Chapter 1248 – Shot himself in the foot
The higher-ups acted fast and agreed to build a test laboratory park. But to please everyone, the test laboratory park will be located beside Jin Lin. It is considered a central location, between north and south.
Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group doesn’t mind, as they have a factory in Jin Lin. If they want to test any vehicles, they can jaust a.s.semble them in that factory.
The construction is divided into three phases. Like the crash test, wind tunnel, etc., the more important laboratories will be built first. The land is flat and was supposed to build a manufacturing park there. Jin Lin had even gotten investors for it.
The state compensated the investors, and Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group gave Jin Lin some money to settle it. Of course, this test center will fall under Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group, as they are the ones paying for it.
After the construction started, Feng Yu thought he can stop worrying about it. But something troublesome happened.
Ralph told Feng Yu that Toyota had contacted Ford and other US companies to suppress Songjiang Motors’ development there.
Toyota had also contacted Volkswagen and other major automobile manufacturers in Europe to stop Songjiang Motors’ development. This will have a significant impact on Songjiang Motors’ overseas sales.
If Songjiang Motors sold their factories’ shares there, they would lose the opportunity to enter the western markets. All their previous efforts will be in vain.
If Songjiang Motors continued, they would not make any profits with those major companies suppressing them. Their joint ventured factories will suffer losses, and it will be a burden for Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group.
When Feng Yu knows about this, he felt this is a sticky situation. He did not expect Toyota to resort to this. Don’t they need to pay the price for those companies’ cooperation?
Luckily, Ralph also told Kameda Masao, and they quickly come up with countermeasures. Since Toyota can work with other automobile manufacturers, we can also do the same.
All the companies Toyota contacted have joint venture factories in China. They can get a share of the profits without doing anything. But they have to share some of their manufacturing techniques with the Chinese automobile manufacturers and helped them with their technological development.
All these don’t matter initially. But with Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group taking the lead, it will be troublesome. If these Chinese manufacturers worked together, they could quickly improve their technologies. In the past, China had done this before. Some small companies merged together to form a large enterprise that can compete internationally.
But the overseas automobile manufacturers know the Chinese manufacturers can’t merge. This is because with they started joint ventures with them, there is a clause in their contract. The Chinese manufacturer must get their approval if they will get additional funds or go into a merger.
The contract is for twenty years, and the Chinese automobile manufacturers can buy out the overseas companies’ shares. But there is still more than ten years before the contract is up. The Chinese manufacturers will not breach their contracts. It will offend many countries, and it is against the WTO regulations.
Compared to Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group and even the rest of Chinese automobile manufacturers, Toyota’s development is much faster.
When someone reaches the third position from the sixth in a race, the five people before him will see him as the biggest threat. Suppose someone in the 30th position reaches the 20th position. In that case, the top five positions will not care because this person still must overtake many people before he can pose a threat.
Now, Toyota is that person who reaches the third position from the sixth, and Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group is the one who climbed to the 20th position from the 30th position. As for the rest of the Chinese automobile manufacturers, they still have a long way to go.
In terms of threat, Toyota’s threat is the greatest.
If all the top automobile manufacturers have to suppress a company, they will surely target the company above them. They can wait for the companies in lower positions than them to climb up before they suppress them.
So, it’s a tragedy for Toyota.
…….
“President! Something happened!” Junichiro Watanabe rushed into Fujio Cho’s office.
Fujio Cho is furious. “How many times have I told you to knock before entering my office?! Go out and knock first!”
Junichiro Watanabe went out of the office. Someone climbed out from under Fujio Cho’s desk and ran into the attached restroom while he zipped his pants.
Knock… knock… knock…
“Come in!” Fujio Cho shouted.
“President, something had gone wrong in our US and Europe sales!” Junichiro Watanabe shouted.
“You are not in charge of that region. How do you know? Just look after your Asia market. You are not the Vice President yet!” Fujio Cho is unhappy and felt Junichiro Watanabe is getting ahead of himself.
“No… the Presidents for Europe and American markets are handling this matter now and had tried to call you. But your phone is off, and your office phone is engaged. That’s why they call me.” Junichiro Watanabe quickly explains.
Fujio Cho had a weird expression and replied. “My phone is out of battery and did not place my office phone properly. What happened?”
“Our sales in America and Europe had dropped suddenly!”
“What? Dropped suddenly? How is that possible? Are there any issues with our products’ quality?”
“No.”
“Then why is this happening?” Fujio Cho asked anxiously. There are no diplomatic issues between j.a.pan and those western countries recently, and they had not offended any of those countries.
Is it because everyone had lost money in the stock markets recently? But even so, the sales will not drop suddenly. During the financial crisis last year, Toyota’s sales had still increased.
Nothing had happened to their sales in the first half of the year. What is going on?
“President, those European and US major automobile manufacturers are targeting us!”
“What? Why are they targeting us?!” Fujio Cho stood up. Didn’t I ask you to contact those manufacturers to target Bing City Machinery Manufacturing Group?
“I also don’t know what is going on. Those companies’ higher executives had agreed to work with us to target those Chinese manufacturers. But I don’t know why they targeted us suddenly. All of them started discount promotion simultaneously, and we did not receive any news beforehand.”
“What are you idiots doing?! They can offer a discount on their cars, why can’t we do the same? Are you saying that we, Toyota are afraid of them?! Inform Europe and the US offices to start our discount promotion!”