In the great changes that have not occurred in a hundred years, "no enterprise has a moat", "change" is the essence, and "change" has a future. In the field of the automotive industry, we especially have a direct feeling that the changes that have taken place in the industry in recent years have exceeded the sum of the past 50 years.
Throughout the century-old history of the global automotive industry, spare parts companies are strong, and the automotive industry is really strong. China's auto industry has grown rapidly, but it has to be said that we are still not strong, and the "domestic substitution" in the field of auto parts is less than 30%.
In the field of auto parts, domestic companies occupy the two areas with the largest share, one is automotive glass led by Cao Dewang of Fuyao Glass; the other is automotive wheels, and more than 70% of the world's wheels are produced in China. It can be proudly said that the wheel hub, Made in China is the global responsibility; but on the other hand, the domestic wheel hub industry production capacity is scattered, and it is urgent to break the situation.
A leader in the "wheel hub" industry refuses to lie flat, takes the "initiative" posture, breaks the label of traditional manufacturing enterprises, embraces innovative technology, and becomes a breaker of a new round of technological revolution.
Returnees "created the second generation", Jingu shares (stock code: 002488) after 80 at the helm, Sun Fengfeng said, "the Entrepreneur's English name is enterepreneur, which means adventurer", "Ten years of grinding a sword, to create this revolutionary product, it is worth it."
The low-carbon wheel "Avatar" will be mass-produced and listed at the end of 2020, and Sun Fengfeng's dream is to promote it to the world and become a "globally renowned brand". China's post-80s entrepreneurs have the ambition and confidence to surpass the post-60s parents' generation of entrepreneurs.
Previously, the role of Made in China was that of an imitator who learned from abroad, and it was increasingly gratifying to see that Made in China was shifting to the role of innovator and leader. As a professional investor in the automotive industry said, "We are very fortunate to be born in such an era, and we are very confident that we can cultivate the automotive industry chain track for a long time."
If Sun Fengfeng's dream is realized, China's manufacturing industry may add a legend of innovation and transcendence, about the revolution of "wheel rolling".
The value of the hub
Automobile wheel hub (wheel) manufacturing technology, you do not underestimate, its technical content is very high. The wheel hub is an important part of the car's driving, a metaphor, the wheel hub is the tire's "closest comrade-in-arms". The wheel hub plays a role in supporting the axle in the car as a whole, its quality is related to driving safety, and the appearance shape is also related to the appearance of a car.
At present, in the global market system of wheel hubs, there are mainly steel wheels and aluminum wheels, which occupy about half of the market, and most of them are mainland enterprises. In this segment of the auto parts supply chain, it can be said that the wheel hub is the first to complete the domestic substitution.
Jingu co., Ltd. is the leader of steel wheel hubs, is one of the largest steel wheel manufacturing enterprises in China, with 5 wheel production bases and 1 tire wheel assembly base in Fuyang, Shandong, Chengdu, Thailand and other places in China, with an annual output of 12 million wheels. In China, the company is a joint venture brand of SAIC Volkswagen, SAIC-GM, GAC Honda, GAC Toyota, Jaguar Land Rover and other joint venture brands, as well as suppliers of independent brand passenger car enterprises such as SAIC Passenger Cars, SAIC-GM-Wuling, BYD, Geely Automobile, etc., and supports commercial vehicle enterprises such as China National Heavy Duty Truck, Yutong Bus, Jirui United Truck, Beiben Heavy Truck, etc. Overseas, the company's products are exported to Europe, the United States and other countries and regions, and is a global supplier of GM, Volkswagen, Daimler and other countries.
SUN Fengfeng. The founder said picture/panorama network
Wheel hub has always been regarded as a traditional manufacturing industry, low cost, scale is the magic weapon of peer competition, there are many enterprises in the industry. As a leading enterprise, as early as 2012, Sun Fengfeng began to develop a new generation of steel wheel products. At that time, the scale of the steel wheel hub business of Jingu shares has achieved the first in China, with a 15% domestic market share, in the words of Sun Fengfeng, "the customers who should take it have taken, the low-end customers we do not want to do, encountered a ceiling and bottleneck, must break through."
Thinking of danger in times of peace and taking the initiative to "seek change" is the characteristic of innovators. Sun Fengfeng's personality is adventurous and loves toss. The thinking and temperament of the person at the helm of the enterprise determines the direction of the development of the enterprise.
Born entrepreneur
Sun Fengfeng is not a typical second-generation post-80s enterprise, he is an entrepreneur in a sense.
