Recently, Chen Guangzu, a member of the China Automobile Industry Advisory Committee, said that the overall competitiveness of China's auto parts companies is declining.
Chen Guangzu believes that "lagging behind" is a major obstacle to the development of China's auto parts industry. The reason for "lagging behind" is that the idea of ​​"heavy lighter components and parts" has always existed in the automotive industry in China, affecting the development of the parts industry. In addition, the rapid advances in the international automotive industry's scientific and technological advances have increased the gap between China's already backward parts industry and the international level. This "lagging" performance is particularly evident in the high-end product market.
Chen Guangzu believes that the outstanding performance of China's auto parts industry "lagging behind" is that the integration of the automotive industry and the information industry is not enough. From the perspective of the development of the global auto industry, information technology has widely penetrated into the automotive industry and the information industry. Convergence has caused profound changes in the automotive industry chain, and the Chinese auto industry has lagged behind in this area.
Chen Guangzu also pointed out that the state is very supportive in this regard and has organized relevant departments on many occasions, inviting many experts including academicians of the two academies to discuss the integration of the automobile industry and the information industry, but so far there has been no substantive the result of.
The vast majority of MCUs (microcontrollers) assembled in Korean cars are supplied by South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., and the level of advancement of the Korean automotive industry is evident. However, the MCUs assembled in China's automobiles all use imported products, and due to the increasing performance of MCUs, they must be bundled and designed, and data needs to be communicated to each other to enable collaborative design. If the output is low, some multinational MCU companies will raise prices, which poses no small threat to the innovation of parts and components companies. Not only that, but almost all of the triodes used in domestic automobile generator plants are imported. The reason is that the products produced by domestic companies are not reliable and affect quality. Diodes, transistors and other basic components are all imported, showing that China's automotive electronics products need further innovation.
In fact, there are also some well-established automotive electronics manufacturers in China. However, the majority of these companies produce automotive electronic products and there are very few companies that produce vehicle-controlled electronic products. Chen Guangzu said that vehicle-mounted electronic control products are the dominant part of improving vehicle performance, but due to the difficulty, the development speed in China is very slow. China is now able to produce automotive electronic products such as ABS (Antilock Braking System), which can be used on self-owned brands. At present, the development of ESP (Electronic Stability System) is being vigorously pursued in the world. China is also studying it, but it will take a long time to really apply it to automobiles. The main reason for this is that ESP has a relatively large degree of relevance to some of the automotive design processes. To organize collaborative design, vehicle manufacturers have doubts and increase the difficulty of ESP development.
In the information age, product updates are very fast. China's auto parts companies must constantly innovate in order to improve their competitiveness. Chen Guangzu pointed out that domestic auto parts companies did not do this. For example, the common rail technology of small diesel engines requires reasonable control of the high-speed operation of the vehicle. In the past, with springs, after the emergence of common-rail technology, solenoid valves were used, and the third-generation common-rail technology used piezoelectric ceramics. Some factories in the country were also trial production. However, due to performance requirements, they had to be imported. Nano-scale piezoelectric ceramics are currently being developed internationally, which can greatly compress the volume and the pump. Whether domestic companies can keep up with is a big problem.
In the existing high-end products, China has a big gap with the international level, and the development of new types of parts and components in the future is even blank or stays in academic discussions. At present, Delphi, Siemens, and Sweden SKF have developed wire drive products to replace steering gear and other products. This kind of product is actually applying a principle of electromagnetic rheological technology, replacing the mechanical transmission with the aggregation and freezing degree of the particles in the liquid, completely changing the vehicle control mode. Chen Guangzu pointed out that three years ago he had seen a number of papers that introduced research in this area, but could not predict the progress of research, application, integration of production, education, research, national or local funds, and technical support.
At present, some companies have realized that there is a gap and spend heavily on R&D equipment and software. This is an improvement, but the problem still exists. Chen Guangzu said that domestic companies have a large gap with international standards in the application of computers and software, especially in engineering analysis capabilities of product design. This kind of design and innovative method has a great influence on the one-time success rate of product R&D, product development cycle, database construction, and cost reduction.