45: Chapter 45 Cost Earthquake, Billions in Deposits

Chen Hao scratched his messy hair and gave a silly smile.

"I haven't calculated it that precisely. Anyway, the ore is mined from our own land, and the equipment is what we already have in the factory. If we go for large-scale production on a fully automated assembly line..."

Chen Hao counted on his fingers, "Including labor and utility costs, the production cost per kilowatt-hour is about forty yuan."

Forty yuan.

This number traveled across the internet.

At that very second, the global battery industry was completely shaken.

Currently, the cost of lithium iron phosphate batteries on the market, even when compressed to the extreme, is over four hundred yuan per kilowatt-hour.

Yet, this Solid-state battery from Lu Chen, which crushes the competition in every aspect, costs only one-tenth of that!

Xinghe Technology building.

Director Li Jianjun sprang up from the sofa and rushed to his desk.

"Quick! Immediately! Right now!"

Director Li Jianjun roared crazily at his assistant.

"Log into the official website of Chenguang Electronics Factory and find their business cooperation email! No! Just transfer a twenty million deposit directly to their company's main account!"

The assistant scrambled to open their laptop.

"Director, we haven't even seen the mass-produced product, and we haven't signed a contract. Transferring a deposit directly violates financial procedures!"

"Screw your procedures!"

Director Li Jianjun's eyes were bloodshot, "If I'm one step late today, Xinghe Technology won't even be able to get a sip of soup in this industry tomorrow! This is a nuclear weapon at cabbage prices! Transfer the full amount! Buy out their entire first batch of production capacity!"

It wasn't just Xinghe Technology.

The BYD headquarters, the CATL conference room, and the Tesla Greater China office.

Countless phone calls were frantically dialed, and countless business emails lined up to flood the Chenguang Electronics Factory's network server.

On the live stream's public screen, Lu Chen announced an email suffix.

"For friendly companies interested in cooperation, please send your qualification certificates to this email address," Lu Chen said calmly.

Big Mouth Liu sat in front of the main console and opened the backend of that business connection email.

"Boss," Big Mouth Liu turned his head, his expression more exaggerated than if he had seen a ghost.

"What's wrong?" Lu Chen asked.

"It crashed."

Big Mouth Liu pointed at the frozen screen.

"In three seconds, hundreds of thousands of enterprise-level emails flooded in. We rented the highest-level server from Alibaba Cloud, and the traffic directly crashed it."

Lu Chen nodded, having anticipated this.

In the live stream's bullet comments, several bolded messages with yellow checkmarks suddenly appeared.

These were the owners of small factories who had just unilaterally announced the termination of their 300,000-unit data cable OEM contracts yesterday.

"Factory Director Lu! We are sorry, Factory Director Lu! We were out of our minds yesterday. We will withdraw the breach of contract notice immediately! Please give us a way out and reserve one hundred units of battery capacity for us! Just one hundred!"

"Boss Lu, I am Liu Daqiang from Tongda Electronics. I will kowtow to you. As long as you give us a quota, you can name any price!"

These opportunistic small business owners were now being extremely humble in the bullet comments.

The fifty million viewers weren't going to indulge them at all.

"Get lost, you fence-sitters!"

"Yesterday you called them a pyramid scheme, and today you come running to acknowledge them as your daddy? Too late!"

"Daddy Lu! Don't give these grandsons a single quota! Let them go bankrupt!"

Lu Chen looked at the bullet comments and reached out to remove the microphone. He waved at the camera.

"The press conference ends here. To all employees, the three-day paid leave continues. Go sleep if you need to sleep, go play games if you want to play games. Da Biao, escort Director Li and the others out. Lao Zhou, end the stream."

Clean and efficient. No unnecessary pleasantries.

The screen instantly went black, but the carnival across the entire internet had just begun.

Outside the headquarters building of Tengfei Electronics, the sound of sirens approached from afar, and red and blue police lights flashed.

Two police riot vehicles pulled up directly to the main entrance, and heavily armed economic crime police rushed into the lobby.

Wang Teng collapsed in his office upstairs. He looked at the blacked-out tablet, tears and snot streaming down his face.

"It's over. It's not that I killed him... I buried myself..."

At the same moment, at the Asia-Pacific branch of the Morgan Consortium.

Jason slumped heavily into his leather swivel chair, his hands trembling uncontrollably.

The red dedicated phone on the desk suddenly rang; this call went straight to the Morgan headquarters.

Jason tremblingly pressed the speakerphone button.

"Jason."

An aged and extremely cold voice came from the phone, "The A-level sanctions not only failed to work, but you also let them display a weapon in front of the whole world that is capable of destroying us."

Jason swallowed hard.

"Boss, listen to my explanation. I will immediately cut off all their channels for purchasing upstream equipment! I will use the international control list to blockade them!"

"Shut up," the aged voice interrupted him.

"I just received an encrypted email with a .gov suffix. This matter has already moved beyond the scope of business."

Jason's face turned pale.

"You mean..."

"Initiate the second phase of the S-level strangulation order."

The boss's voice was filled with intense murderous intent. "I don't care what method you use. Within three days, go get the original design blueprints for that battery. If you can't get them..."

The boss paused for a moment.

"Then let those people who developed this battery, along with that factory, disappear from the face of the earth forever. Do it immediately."

The call hung up, and the busy signal echoed in the spacious office.

Jason stared at the black screen.

He pulled open a drawer, took out a black phone with no markings, and pressed his finger on the dial button.

Chenguang Electronics Factory, Factory Director's office.

Outside, the factory area was still buzzing because the press conference had just ended, and Lu Chen sat alone in the boss's chair in the office.

He rested his legs casually on the edge of the desk, listening to the system prompts constantly ringing in his head.

"Ding! Detected that the host has completed the live streaming press conference across the entire internet, prestige points have exceeded ten million!"

"Ding! Completed hidden task: resolve the trust crisis. Reward: Black technology [Super Automated Packaging Assembly Line Blueprints]!"

"Ding! Reward: God-level building qualification [God-level Employee Wellness Center]!"

"Ding! A sky-high amount of intent deposits has flooded the current company main account, funds have exceeded ten billion!"

Lu Chen looked at the numbers constantly jumping on the computer backend and took out a cigarette pack to light one.

The door was pushed open violently.

Lao Zhou ran in, covered in sweat, holding a stack of reports, too excited to speak clearly.

"Boss Lu! It's crazy! Everyone's gone crazy!" Lao Zhou panted heavily, "Car companies across the entire internet, as well as several old-school overseas giants, just in this past hour, have directly flooded the company main account we announced!"

Lu Chen exhaled a puff of smoke, "How much money?"

"Just the unconditional intent deposits that have been transferred have already exceeded forty billion! The online banking USB token on the finance side has burned out!" Lao Zhou swallowed hard, "These are all advance payments for our Solid-state batteries!"

Lu Chen smiled, "They can't hold their composure already? The mass production workshop for the batteries hasn't even had a single brick laid yet."