machinery Company refused at first. After all, the patent authorization had a great impact, and they did not want to create another competitor of their own.

But Li's Power Company gave too much... It financed at a super premium, and also provided some very good patented technologies that can also be used in gasoline engines.

Finally, they agreed...

Anyway, there are more than these basic patents for internal combustion engines, and about 70% of them are in the hands of Tangshan Machinery Company and Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company. As long as the other two companies do not authorize them, then Li's Power Company has obtained some of the patents of Liaodong Machinery Company. , which is actually of no use.

However... they still underestimated the cruelty of business competition and the determination of Lee Iron and Steel Company to obtain tickets in the field of internal combustion engines!

Almost at the same time, an engineering equipment company located in Songjiang Prefecture and an old customer that had cooperated with Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company for many years also made detailed modifications based on the heat pipe ignition gasoline engine provided by Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company to facilitate In order to better match its own engineering equipment, we applied to obtain some basic internal combustion engine patents from Liaodong Hekou Machinery Company.

At the same time, a company located in Tianjin, which has been a strategic partner of Tangshan Machinery Company for many years, also used similar reasons to obtain some of the basic internal combustion engine patents held by Tangshan Machinery Company.

Immediately afterwards... these two engineering equipment companies that had obtained some basic patents for internal combustion engines were wholly acquired by Lee Iron and Steel Company at a high price.

Subsequently, these two engineering equipment companies merged with Li's Power Company... which immediately caused a sensation in the industry!

As a result, the three major internal combustion engine companies found that things were very complicated... Li's Power Company integrated the patent authorizations held by the two major engineering equipment companies, plus the patent authorization obtained from Liaodong Machinery Company... Finally All basic patents for gasoline engines have been obtained.

There are many basic patents on four-stroke, carburetor, electronic ignition and even heat pipe ignition...

Then Li's Power Company made a high-profile announcement that they would invest heavily in the next few years to develop a mass-produced electronic ignition gasoline engine, which is expected to be commercialized fifty years ago... As soon as the news came out, the three major internal combustion engine companies were dumbfounded. Damn it, this is an exclusive patent belonging to three companies respectively, and strictly speaking, these three internal combustion engine companies have only authorized it once.

But just this one time, Li's Power Company was able to collect the basic patents for internal combustion engines... a powerful competitor was added for no reason... Maybe you can ignore Li's Power, but its parent company is Li's Steelmaking, the company with the highest market value among domestic listed companies.

It would be quite difficult to compete with them!

Not every company can be like Hantian Machinery Co., Ltd., and can make Li's Iron Co., Ltd.'s parents unrecognizable in the field of general machine tools...

Even so, Li's Iron Manufacturing Company has never admitted defeat. For decades, it would rather not make a single copper in the machine tool business than continue to fight against general machine tools. Dayou and Hantian Machinery Company have fought this machine tool war to eternity. posture!

It’s hard to meet such a competitor...

Later, I heard that after people from the three major internal combustion engine companies complained privately, they also reached a so-called gentleman's agreement, and they were no longer allowed to license basic internal combustion engine patents to outsiders.

This competitor can only have one less competitor!

But what is irreversible is that the number of internal combustion engine manufacturers in the Dachu Empire has changed from four to five...the traditional three major internal combustion engine companies and the Guangzhou Machinery Company that specializes in diesel engines, plus a company that has secretly collected all the basic patents on gasoline engines. Lee Dynamics.

Putting aside the isolation from the world, Guangzhou Machinery Company closed its doors and engaged in diesel engines... Then there will only be four manufacturers of gasoline engines in the future, and competition will further intensify.

However, this kind of fierce competition in internal combustion engines has a very good role in promoting the overall industrial development of the Chu Empire and even the development of transportation and agriculture.

Otherwise, if one company alone has no competitors, God knows when it will be possible to put gasoline engines into practical use... let alone when it will be able to continue to advance the advancement of gasoline engine technology.

No one knows, a heat pipe ignition technology can be used for decades. How can any company or person bother to figure out electronic ignition and come up with it?

(End of this chapter)