A few years ago, recommending domestic cars to friends around, their first reaction was surprise! Then they would throw out a bunch of questions, such as the quality of the domestic line is not high fuel consumption and other issues? Summarize is not domestic! In order to take off the poor quality of this hat, the domestic car has made great efforts, whether it is a third-party research organizations or professional market consulting firms, they give data to prove that the quality of domestic cars has been the industry's medium to high level, individual brands and even overtake the many veteran joint-venture manufacturers ranked at the forefront of the industry.
One said domestic good, I guess some people want to lift the bar! Here the domestic mainly refers to the Great Wall, Changan, Chery, Geely, these independent brand veterans. Their history of building cars but more than 20 years, in the lack of resources and saturated environment, the independent brand not only survived, but also became the backbone of the domestic force. Today, the market share of independent brands has been stabilized at about 37 percent,
said the company.The law of development of the automobile industry is in fact similar, when the per capita car ownership reaches a certain size, the overall efficiency of the car will stop growing to maintain a stable range. China's per capita car ownership is only 173 units, while the United States is more than 800 units, and even South Korea's car ownership is several times that of ours. According to forecasts, the annual domestic car sales peaked at 42 million units, such a big cake who do not want to share a piece?
Online a singing down the car market at the same time, overseas parts suppliers are increasing investment, such as Schaeffler, ZF, Continental, even Toyota has always been cautious about expanding production capacity, but also a long time to increase holdings of Konami. The influx of foreign companies into the country in turn let the independent brand tasted the sweetness of the left and right independent brand can finally enjoy the treatment of joint venture brands!
A common car, parts add up to more than 10,000, the body harness up to more than 1,000 meters, in case of any part of the problem, a sub-system will be paralyzed! A bit of common sense to know, an enterprise to produce tens of thousands of parts, simply unrealistic. Not long ago, the professor went to an independent brand of engine factory, engine R & D engineers confidently introduced, our new engine thermal efficiency reached 37%, power and efficiency and the international level of first-tier manufacturers comparable to the level, here again, it is estimated that some people want to raise the bar that the quality of the first to achieve the level of the joint venture before saying! What is the joint venture level? The first thing you need to do is to start with the details.
In fact, the big breakthroughs are often small details to start, after some observation, found that many joint venture factory technology, this domestic engine all have! For example, the Honda Accord hybrid engine intake valve mirror process, Mercedes-Benz M264 piston oil cooling, BMW's single turbo twin-scroll and so on.
Continuing to dig deeper, you will find that the valves, pistons, rocker arms, turbo and timing chain, and almost most of the parts are provided by the supplier. In other words, automakers don't even build their own engines!
No automobile company in the world builds cars, is a single one to complete, who need suppliers from various industries to work together. To make an analogy, Toyota's current best engine, a lot of design to suppliers to help, such as laser cladding, the technology that Toyota applauded, in fact, is a Swiss company's program. If the independent brand also cooperate with this company, the same technology will appear in the domestic engine.
Automakers can produce world-class drawings, but to turn them into products they need suppliers to solve problems with processes, materials and reliability. Another example, Mazda's latest HCCI engine, there is a key component called the cylinder pressure sensor, without it can not work stably, however, a sensor in the laboratory is worth more than 100,000 yuan, an engine installed four sensors cost has been against the sky! In the end, Citizen designed a part for Mazda to meet the requirements, which allowed the new engine to be mass-produced.
Previously, domestic cars always have a variety of small problems, the reason behind it is actually very helpless, when the supporting resources are scarce price is very high, what have to do themselves, now independent brands as long as you concentrate on technical research and development can be, engineering problems suppliers will be lined up to provide programs! As for the flip who got the card, that depends on ......
The quality of domestic cars has improved dramatically, the main reason is still because China's auto market is too big, now 28 million units a year of sales has almost accounted for one-third of the global share, there are a few independent brands have been sold a million units a year, so big customers, suppliers can not bear to look at it into someone else's arms, the A side after all, the father! Today China's automotive industry chain has been very perfect, not to mention self-production and self-sales, even if the domestic sales to export is also completely feasible.
