Chapter 686: Alternative Energy Vehicle Summit

Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations

Lu Zhou was indeed a little selfish when it came to the East Loop project.

The reason why he tried so hard to realize this project, was partly because of the 750 GeV signal.

He knew that his own calculations didn’t lie. And the “errors” that appeared on the two detectors weren’t just a coincidence. Even though the LHCb experiments had found nothing, he believed that the experimental method was wrong.

He couldn’t rely on CERN anymore.

He needed a large hadron collider that was his alone. Or at least one that he had total control over. Only then, could he conduct experiments exactly how he wanted.

Of course, before making these blueprints a reality, he had to face the things in front of him.

It was the middle of October when the Alternative Energy Vehicle Summit was held.

Big names in the automobile industry, academic leaders, and other capitalists who were interested in this industry all gathered in this city.

With the invitation that Chen Yushan was able to get, Lu Zhou arrived at the summit.

After he showed his invitation letter to the reception, he was about to walk inside the venue. However, he was stopped by a lady standing at the entrance.

“Sir, your seat is over there.”

Lu Zhou looked at the corridor the lady was pointing at and asked, “Isn’t the auditorium over there?”

The lady politely said, “You have a special expert-only invitation. It’s on the right side of the auditorium, please use the right corridor to enter the venue.”

Lu Zhou looked at his invitation letter, which had the words “Special Expert Invitation”.

“There are special invitations?”

The lady was baffled, and she said, “Sir, did you not realize this prior to receiving your invitation?”

Lu Zhou smiled awkwardly and said, “I… My company’s CEO helped me get this invitation, I didn’t look at it carefully.”

“I’ll take you there then.”

Lu Zhou nodded.

“Okay then, thanks.”

Alternative energy vehicle was the first application of the new controllable fusion technology. After the standardization of vehicle batteries, a large amount of capital would be invested in alternative energy vehicles. This would accelerate the Chinese automobile market and eventually eliminate traditional gasoline cars.

The fact was, this trend had existed before the lithium-sulfur battery breakthrough.

For high-tech companies focused on research and development, like Star Sky Technology, this summit was undoubtedly a valuable opportunity. After all, after the battery standards were set, battery research and development would change.

Even though Lu Zhou wasn’t interested in making money, he was a bit short on cash.

He burned hundreds of millions of yuan into the space shuttle project and only made a little progress. Who knew how much he would have to spend in the future.

Soon after, the summit began.

Lu Zhou opened the recording app on his phone and asked Xiao Ai to organize the conference contents into notes. He then focused on the presentation.

The first to walk on stage was the second-highest-ranking official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Secretary Yang Zhongyuan.

After a round of applause, he began to give a normal conference opening speech.

Honestly, there wasn’t anything particularly important in this speech. However, there was one thing that attracted Lu Zhou’s interested. During his opening remarks about alternative energy vehicles, Secretary Yang mentioned the keyword “smart city” multiple times.

Generally speaking, speeches like this often conveyed the Communist Party of China’s true intentions.

“The development of science and technology is rapidly changing our society. With the rapid growth of the Internet, the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, etc, smart cities will slowly emerge into our lives. Controllable fusion has brought us cheap and clean energy. This new energy allows us to realize everything in our blueprint for the future.”

Secretary Yang paused for a second before he continued, “We have clearly seen that our economy and society are racing toward ‘artificial general intelligence’, and in some cases, we are at the forefront of the world.

“Informatization and electrification of cities will be our focus for the next five years. I hope you all can continue to use this momentum to build a future that is full of prosperity.”

Secretary Yang nodded in midst of the applause and announced the start of the summit.

When the summit host walked on stage, Lu Zhou seemed to be in deep thought. He wrote down a line in his notebook.

[Lithium-air battery.]

Lithium-air batteries were more futuristic than lithium-sulfur batteries as they relied on external oxygen to generate oxides. Theoretically, they would have a higher volume energy density than lithium-sulfur batteries. In fact, the first debris he got was of a lithium-air battery. Therefore it shouldn’t be difficult to reverse engineer the technology.

Actually, he didn’t even need to completely reverse engineer the technology. He just had to follow the technical routes seen on Debris No.1 and let the Institute of Computational Materials of the Institute for Advanced Study do the rest.

However, Lu Zhou wasn’t sure if he should create this technology right now or later.

“I’ll let Yang Xu start a research on oxygen molecular gas exchange membranes first.”

Lu Zhou’s eyebrows furrowed as he began to think. He crossed out the words “lithium-air battery” and wrote the words “gas exchange membrane”. He then closed his notebook.

He heard a voice beside him.

“Isn’t this speech interesting?”

This person was clearly talking to him.

Lu Zhou looked across and was suddenly surprised.

The man sitting next to him, who looked a bit like ET, smiled kindly and reached out his right hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Professor Lu.”

Lu Zhou shook his hand and gave a simple response.

“Hello, CEO Ma.”

Jack Ma smiled and said, “I’m not a CEO anymore, you can call me Jack Ma.”

Lu Zhou was thinking about his own problems, so he didn’t even realize that he was sitting next to the boss of Alibaba. However, this wasn’t a huge deal. Lu Zhou was just slightly surprised.

In terms of money, Lu Zhou definitely had less than Jack.

In terms of status…

That wasn’t easy to compare.

“Mr. Ma, you’re also interested in alternative energy vehicles?”

“I’m not interested in alternative energy vehicles per se.” Jack Ma shook his head and said, “I’m interested in this industry.”

“The alternative energy industry?”

“Nope, the future industry.” He paused for a second and said, “Just like Secretary Yang had said, electricity will become cheaper and cleaner. Many costly ideas that couldn’t be realized, might become a reality. Not just alternative energy vehicles, but many other great inventions will come to life.”

Jack Ma suddenly turned his head and smiled at Lu Zhou.

“For example, the logistics drones you proposed six or seven years ago was definitely unattainable back then. But in four to five years, our streets might be filled with flying drones. In the future, our cities will be more like an information-based community, people will only need to connect to the Internet and will be able to do everything through the Internet. People released from repetitive manual labor will be able to do creative work, enriching our civilization.”

Lu Zhou smiled and said, “I thought you weren’t a manager anymore.”

Jack Ma smiled and said, “I’m not a manager, but I’m still an investor. Even though I can’t get to space, that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in space. Of course, I’m more interested in you, Professor Lu.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, I have a lot of ideas. But not only do you have ideas, but you also have the ability to realize those ideas,” Jack Ma said while staring at Lu Zhou with a twinkle in his eye.

Lu Zhou went silent for a while.

He suddenly smiled and replied, “I’m a little embarrassed you think so highly of me.”

Jack Ma smiled and said, “You’re too humble.”

He took out a business card from his pocket and handed it to Lu Zhou.

“If you have any interesting projects that need investment, you can always contact me. Even if I can’t help you, I can introduce you to someone who can.”

I see…

That’s why you started to talk to me, you want to invest in me?

Lu Zhou took the business card and nodded as a show of thanks.

“If necessary, I’ll definitely call you.”

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