The Rise Of Australasia

Chapter 91: Gifts from the Kingdom of the

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Translator: 549690339

November 23,1901. This day was an extraordinary day for Australia’s industry.

Firstly, Benz’s Car Factory, with the joint efforts of Benz and Disel, finally established the world’s first car factory using assembly line production technology after half a year of renovation.

Although it was somewhat different from the more mature automobile assembly lines later created by the Ford Company, the renovated factory had already achieved good results in terms of saving labor costs and reducing production time.

Originally, to make a car with similar performance to the Victor, the factory had to mobilize more than ten excellent workers and work overtime for almost a week to complete it.

Not to mention, the salary of these ten or so excellent workers for a week alone would be worth at least thirty pounds.

If you add in the cost of producing various mechanical parts, the cost of the car would instantly reach over a hundred pounds. Considering the scrapped substandard products, the cost of each car would be at least 160 pounds.

So, is it high to set the price of a car with a cost of 160 pounds at less than 200 pounds?

The answer is not really. According to Benz’s original scale, even as Germany’s largest car factory, its annual output was only less than two hundred units.

Even if each car could generate an income of thirty pounds, these two hundred cars could only generate an income of 6,000 pounds at most.

After deducting various taxes and other miscellaneous expenses, the company could only make a profit of less than 5,000 pounds.

Most importantly, even if Benz kept the price of the cars low and the profit margin thin, very few people could afford the expensive cars.

The car, while showing great potential, still did not develop a market corresponding to it. This was the most important factor.

Luckily, the renovated car factory had significantly improved this shortcoming.

According to Benz’s estimates, there are three major changes in the new factory: first, the car construction time is greatly reduced.

Before, Benz’s car factory in Germany had over three hundred employees, and the output was less than 200 vehicles per year.

In contrast, the size of the car factory hasn’t expanded now but instead has become smaller, with only more than 200 employees and an estimated output of an astonishing 2,000 vehicles per year.

This is the radical change that assembly line production has brought to the automotive industry. Workers have shifted from being responsible for all modules of the car to just one module’s production and installation.

This will make workers more skilled in their positions, and the production and installation of parts will become faster.

The second change is the unification of car parts.

The previous production method led to cars being produced by different workers, resulting in significant differences in parts between cars, indirectly increasing the difficulty of maintenance.

This is one of the reasons why people couldn’t afford such expensive items as cars. The maintenance price of the car could even rise to a level similar to its cost in just a few years, and the unstable car made it a very expensive luxury.

Now, with the same workers producing the same type of parts, the parts become more uniform, making it more convenient to repair and replace parts as one of the main methods of car maintenance.

The third change is the significant reduction in car manufacturing costs.

With fewer workers producing more cars, the labor cost per car is significantly reduced.

Originally, the manual production method required at least twenty pounds of labor cost per car.

Now, after switching to assembly line production, the labor cost of each car has been sharply reduced to less than three pounds.

At the same time, due to the second change, the rate of assembly errors has also been greatly reduced, indirectly reducing the cost of the car.

According to Benz’s estimate, the new car production cost is roughly between 100 and 120 pounds, and with workers becoming more familiar and improving the assembly line production method, the cost can be further reduced.

After all, this is just Benz and Disel’s preliminary attempt at assembly line production at Arthur’s suggestion.

Being able to do this is already good enough, as it has significantly reduced production costs and effectively sped up production.

Upon learning this news, Arthur was quite surprised and satisfied. However, a cost of over a hundred pounds was still too high, and there was more room for improvement in the new production method.

It should be noted that the final selling price of the Model T was only 260 US dollars, which is only about 50 pounds in terms of British pounds.

This means that the production cost of the car can be reduced to at least 50 pounds or less. Mercedes still has a long way to go.

Arthur’s command was to continue studying assembly line production methods and improve them.

As long as the production cost of the car is kept below 80 pounds, it can be put into production.

The initial selling price of the Model T was 825 US dollars, or 165 pounds. If Mercedes could keep the manufacturing cost below 80 pounds, they would still make a fortune by setting the price at 150 pounds.

On the basis of researching large-scale assembly line production technology, Arthur felt it necessary to expand the scale of the Mercedes car factory.

As the selling price of cars decreases, the potential and market for cars will gradually expand and even reach a huge market of 20 million vehicles within 30 years.

If Mercedes can seize the opportunity, it may not be impossible to create the sales record of the Model T in history and establish a huge car empire.

Therefore, the production of cars must keep up, so as to divide the vast car market as soon as possible, at least occupying the European market.

If the initial success of the assembly line is considered the first good news, then the return of the visiting group is the second piece of good news.

Nearly three months have passed since the visiting group set off. Under Arthur’s expectation, the fleet finally arrived smoothly at Sydney Harbour and brought good news to Arthur.

First was the official signing of the Indigenous Plan.

This plan had already been agreed upon in advance, and after Queen Wilhelmina signed her name, the treaty officially went into effect.

For Australia’s development, this is good news, as the acute shortage of human resources in Australia has been basically resolved.

The second piece of good news was the red cloth-wrapped object on the transport ships. Because it was tightly wrapped, Arthur could not tell what it was.

But judging from the protruding long tube, the wrapped object should be a firearm.

According to Princess Louise, it was a gift from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Due to the signing of treaties and the mutual appointment of ambassadors, the Kingdom of the Netherlands generously presented this gift, and the seriousness with which the Dutch Kingdom took it showed that the value of this gift was absolutely not small..