Chapter 207 Uber’s request

Originally, according to the plan, Zhang Yong’s first investment in Angel Island should be 20 billion. But now that so many projects are started at the same time, 20 billion is not enough, so Zhang Yong has added a large amount of investment. How rich is Mr. Zhang? Almost people all over the world were stunned, as if Zhang Yong had a money printing machine, as long as it was the cost of island construction, he could take out money from his pocket.

However, others were surprised and surprised, but did not put it into practice. However, Travis Kalanick firmly believes that Zhang Yong’s money must be unlimited, so he came to Zhang Yong to invest again!

It can be said that Zhang Yong recently, spending money like water, started with Buffett and Soros to start the bankruptcy filing of General Motors, became the third largest shareholder of General Motors, purchased Seralvo Island alone, and launched a new business. The large-scale Angel Island development project, these two expenditures add up to more than 10 billion US dollars!

Half a year ago, Travis Kalanick got Zhang Yong’s angel investment with his Uber, which had just started. After sufficient funds, Travis Kalanick’s Uber company has developed very rapidly, and has quickly seized the online taxi-hailing market that is still in the blank stage in almost the United States, and is competing with local taxi companies. , is also in a dominant position of the offensive side.

But Travis Kalanick’s ambitions don’t stop there. Although the country is highly open, after all, there are still some cities with some market barriers. They have made various excuses to prevent Travis Kalanick and his Uber company from entering the local market. There are various reasons. For example, most private cars are more polluting than taxis. In order to protect the environment, taxis are promoted. For example, Uber’s vehicles do not have uniform specifications, which affects the image of the city. Therefore, everyone is required to join Uber. All private cars are painted orange, the standard color of taxis.

Are private cars polluting? This is really the case. For cities with environmental barriers, only a small number of high-end and environmentally friendly vehicles can be operated on the road. Affect the city appearance and require a unified change of vehicle color? It doesn’t matter if you run Uber full-time, but the vast majority of people who run Uber part-time to earn extra money are determined not to change the color of their vehicles uniformly!

So, in those cities with trade barriers, Uber’s vehicles are seriously short! Uber itself is a company that needs to use “volume” to attract customers. If there is no certain amount of vehicles, when users want to use Uber to take a taxi, but no vehicles arrive, they might as well choose a taxi passing by the roadside. , even if the taxi is a little more expensive!

Originally, Travis Kalanick hadn’t racked his brains on this problem and didn’t know what to do. But now, after seeing that his boss Zhang Yong is so rich, he suddenly feels that he can ask for a little more money from Zhang Yong to solve this problem!

Travis Kalanick rushed to Los Angeles from San Francisco to report his request to Zhang Yong:

“Mr. Zhang, the development of our Uber company has encountered some bottlenecks. In some cities, the number of Uber taxi vehicles is seriously insufficient! In order to supplement the shortage of these companies’ vehicles, I would like to purchase 200,000 company-owned vehicles. Increase the number of vehicles in these cities.”

Travis Kalanick said cautiously, while talking, looking at Zhang Yong’s expression, worried that if he opened his mouth, Zhang Yong would not accept his plan. Originally, he wanted to say that buying 1 million company-owned vehicles was too small, but because he was worried that Zhang Yong would not accept it, he said the number to the minimum.

But even 200,000 vehicles are actually quite a lot! Even if a vehicle is $10,000, these 200,000 vehicles will cost $2 billion!

Zhang Yong knows that in the future, online taxis will be popular with market funds and become a representative product of “Internet +” investment. By that time, Uber, the leading company in the online taxi industry, will have a market value of hundreds of billions of dollars, not to mention. However, Zhang Yong knows more that the threshold for the online taxi industry is not high. In this industry, it can only tell stories to the capital market and survive through constant financing, and there will never be a day when it will truly make money. But this story is shattered, and no matter how big the market value is, everything will become a bubble in the end.

Zhang Yong originally planned that he had invested 50 million US dollars in Uber. After ten years, maybe this 50 million US dollars will become 50 billion US dollars, and he can get 1,000 times of income in 10 years. But if he adds so much money now, 2 billion will become 50 billion, and his rate of return will change from a thousand times to dozens of times. This is obviously unacceptable to Zhang Yong.

But seeing Travis Kalanick’s expectant eyes, Zhang Yong couldn’t directly refuse: “Then do you have a favorite model?”

Travis Kalanick heard Zhang Yong’s reply, and felt that the hope of financing this time was even greater: “I heard that in October last year, Tesla’s Roadster sedan has been rolled off the production line and has begun to gradually Delivery ~www.readmtl.com~ Their Roadster sedans are pure electric vehicles. Although their cruising range is not as high as gasoline vehicles when fully charged, they can reach more than 400 kilometers. It is completely feasible as a city network travel vehicle! , their cars are completely green, which will avoid green barriers in many cities and allow our company to grow faster.”

“So, you want to buy 200,000 Tesla electric cars?” Tesla has been established for so many years, it seems that it is only in the past two years that it has gradually broken out of the predicament. Moreover, although electric vehicles will still be in a non-mainstream and loss-making position in the next decade or so, when global warming is becoming more and more serious, oil resources are increasingly depleted, and people are paying more and more attention to the requirements of environmental protection, electric vehicles Sooner or later, cars will become mainstream, and Tesla will eventually stand on the top of the world.

Isn’t the problem obvious? Travis Kalanick didn’t understand why Zhang Yong asked: “Yes, Mr. Zhang. Besides, I have bought a Tesla Roadster as my own scooter, and now I use it every day. The car works and travels. I have to say that the quality of this car is very good, and it is very comfortable to sit on, so I recommend our company to buy 200,000 Tesla electric cars. President Zhang, are you worried? The price of this car is too high? It’s not high at all. When I bought it, the price of a low-profile model was only $15,000! If we buy it on a large scale, it is estimated that the price will be reduced to $10,000, which is not a big problem. ”

Travis Kalanick said to Zhang Yong very excitedly, but he suddenly found that Zhang Yong’s face was already covered with black lines!