Chapter 473 - 217: Trial

Chapter 473: Chapter 217: Trial

Even though the New Year was approaching, Hailufeng Company’s management was still at their posts. It was the regular employees who had started taking their holidays in batches.

The HR department had just poached a management team from a battery company in Peng City.

Lei Bo and Jiang Miao met.

He promptly stood up. "Hello, General Manager Jiang. It’s an honor to be invited."

"Have a seat." Jiang Miao looked at the man’s and his team’s files. "Mr. Lei, the company you were with before is one of the industry leaders. Why didn’t you stay there?"

"It was nothing much. I just felt our philosophies didn’t align." Lei Bo didn’t elaborate.

"Didn’t align? Mr. Lei, you should be aware of our company’s terms, right? Our offer can’t compare to that of an industry giant."

"You’re too kind, General Manager Jiang. My income wasn’t that high, actually. In a good year, it was around 500,000 yuan. For the past few years, it’s been about 200,000-plus."

Lei Bo had previously worked in quality management as a mid-level manager. His entire eight-person team consisted of personnel related to quality management.

On the surface, the terms Hailufeng Company offered him were indeed average. He would start with a C2 package, which was a monthly salary of 10,500 yuan. The other team members would get a C1 package, a monthly salary of 8,500 yuan.

However, before coming over, Lei Bo and his team had clearly researched Hailufeng Company’s internal compensation structure.

They discovered that within Hailufeng Company’s compensation, the base salary wasn’t a large component. Performance pay, bonuses, and profit sharing could add up to one to three times the salary. Combined with other benefits, the overall package was quite good.

If they performed well, earning a million a year wouldn’t be a problem.

Notably, Hailufeng Company’s promotion channels were relatively transparent. Once you put in the years and accumulated enough contributions, your Employee Level would naturally be raised automatically.

Lei Bo had worked at his previous company for over a decade and had been the factory’s quality supervisor for nearly ten of those years with no room for advancement. Now in his forties, with more and more young people joining, he felt the pressure and began to consider a change.

After weighing his options, Lei Bo ultimately chose Hailufeng Company.

In fact, there was another important reason he chose Hailufeng Company: it owned 30 million mu of land in Monan and was a major agricultural enterprise. A company like that was unlikely to suddenly go belly-up.

Having slogged through the battery industry for over a decade, Lei Bo knew very well how intense the competition was in the domestic market. The slightest misstep could bankrupt an entire company. He was essentially looking for a comfortable place to coast into retirement.

This was especially true during this critical period, as the battery industry had begun transitioning from lithium iron phosphate, ternary lithium, and semi-solid-state batteries, attempting to make the leap to all-solid-state batteries.

Moreover, after more than a decade of savage growth, the domestic battery industry was about to enter a phase of replacing old batteries. Whether many battery companies could survive this transition was an open question.

Jiang Miao could see what Lei Bo was thinking. He was probably just looking to coast at Hailufeng Company. But that was fine. Jiang Miao wasn’t afraid of laid-back subordinates; he was afraid of subordinates with ambitions loftier than the heavens.

In any case, his purpose for hiring a manager for the battery division was for factory construction and quality management. The technology division would handle R&D and technical management, while the sales department would handle sales.

For a manager in a production department like this, a simpler mindset was actually more reassuring.

Jiang Miao put down the resume. "I’ve reviewed your history, Mr. Lei. You have experience managing a factory, and your team has relevant work experience as well. Let’s start with a three-month trial period."

"No problem."

Lei Bo and his team took up their new posts at the Hailufeng battery division. Along with a few other management trainees that Hailufeng Company had already been preparing, the 20 of them formed a skeleton crew.

They were quite lucky, though. The new headquarters had plenty of empty offices, unlike previous departments that had to cram into self-built houses in Nanhu Village.

By the time they finished the relevant paperwork, it was already the first day of the New Year.

Lei Bo didn’t go home for the holiday. Instead, he brought his wife and children from Peng City to Shanmei.

The company’s thoughtful arrangements for hosting employees’ families left Lei Bo and the others very satisfied.

The company had converted two buildings in the employee residential complex across from the headquarters into temporary apartments. Lei Bo and several colleagues’ families were staying there for the New Year.

The entire residential complex currently housed about 1,300 households, all of whom were company employees and their families.

The first and second days of the New Year were lively for a while.

On the third day of the New Year, Lei Bo took a few colleagues to the Gongping Town biofuel base.

They arrived at the Gongping Town biofuel base.

"So many cows..." A middle-aged man with glasses peered out through the car window.

On the grassy slopes on both sides of the road were herds of black and white dairy cows, out to move around and sunbathe.

Past the dairy farm, the biofuel base was right next door.

Zhang Haitao, the head of the biofuel division, was also on duty here during the New Year. When he heard that Manager Lei’s group was visiting, he came out to greet them.

"Manager Lei, you’re here to see the experimental workshop, right?"