Sun Fengfeng was born in 1981, and in 1986, his father opened an automobile steel wheel processing plant in Fuyang City, Zhejiang Province, and the development was quite good. Sun Fengfeng after graduating from Harbin Institute of Technology, in 2003 to study in Canada, when Sun Fengfeng's company in a person who can speak English is not, so Sun Fengfeng took on the burden of developing the North American market during the study abroad, when China joined the WTO, Chinese manufacturing in the overseas supply chain system shines brightly, Sun Fengfeng single-handedly did the overseas business of Jingu shares, "At the peak of 2007, 90% of Jingu's business came from overseas, with tens of millions of dollars in revenue, accounting for more than 60% of the United States alone. ”
In 2005, Sun Fengfeng returned to China to join his father's company, and in 2007, Sun Fengfeng officially took over The Jingu shares. Who would have thought, less than a year later, in 2008, the international financial crisis broke out, "overnight, not a single order overseas was gone." ”
In the crisis, Sun Fengfeng led Jingu shares to attack the domestic market. At this time, a number of cutting-edge domestic independent brand cars are rising, and Jingu has become a supplier of domestic automobile brands such as BYD, Geely and Chery. By 2010, Jingu shares not only turned the crisis into safety, but also increased its annual revenue from tens of millions to 1 billion, and successfully landed on A shares. In the next two years, Jingu became a first-tier supplier to high-end automobile manufacturers such as General Motors, Volkswagen and Ford.
In 2012, Sun Fengfeng found the bottleneck of the industry ceiling and wanted to seek changes in traditional steel wheel products. Keen, he found a new technology, "this technical process we have seen in other industries, but there is no application in the wheel industry, a process of great weight reduction, if this technology can be applied successfully, it can reduce the weight of our steel wheels by 50%." ”
Since 2012, Jingu R&D department has been committed to the research and development of innovative wheel products with weight and precision benchmarking aluminum wheels. The project was code-named "AVATAR" (i.e. "Avatar").
Avatar wheel diagram/panorama mesh
"No one has done it before"
Avatar began research and development in 2012, aiming at lightweight development, in fact, the risk is very large, "no one has done it before."
In 2005, Jobs said, "I'm going to put a computer into a mobile phone, and the mobile phone of the future will become a smart device", Jobs was ridiculed by the vast majority of traditional mobile phone manufacturers, and the practitioners of the mobile phone supply chain also scorned him.
Sun Fengfeng's doing Avatar has also been ridiculed by some of his peers, but he firmly believes that "in the wheel industry, the emergence of Avatar is equivalent to the emergence of smart phones in the mobile phone industry that year." ”
Xu Yingguang, deputy director of the review committee of the China Automotive Industry Science and Technology Award, went to Jingu shares in 2021 to participate in the evaluation of Avatar. As a senior expert in the automotive industry, he is very emotional, "the original old wheel, the technical threshold is not too high, the manufacturers are very many, Jingu this kind of investment, light capital and time, many companies will not make this determination." ”
XU Yingguang. The founder said picture/panorama network
According to the person in charge of R&D of Jingu Shares of the Avatar project, "the whole process is relatively bumpy, avatar low-carbon wheels, the entire process and product design, and the traditional wheel, there is a big difference." ”
Jingu has been improving the design and process until 2016, Jingu finally produced a product that can pass the test and can be used, this new product was originally developed specifically for the North American market, and it is expected that the North American market will have a strong demand for new product acceptance. However, the international situation is changing, China's steel wheels soon encountered anti-dumping by the United States, and Sino-US relations are also undergoing profound changes.
Sun Fengfeng led the R&D team to adjust the direction of product development and conduct research and development for the domestic market. At the end of 2020, the global original "Avatar" low-carbon wheel independently developed by Jingu Co., Ltd. was successfully launched.
In December 2020, Jingu's first 1 million-piece Avatar mass production line was officially put into operation in Fuyang, Hangzhou, which is highly sought after in the automobile market; the second production line with an annual output of 1 million pieces will also be officially put into operation in the near future, which will accelerate to the global market this year.
Automated production workshop photo courtesy of /Jingu shares
"This Avatar product weighs 28 kilograms, while conventional steel wheels weigh almost half as much as conventional wheels at 44 kilograms."
