Many old drivers often issue such feelings: the current car, too not "anti-construction", a little tired of temper tantrums, walk a little bad road will creak, as soon as the year begins to break. Which is like the car I drove back then, it took more than ten years, running hundreds of thousands of kilometers up and down the mountain and haiti, often overloading and speeding, and the car condition was still leveraged. Alas, the current car, the human heart is not ancient!
Thinking about it carefully, the old driver's feelings seem to be true, and the current car is indeed not "anti-manufacturing" before. It is reasonable to say that society is developing, science and technology are progressing, and the quality of automobiles should be getting better and better. As a bulk consumer product in the family, the car should be very durable and have a long service life. But now, a few years have begun to change the car, the car seems to have changed from "durable goods" to "fast moving consumer goods", why is this?
Before answering this question, Lao Hou will first tell you a small story.
In the 1990s, there was a local company that produced electric fans. The electric fans they produce, using imported motors and controllers, are well-made, safe and reliable, and the quality is very good. For a while, a wave of rushing to buy electric fans in the province was set off, and the supply of products was in short supply, and the benefits of the enterprise were of course also leveraged.
However, two years later, the company fell into a serious loss, not to mention that the electric fan can not be sold, that is, the accessories for repairing the electric fan cannot be sold. The products are piled up, there is a serious backlog, and the company can't even pay wages.
How can there be such a big change? The factory director quickly sent someone to do market research. The results of the survey are laughable: the quality of the electric fan is too good to be bad at all. A workshop has not stopped the electric fan all summer, used for two consecutive years, there is no noise at all, and there will be no problem for family use for ten years. Now that the electric fan market has been saturated, the old electric fans are not bad, and everyone will naturally not buy new electric fans.
What should I do? The factory director quickly held a meeting to discuss the response strategy. As a result, the strategies given by everyone are: to reduce the quality of products, reduce the service life of parts, launch new products every year, increase flashy new features, accelerate the replacement speed of electric fans, open up other regional markets, increase the price of maintenance parts, and so on. After the company did it one by one, it miraculously came back to life.
This little story is now playing out in the automotive industry. In previous decades, cars were in an incremental market, and the cars produced were not worried about sales. Whoever has good quality will occupy a larger market share. So, over the past few decades, the quality of the car has climbed year by year, and in the decades of the 1990s and the beginning of this century, it reached a peak. The cars produced during this period are solid in workmanship, thick in materials, and high in quality, which is what the old driver said is a car that is "strong and resistant to driving and not broken".
However, in the past decade, the automobile has gradually changed from an incremental market to a stock market, and the cars on the market have gradually become saturated, and the pressure on car companies has become increasing. If everyone doesn't buy a car, the car company will certainly not survive. So how do you keep people updating their cars normally? An important measure is to reduce the service life of the car, and force everyone to update the car when it expires.
What are the specific measures? Naturally, this car company will not announce it. However, judging from Lao Hou's observation and analysis, there are mainly the following points:
1, the appearance of the design of the pursuit of fashion. Fashion can change at any time, so this design is easy to become obsolete, and new cars become old cars. In addition, the current cars are basically two or three years of small changes, three or five years of mid-generation, seven or eight years of major changes. The new car now, looking at it in a few years, is an outdated old car. In this way, some fashion-conscious people can change their cars early.
2, car companies are deliberately reducing the service life of parts, especially the service life of some rubber parts and frequent consumables. After many cars are used for a few years, the rubber bushings on the chassis are aging and cracking, and the texture of the chassis is reduced, and looseness and strange noises follow. If you want to restore the state, replacing these parts is a big expense. If you don't want to replace parts, then change the car! In addition, all kinds of electrical equipment on the car, such as light bulbs, batteries, etc., the service life is also decreasing, and the battery capacity is significantly reduced. After the car is used for a long time, the failure rate increases, and the owner repairs the car annoyingly, and he wants to replace the car.
3. The standard of automotive materials is reduced and the process is reduced. Old drivers are nostalgic for the old cars before, both resistant to collision and maneuvering, because these cars are very solid materials and very well-made. Now the price of cars is gradually declining, in order to reduce costs and maintain profitability, car companies can only make a fuss about materials. This will also lead to a long period of use of the car, the driving texture is reduced, the safety factor is reduced, prompting people to update the car.
4, most of the previous cars use manual transmission or AT transmission, these two gearboxes are strong and reliable, low failure rate, strong anti-overload ability. And now the large-scale use of the dual clutch transmission and CVT gearbox on the car, the reliability and service life is obviously not as good as the above two gearboxes, more than a dozen or twenty thousand kilometers basically to the limit of life. In this case, the cost of changing the gearbox may be higher than the residual value of the car, forcing everyone to change the car.
5, use policies to eliminate cars. Every country has a vehicle testing system and exhaust emission standards, and this standard is being raised year by year. Many old models cannot meet these standards, and eventually can only take the initiative to eliminate. For example, now That China has begun to implement the National VI B emission standards, the previous National V, China IV or even China III cars have been greatly restricted in terms of driving area, registration place, etc. In order to travel conveniently, people can only change new cars.
6, use software to eliminate hardware. Nowadays, cars are becoming more and more intelligent, and many functions on the car are electronically controlled, and software is needed to control the operation of hardware. With the rapid development of electronic technology, the hardware facilities on the old car cannot run the new software, many functions cannot be realized, and if you want to keep up with the pace of the times, you can only replace the car. This is like the current mobile phone, after a few years of use, the hardware of the mobile phone itself is not faulty, but there are many software and programs that cannot be used, and finally can only endure the pain of love.
7, with ultra-high parts prices to obtain high profits from after-sales service. Many car companies have released a car zero ratio data is not high, but everyone feels very expensive when repairing cars, why is this? Because when car companies formulate the price of after-sales service parts, the price of parts that are not commonly used is set to a relatively low, and the price of some commonly used parts is set very high. For example, engines, transmissions, body, fuel tanks, etc., the replacement frequency is relatively low, the price can be lower; and the front and rear bumpers, headlights, reversing mirrors, doors, hoods and other parts that are often damaged, the price is set very high. There is a car where five pairs of headlights cost more than a car. Sometimes there are not very serious collisions, and the money for repairing the car is higher than the residual value of the car. In this case, more people are willing to choose to change cars.
The so-called "gentleman loves money, there is a way to get it", car companies for their own survival and development, the use of some invisible small means, is also understandable. In fact, every industry in society is like this, only by maintaining a normal metabolism can it run well. If everyone tightens their wallets and does not consume, and uses old cars that are strong and durable, this society will not be able to progress. As the saying goes, consumption is love one's country!