Lei Bo had already reviewed the relevant internal documents a few days prior and was so shocked by the data on the Gel Batteries that he couldn’t even wait for the holiday to end. He brought his men here directly to verify the data. "Yes! The battery division was just established, so I came to get a better understanding of our company’s battery technology."

"Manager Lei, would you like to go to the experimental workshop first, or to the office?"

"Let’s go to the workshop."

They arrived at the temporary experimental workshop.

It was divided into two areas.

One was a microbe cultivation room, hermetically sealed from the outside, and the other was a battery processing workshop.

Lei Bo didn’t enter the microbe cultivation room, choosing instead to first inspect the situation in the battery processing workshop.

His first impression of the battery production workshop was that the conditions were extremely crude, and the eight workers weren’t using strict protective gear.

’When the official factory is built, we absolutely can’t be this careless.’ Lei Bo looked at a large, gray cube that had just been deactivated, sterilized, and dehydrated. "Is this the main component of the battery?"

Zhang Haitao patted the sponge-like gray cube. "This is the Power Storage Sponge. It’s a honeycomb-like structure formed during the reproduction of the power-generating microbes. Its form is very similar to a sponge, which is why we all call it the Power Storage Sponge."

"How is it usually processed?"

"It’s very simple. First, it’s deactivated and sterilized, then spun to remove moisture, followed by three deep-drying cycles to reduce its free moisture content to below 0.1%. After that, it’s ready to be used."

He watched as a worker used a wire cutter to slice the Power Storage Sponge into rectangular blocks, which were then inserted directly into an aluminum nitride ceramic inner casing. Then, a row of LED lights, which had been pre-fitted with an insulating and heat-resistant layer, was inserted into the rectangular Power Storage Sponge.

Next, a fiberglass-reinforced plastic lid, equipped with positive and negative terminals and a heating tube, was fitted with an insulating gasket and installed on top of the inner casing.

An outer fiberglass mesh shell was then added to enhance overall structural strength and to ensure heat from inside the battery could dissipate in a timely manner.

At the next station, a worker injected a pre-mixed soybean oil-based battery fluid into the Power Storage Sponge, stopping only when a scale indicated the target weight had been reached.

"And that’s it?"

"Yes, but this is just an experimental product. True mass production will definitely require large-scale mechanized production, as well as factory quality inspections."

Looking at the batteries before him, Lei Bo found it truly hard to imagine that such high-performance batteries could be produced under such crude conditions.

But after following the batteries into the temporary testing workshop next door and observing for more than ten hours, Lei Bo knew he had stumbled upon a massive opportunity.

The test results for these batteries were excellent. They charged for five hours and discharged for five hours as well.

An inner casing with a volume of one cubic meter, charged for five hours at a rate of 90 kilowatts, stored 450 kilowatt-hours. Discharging for five hours released 409.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

A battery pack modeled after the structure of a BYD K7 battery case, weighing 837 kilograms, was installed into the battery compartment of a K7 bus.

Since the K7’s motor has a maximum power of 180 kilowatts and a rated power of 150 kilowatts, the Sponge Battery was divided into two groups connected in parallel to increase its maximum power output to 180 kilowatts.

Furthermore, its battery management system was also replaced by staff with a new one to accommodate the new battery.

Over a dozen K7 buses brought over from the bus company had already had their original batteries removed. Fortunately, these were all older models without too many convoluted system restrictions.

Old Liu and Lin Huolin, who had been transferred over to help test the new batteries, were currently driving a bus along a road in Hai Feng County.

Lei Bo and a few of his colleagues were also on the bus.

A temporary vending machine had been installed next to his seat, selling things like water, soft drinks, ice cream, popsicles, and ice cream cones.

As they were driving, they happened to see people waiting for a bus at a bus stop. Old Liu pulled over and shouted in his booming voice, "Anyone going to the city? 12 yuan!"

"Me."

"Isn’t this the number 19 bus? It’s going to the city too?"

"Maybe the route changed?"

A few passengers were bewildered, but they didn’t say anything. They just got on the bus and paid the fare via WeChat Pay.

A young man carrying a red bag had just sat down across from Lei Bo when he immediately spotted the vending machine.

"This bus sells water?"

Feeling a bit thirsty, the young man selected a bottle of mineral water. The price was the same as at a convenience store.

Lei Bo asked with a smile, "Young man, what do you think of this vending machine?"

"Uh? This vending machine is pretty cool. Sir, are you from the bus company?"

"Yes, the company is innovating, so we’re out here testing even during the New Year holiday," Lei Bo said with a nod.

"It’s a good idea."

In fact, Lei Bo had previously asked Old Liu and the others about it. This modification process didn’t just include this standard beverage vending machine; there were also specially customized "tourist" and "student" versions.

The tourist-type bus, in addition to selling drinks, also sold local specialties and Hailufeng Company’s own products.

The student-type bus also had a beverage vending machine, as well as specially prepared nutritional boxed lunches for students.

Clearly, Jiang Miao understood that relying on bus fares alone, even if they doubled the passenger capacity, wouldn’t be enough. Therefore, they had to make full use of the space on the bus, and selling things was one potential direction.