Not only is the weight light, experimental tests show that the Avatar wheel strength is high, 3 times the strength of the ordinary steel wheel, 6 times the aluminum wheel; the precision is high, it is 2 times that of the ordinary steel wheel; at the same time, it also has better balance, stronger deformation resistance and more durable characteristics, and it is also very advantageous in appearance and price cost.
Products using Avatar technology can weigh the same as or even lighter than aluminum wheels, but the cost is only about half that of aluminum wheels.
Xu Yingguang, an industry expert, said, "In terms of indicators, it is leading in China; these data are also advanced in the world when they are taken to the international level." ”
The low-carbon nature of "Avatar" is also what Sun Fengfeng likes to say, "Take a heavy truck, replacing with Avatar wheels can save 8 tons of diesel fuel a year and reduce carbon emissions by 24 tons; there are currently about 15 million heavy trucks in the world, if they are replaced by our wheels, they can reduce carbon emissions by hundreds of millions of tons per year." ”
Sun Fengfeng is proud, "Although Avatar has spent nearly 10 years, it is very worth it."
In 2017, through its industrial investment fund, Anpeng Automobile Market Stock Fund, BAIC Invested 300 million yuan to participate in the private placement of Jingu shares, becoming the fifth largest shareholder of Jingu shares. As the investment representative of BAIC Production and Investment Company, Gao Yunchuan currently serves as a director of Jingu Shares.
GAO Yunchuan. The founder said picture/panorama network
Gao Yunchuan introduced, "Jingu shares, itself is a supplier in the supply chain of BAIC, optimistic about the technical reserves of Jingu shares in Avatar." Sun Fengfeng in his eyes, "After the 80s, there are many ideas, but they are very practical. ”
BAIC Production and Investment is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BAIC Group. Beijing Automotive Group is the absolute protagonist of the automobile industry, one of the world's top 500 companies and one of the four major domestic vehicle manufacturers, and BAIC Production and Investment is an important platform for capital operation and equity investment of BAIC Group.
From the perspective of industrial investors, Gao Yunchuan commented, "We believe that there is no eternal traditional industry, the core is to have innovative genes. ”
Sun Fengfeng said, "Jingu is an enterprise of innovation and research and development, which is our real core competitiveness and one of our lowest genes", "Adhere to research and development, adhere to innovation, in the end will have great value to this society."
The post-80s generation has a deep understanding of the industry, "the automotive industry has always been at the forefront of industrial change, key components continue to be transformed and upgraded, new materials, new energy, automatic driving and other new technologies continue to break through, as long as enterprises adhere to technological innovation, seize market opportunities, there will be great potential."
Talking about the future of Avatar, Xu Yingguang's point of view, "The wheel of Avatar is expected to occupy the international market, and the prospects are expected to be very good." ”
The future of Avatar
At present, the production capacity of a "Avatar low-carbon wheel" production line of Jingu Company is 1 million, and it is currently mainly producing "Avatar" commercial vehicle wheels.
"Avatar" low-carbon wheels first landed on commercial vehicles, is expected to take the lead in replacing traditional steel wheels, this overall gross profit is 15% to 20% higher than the existing steel wheel business.
Avatar's market promotion strategy is to take the commercial vehicle first strategy. Xu Yingguang commented, "The way is right", "a commercial vehicle heavy truck, 1 towing head is at least 6 wheels, if you bring a trailer, a car will save dozens of wheel weight." ”
Detailed calculations, an ordinary trailer generally has 22 wheels + 2 spare wheels, if all the Avatar wheels are used, it can reduce the trailer by about 384kg (compared with 44kg ordinary steel wheels). By increasing capacity by about 8%, saving about 2.4 litres of fuel per 100 kilometres, reducing carbon emissions by 6%, and increasing operating income.
In 2020, the cumulative sales of commercial vehicles nationwide are 5.6187 million units (including trailers), and the total demand is expected to be about 47 million, if you add the aftermarket of existing commercial vehicles (such as trailers need to replace wheels in an average of 2 years), the total demand for wheels for commercial vehicles every year is very huge.
At present, Jingu Company has supplied Avatar wheels to a number of domestic commercial vehicle OEMs in batches, and has sent the wheels to international commercial vehicle OEMs such as Daimler in the United States for road testing.
Exterior view of Jingu shares/Jingu shares
Sun Fengfeng said, "the market response, far better than we originally expected", previously expected that Avatar will replace all the traditional steel wheels, now more optimistic, "may replace a large part of the aluminum alloy wheel market." ”
Sun Fengfeng also made a specific estimate, hoping to form a production capacity of 10 million "Avatar" wheels in three years, and achieve 20 million "Avatar" wheel production capacity within 5 years, "The entire global market space is 300 million wheels, and the biggest bottleneck we have now is insufficient production capacity."