A second joint venture?China's auto market is dominated by joint ventures as a supplement to the domestic model, the joint venture model, although mixed reviews, but look at it from another angle, early it did not because of the disparity between the strength of domestic and foreign, and the foreign brands rejected, and the middle of the joint venture through the automobile production technology, and the late with the help of the experience and capital to grow the independent brand, in short, the domestic car survived.
If you've ever visited a factory of a domestic brand, you'll find that there are many things that are similar to those of a joint venture, such as their assembly process, quality management or testing standards. The most important purpose of a joint venture is to cultivate talent. Here's an example: most of the people in SAIC's technology development center have experience working with joint ventures, and some of the management team has held key positions at Volkswagen and GM joint ventures.
Here the professor told another vivid story, the period of the National 5 switch to National 6, many joint venture car emissions upgrade is not as fast as the domestic, such as SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC General Motors, the reason is very simple, SAIC Group to prioritize the resources to the Rongwei and the MG, when they completed the switch to the National 6 on the market for sale, the joint venture brand of the National 6 engine is still lying in the rack it!
Most of the independent brands have been joint ventures with overseas car companies, such as Chery Jaguar Land Rover, Great Wall Beam Motors (BMW), Geely Volvo (Volvo Asia-Pacific), the state-owned enterprises also have joint ventures, the difference this time is that the two sides of the cooperation each have their own strengths and each take what they need, and the independent brands are no longer satisfied with the production of low-end cars, and would like to get involved in high-end manufacturing! Thus the new brands Wei, Link and Xingtu.
The emergence of independent high-end brands, on behalf of the domestic car has been aligned with the luxury brands, many details on the product have the shadow of the luxury brands, there is a higher price premium, you can get rid of the cost of domestic cars, with high-end car technology, in turn, armed with a domestic car, you say the quality can be bad?
Chinese standards?Because it used to be a joint venture model, so the development of models is generally completed abroad, the domestic almost get a plateau, high temperature, high temperature and high humidity experiments on the end of the matter. There are a lot of problems to be solved, such as the domestic has been using the European NEDC or WLTP cycle, but the European driving environment is not the same as the domestic, so that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology fuel consumption and the actual fuel consumption is very different.
As automotive powerhouses, the U.S., Germany and Japan all have their own standards, and with their own standards come corresponding test sites and data accumulation, which happens to be the weak link for independent brands! In order to make the reliability and performance of domestic cars to achieve first-class level, the country began to develop Chinese standards while building professional test sites, such as the China Automobile Research Institute both to undertake technical consulting and standardization tasks, but also act as a think tank role! If you want to understand the level of joint venture cars, China Automotive Research Institute provides a one-stop service, in fact, the state-funded establishment of such a company, so that domestic cars to take a lot fewer detours, which is also considered to be a quality improvement!
Good cars are tried and tested, but you have to have a professional test site, today's domestic automotive test site hardware level has been very high, SAIC Volkswagen Turpan test site, SAIC General Motors Guangde test site, Chongqing Chang'an Automobile Comprehensive test site are international first-class test site, anyway, in the domestic test site in a variety of environments are available. The longer a vehicle's test mileage, the more data it accumulates, and the quality is based on these data. Many prototypes of independent brands, the total mileage of the test is 3 million kilometers, and even some up to 4 million kilometers, durability can be bad?
Professor summary?Domestic car quality is good partly because of the influx of foreign parts giants into the country, overseas giants brought a lot of technology, in addition to overseas giants, domestic auto parts suppliers are also on the rise, for example, less than 100,000 domestic cars, the three major parts are almost purely domestic parts, not that the domestic parts are very cheap, but the quality and performance are good. This year, we can not say that the performance of domestic cars do not lose joint venture, but about 100,000 domestic cars, the quality is really not much worse than the joint venture. Now the independent brand in the high-end car technology reserves are still relatively weak, so the guys are scrambling with the luxury brand joint venture.
This article comes from the author of the automobile home car family number, does not represent the views of the automobile home position.