To be honest, Ye Ge really did want to try his hand at electric vehicles. The companies Future Auto and Xiaopeng Auto were both founded in 2014, which would be the year after next. Lixiang Auto wasn't founded until 2015. It was currently 2012, and the domestic electric vehicle industry was still in its infancy. If he started manufacturing cars now, he might actually be able to get a piece of the pie; entering the market at this stage would certainly grant him a significant advantage later on. Furthermore, China was currently heavily subsidizing new energy vehicles, striving to overtake other nations in the automotive sector.
However, manufacturing cars was by no means a simple matter. Cars were the crown jewel of the industrial world, and they weren't something one could just decide to build on a whim. First, you needed a large number of engineers; second, you needed sufficient capital. Tapping into the funds of miHoYo and Bilibili wasn't really realistic, as both companies were actually quite tight on cash. If he used a massive amount of capital to build cars—leaving aside whether he could succeed—if something were to go wrong at miHoYo or Bilibili, everything would be finished.
That was the problem: building cars burned through money too quickly, and it was easy to end up bankrupt in the process. Wasn't that exactly how "Boss Jia" from his past life went bankrupt? LeTV.com had been doing fine, and LeTV phones had been doing well, too—users were satisfied, the ratings were…
Chapter 626