In 2022, Avatar has two production lines and is expected to produce 2 million Avatar products. In addition to the existing Hangzhou Fuyang base, Jingu plans to expand production within three years and build 10 new "Avatar" wheel production lines. After the expansion of "Avatar" wheels, Jingu shares will lead the world, greatly increasing the share of steel wheels in the wheel supporting market.
Since the beginning of this year, many investment institutions have frequently investigated Jingu shares and paid attention to the new production capacity and sales progress of Avatar.
Response to the era of new energy vehicles
"Carbon neutrality, carbon reduction" has become a global consensus, for the automotive industry, this is no less than an energy revolution. "Carbon neutrality, carbon emission reduction" is also an important problem to be solved by automotive OEMs, and the "Avatar" wheel just fills this pain point. R&D personnel say that the carbon emissions per ton of aluminum produced are more than 6 times that of per ton of steel produced.
Lightweight steel components replace traditional aluminium components, which is a major trend in the automotive industry. As an advanced lightweight technology product in the market, the "Avatar" wheel is welcomed by major automobile OEMs.
A large number of emerging car manufacturers have entered the field of new energy vehicles, and the competition of new energy vehicles will be white-hot, and cost reduction and efficiency increase will also be the focus of car companies.
While reducing the "negative" of the vehicle, the price of the "Avatar" wheel is only half of the aluminum wheel, which can effectively help new energy vehicles reduce body weight, improve mileage and reduce product costs. In addition, the "Avatar" wheel can be called the face value of the steel wheel industry, which is more novel and modern than the appearance of the traditional steel wheel, Sun Fengfeng said, "do not lose the aluminum wheel."
At present, in the field of new energy passenger vehicles, Jingu has become the standard wheel supplier of Wuling Hongguang MINI EV, and has obtained the GAC Toyota New Energy Vehicle Leiling Supporting Project, and has also become the wheel supplier for GAC Toyota Camry's full range of models (oil-electric hybrid models and traditional oil vehicles).
Jingu plans to "take Avatar technology as a stepping stone, continue to develop the new energy vehicle passenger car market, and seize the market of the original aluminum wheel" as one of the core strategies. At the same time, the company will continue to promote the research of lightweight products based on Avatar technology.
The future of auto parts companies
China's auto market scenery is good, the balance of victory is more and more inclined to the head competitors, Jingu shares as the leader of China's auto parts industry segmentation, in the development of the main business self-transformation, looking for new growth points.
According to the "Global and Chinese Automotive Wheel Industry Market Research Report (2019 Edition)" released by Standing Wood Information Consulting, with the development of the automotive industry, the automotive wheel industry has grown steadily. In 2017, China's automobile wheel hub production was about 270 million pieces, an increase of 7.1% year-on-year; the average annual compound growth rate from 2009 to 2017 was 14.2%; with the continuous support of the policy, the average annual growth rate from 2018 to 2023 will remain at about 4.0%.
Gao Yunchuan, an investor in the automobile industry, said, "With the rise of mainland independent brand vehicles, domestic auto parts companies will face more opportunities, and companies with sufficient product performance and quality are the focus of our attention, especially the main line of import substitution." ”
China's automobile industry is already the world's first, on the road to becoming stronger, as far as possible to create some technological innovations with Chinese characteristics, and then become a global industry standard, the automobile industry chain of Chinese enterprises are exploring this road, which is also the direction of China's industrial manufacturing industrial upgrading and enhance global competitiveness.
Under the background of global economic changes and supply chain reshaping, the supply chain system is based on stabilizing domestic demand and innovating new technologies, and Chinese auto parts companies play an increasingly important role in the global automotive supply chain system, which will also accelerate the process of globalization.
Sun Fengfeng said, "In the past, we were imitating to learn from others and learn from foreign advanced leaders, and now, we have even surpassed our international counterparts."
Xu Yingguang, an expert in the automotive industry, said, "Third-rate enterprises do products, second-rate enterprises do brands, and first-class enterprises do technical standards and patents."
China's auto parts enterprises, growing into a world-class enterprise, we have seen Fuyao Glass, Fuyao Glass domestic automotive glass market share of more than 60%, global market share of more than 30% (from The West China Securities Research Report). We also look forward to Jingu shares becoming the "Fuyao Glass" of the automobile wheel industry.