Chapter 119: Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen: Large- scale Production of Cars (Subscribe!)

After visiting the entire mining area and refinery, there was hope of solving the problem of gold reserves required for the issuance of new currency.

Only by issuing new currency can the dependence of Australians on the pound be effectively reduced, and the control of the British Empire over the Australian economy be lessened.

Of course, this too is a lengthy plan. As long as the British Empire does not lose its status as the number one superpower, the pound will always be a very important currency in any region.

Arthur does not pursue completely replacing the pound in Australia, he simply hopes that the new currency can gain some circulation, reducing the British Empire’s influence over Australia.

After all, now the monarch of Australia is Arthur, and for him, an Australia that is not influenced by any country truly belongs to his own territory.

At present, Arthur can only try to reduce the British influence on Australia as much as possible. It is impossible to completely eliminate it, as the national composition of Australia determines the special relationship between the Australian people and the British Empire.

After returning to the manor house, Arthur saw Princess Louise and his two sisters, whom he had not seen for more than a month. After having a simple dinner with his family, he returned to his room.

Now that he is back in Australia, it’s natural to accelerate the pace of Australia’s development.

There are many ongoing construction projects in Australia, such as the West Australian Industrial District, steel factories, New South Wales military factories, shipyards and more. These constructions also include the industrial railways, hospitals, schools, nursing homes, and orphanages. All are important development plans for Australia right now.

With sufficient indigenous labor available, Arthur believes it is also necessary to speed up the progress of these projects, even if it means tens of thousands of casualties among the indigenous peoples.

Although Australia had more than a decade of golden development before World War I, who can guarantee that reality will be exactly like history?

If anything unexpected happens in Europe’s situation and Australia is not prepared, then all of Arthur’s efforts will be in vain.

Therefore, in addition to more accurately grasping the situation in Europe, accelerating the pace of Australia’s construction is also very important.

After making plans for the near future, Arthur, after many days, fell into a deep sleep in his own bed again.

May 17,1902, Benz Car Factory.

A year later, Arthur once again arrived at Benz’s car factory. Right next door was Disel’s engine factory.

His last visit was a year ago when Benz and Diesel jointly invented a new car.

It was also at that time that Arthur first proposed the concept of the assembly line to Benz and Diesel, surprising them and prompting them to start making changes to their factories.

More than half a year has passed since the successful construction of the assembly line, and with the workers at the Benz car factory becoming proficient in assembly line production technology, and Benz and Diesel’s repeated modifications and improvements, the car production costs have been reduced to a figure Arthur can accept, which is just over 80 British pounds.

Is the production cost of over 80 pounds high or not? If you’re talking about this era, it’s not high anymore.

Keep in mind that even the highly mature Model T at the time had a final selling price of 260 US dollars, which is more than 50 pounds.

And the initial selling price of the Model T was even more than 800 US dollars, which is over 14.0 pounds.

The Model T, priced as such, was highly sought after at the time and was considered a car for the common people.

It was precisely because of the low-cost Model T that cars truly entered thousands of households, becoming one of the very important means of transportation, completely replacing horse carriages.

By the starting price of the Model T, the profit for each car produced by the Benz car factory is over 60 pounds, which is an extremely terrifying figure.

If we put this into the total output of Model T’s 15 million units, that would be at least 900 million pounds in profit.

Although the selling price of cars will decrease as time passes, the cost of cars will also gradually decrease, even down to around 30-40 pounds.

This means that each car has a net profit of at least more than 10 pounds, the total profit of the automobile industry may exceed 1 billion pounds.

And now, the automotive industry in various countries is very backward. Benz cars can definitely be the pioneer, with excellent performance and low prices, rapidly occupying the global car market and earning huge profits.

This is also why Arthur places so much importance on cars; not only can they bring him huge profits, but the transformation of cars can also enable Australia to overtake competitors quickly. In terms of economy and military, cars are definitely important products.

After a year, Benz and Diesel still looked the same. With the expansion of their respective factories, owning 10% of the shares, both Benz and Diesel have become tycoons worth several hundred thousand pounds. Even their salaries have reached hundreds of pounds a month.

However, they did not pay much attention to their appearance, always wearing their work clothes stained with large and small oil stains and dirt, which did not match their status.

Seeing Arthur again, Benz was very excited and hurriedly invited Diesel from next door.

Diesel’s research is usually very busy, and even sometimes Minister Pierre has to wait a while to find him.

But when Diesel heard of Arthur’s arrival, he quickly stopped his research and went to the car factory next door himself.

Seeing the two again, Arthur felt a bit emotional and asked with a smile, “I heard that the car factory has started mass production now?”

According to the agreement Arthur had with Benz at the time, if the car production cost cannot be kept around 80 pounds, mass production will not begin.

Since the car factory has now begun mass production, it means that the cost of the car has been reduced to about 80 pounds, which signifies that Benz’s research on the assembly line has achieved initial success.

“Yes, Your Highness, as early as a month ago, our improved assembly line was able to keep the production cost of the car at around 80 pounds, meeting your requirements for mass production.” Benz replied with a smile, “But at that time, since you were not in Australia, we couldn’t report the situation to you. However, the production of cars was what you had instructed earlier, so I took it upon myself to start mass production of cars in our factory.”