Reaching the age of thirty, my income randomly doubled

March 11.

Chen Pingsheng, along with Tang Jing and most of the senior management of the group, went to visit the Tengde Era Battery Factory located in Shenzhen.

This factory was purchased for 6 billion yuan when he initially planned to venture into the new energy sector.

Over the course of five years, more than 60 billion yuan has been invested in its research and development division, making it indisputably the largest Lithium Iron Phosphate battery facility in the country.

Currently, the number of patents it has applied for exceeds 1,000, all related to the battery sector.

The core focus of Tengde Era has always been solid-state batteries, and once solid-state battery technology is successfully developed, Tengfei New Energy will truly have the ability to compete in the global market.

No longer limited to the domestic market.

Don't be fooled by some exaggerated claims—foreign markets don't actually recognize domestic pure electric vehicles very much.

In reality, electric cars are mainly popular in the domestic industry.

If one wants to expand overseas, lacking proprietary core technology is utterly insufficient to compete with century-old automotive companies.

For electric vehicles to truly outperform fuel-powered cars, solid-state batteries are a must.

Otherwise, no matter how much you boast, it remains meaningless.

The reason is simple: fuel costs abroad are not particularly high, whereas electricity costs are not cheap either.

Compare these two aspects, and you'll find that genuinely choosing electric vehicles is a rarity.

As for those so-called intelligent driving features, what electric cars can offer, fuel cars can easily adopt as well.

Ultimately, the popularity of electric cars is largely due to strong domestic support; internationally, none of the century-old car companies are truly invested in electric vehicles.

In fact, electric cars existed abroad a century ago but were phased out later on.

Chen Pingsheng has always focused on overseas markets. The billions he has invested aren't just meant to dominate domestically.

If the business can't expand globally, it hardly qualifies as a top-tier car company.

With this philosophy in mind, Tengfei New Energy has been meticulously grounded.

Despite being second only to Tesla, no signs of arrogance or complacency have emerged within the company.

Throughout the visit, the technical team introduced a lot of details.

The primary focus was on the five-year development process of solid-state batteries.

The core project involved countless top engineers—physicists, mathematicians, chemists, and others.

Five years of effort have merely reduced the cost from over three million yuan to around one million yuan.

According to Chen Pingsheng's estimation, only when the battery cost is reduced to below three hundred thousand yuan can it gain a certain market advantage.

In other words, it could then be integrated into high-end cars paired with solid-state batteries.

With a battery cost of three hundred thousand yuan, the selling price of the vehicle would have to be set at least at six hundred thousand yuan.

Even then, it would still fall far short of recouping the R&D costs.

Vehicles priced over six hundred thousand yuan are limited in volume, especially overseas, where a Mercedes-Benz E300 is priced at fifty thousand US Dollars.

A car with a cost of six hundred thousand yuan would have to compete against the Mercedes-Benz S-Class.

Without substantial strength or moving away from the patriotic consumption group, competing with the S-Class would undoubtedly remain incredibly challenging.

Chen Pingsheng doesn't doubt domestic sales will perform well, given the extensive preferential policies.

However, at this cost level for international markets, it still feels lacking.

In terms of brand influence and other factors, this cost does not offer the competitiveness required to rival the Mercedes S-Class at the same tier.

This will only improve gradually over time.

After wrapping up the visit to the battery project, Chen led the team to Guangzhou to inspect several projects supported by the Dream Fund.

Overall, things looked quite promising.

As the days passed leisurely, mid-March arrived in the blink of an eye.

While Wuhan's situation was still ongoing, other places had started to gradually experience disruptions.

Numerous Tengying Group offline stores were either opening or closing intermittently—whichever areas were affected saw basically no consumer activity.

In today's society where life has improved, people get sick more easily, and upon hearing of issues, everyone avoids them like the plague.

Every day, there were closures and openings happening everywhere.

With such operations, if the entire group's traditional businesses can maintain a balanced profit-loss equation by year's end, it would already be considered quite good.

Chen Pingsheng has prepared 20 billion yuan in funding on standby, so there's not much to worry about.

Instead, he's accelerating the advancement of the healthcare sector, aiming to launch new healthcare projects following the overall consumption downgrade in traditional industries.

This would mitigate future risks.

In mid-March, an unpleasant incident occurred within the Peng family.

His cousin Peng Yu was cuckolded; his influencer wife couldn't settle down peacefully, and not long after marriage, she had already cheated on him at least three times.

Thinking about the situation, it's arguably quite typical—female influencers rely on livestreaming, not for selling goods or singing.

Their primary tactic involves calling out "big brothers" to gain virtual donations.

Any truly paying top patron would expect offline engagement; without it, few would keep spending money.

As for offline connections, well, anyone knowledgeable can figure it out.

It's just meetings at the hotel, right?

Peng Yu didn't show up for the wedding, perhaps having had decent foresight beforehand. After marrying this female influencer, he barely cared about her.

No doubt, his influencer wife likely felt some disappointment.

Soon after the marriage, she returned to streaming, sitting down and calling "big brothers" to earn tens of thousands overnight.

Honestly speaking, this method of earning money is essentially a maximized combination of ancient beggary and social attributes.

The two divorced amicably, with the woman leaving empty-handed, turning the incident into quite a spectacle for the family.

Following this, the families involved issued strict instructions forbidding the marriage of influencers.

Those who merely sit idle and rely on chatting to gain money from men essentially embody the concept of effortless gain.

Such female streamers can easily earn several hundred thousand annually, epitomizing an era's tragedy.

From another perspective, this also highlights a problem: many men struggle to find suitable partners.

Thus, they turn to online platforms to seek virtual validation, what some might call virtual emotional value.

According to Teng You Media's statistics, in the first quarter of 2020, over six million women joined the livestreaming industry.

What does this number signify?

By year's end, the female newcomers to livestreaming may exceed thirty million.

Only a small minority have real talents; the vast majority lack any skills.

No matter how people look in real life, turning on extreme beauty filters instantly transforms them into "gorgeous ladies."

Behind such numbers lies a deeper reflection of contemporary employment trends.

A substantial portion of individuals have shifted their attention entirely to short videos.

The only Tengying Group-listed subsidiary experiencing explosive growth this year is Teng You Media.

It's hard to say whether this is something to celebrate or lament.

Teng You Media achieved 1.6 billion yuan net profit within merely two and a half months.

The annual net profit is projected to hit approximately 8 billion yuan.

These figures are extraordinarily high—even Chen's assistant Zhang Wanyi often complains about how it's impossible to spend all the money Teng You Media generates.

The company produces a daily net profit of 25 million yuan.

Half of that comes from product sales revenue, another portion from advertisement income, and the remaining fraction from guild earnings.

That is, the cut taken from streamer donations.

Amidst this maddening short-video era, the key point is these numbers keep growing.

Each day, tens of thousands try to apply for jobs as streamers at Teng You Media; it's at least fifty to sixty thousand.

One in ten people harbors dreams of becoming an influencer.

If 2018 marked the golden era of influencer traffic, then 2020 is undoubtedly the age of short video explosion.

From corporate tycoons and celebrities to street hawkers selling skewers, everyone wants to be an influencer.

Even during meetings, Chen Pingsheng frequently remarked, "The era of youth madness has arrived."