How big is the gap between China's car-making level and Europe and the United States, where is the gap, has always been the focus of controversy, we are neither exaggerated, nor arrogant, not blown and black, objectively to talk about how big the gap between China and Europe and the United States in the level of car manufacturing is.
10 years ago when talking about domestic cars, I believe that most riders will only shake their heads, "body rust, abnormal noise, high fuel consumption, oil seepage, tire eating" and other problems have become the lingering shadow of many car owners, and the overall performance of the joint venture car at that time is far beyond the domestic car, which is not only the engine, gearbox, chassis technology These core technologies have a gap, the same in materials, processes, quality control and other aspects, domestic car companies are still failing, why is there such a big gap? Summarizing the four major reasons, this is also the direction of domestic cars in recent years to make unremitting efforts to catch up with joint venture vehicles.
First, China's machine tool manufacturing industry base is weak
For the high-tech industry, without advanced processing technology, it will lose the core competitiveness of product manufacturing, which shows the importance of machine tools, the automobile manufacturing industry and the machine tool industry can be described as lips and teeth, complementing each other, such as automotive stamping, welding, painting and other links, especially thousands of precision parts such as engines and gearboxes are inseparable from machine tools
Looking at the global machine tool manufacturing industry, after the mid-19th century, the secondary industrial revolution was the strongest in European industry, and it was also during this period that the German automobile industry gradually developed, entering the early 20th century, and the semi-automatic and automated industrial system led by the United States gradually formed.
Japan was in 1945 after World War II, desperate, had to take technology-intensive industries as the leading to develop the national economy, of which the automobile manufacturing industry became the main industry, coupled with the support of the United States machine tool technology, in just a few decades after the United States, Germany after the third largest machinery manufacturing power.
Machine tool technology not only affects the overall quality of the three major parts of the car, but also affects the production cost of the car, any transaction commodity, can be produced is not difficult, difficult in the cost control, because in the end there must be consumers willing to pay, it can survive, in the automobile manufacturing process, more than 70% of the cost is in the machine tool industry.
Compared with the advanced machine tool industry in Germany, the United States, Japan, look back at the development history of China's machine tool technology, the gap is inevitable, after the founding of New China, the domestic machine tool manufacturing industry has been developed rapidly, such as Shenyang machine tools, Dalian machine tools, but in the face of German TRUMPF, the United States MAG, Japan Sen Seiki and other brands of competition, just a few decades of machine tool development, or can not and develop nearly a hundred years of German and American comparison, and finally bankruptcy.
It can be said that the domestic machine tool as a whole is "big but not strong", in such a big environment, domestic car companies want to mass-produce precision parts, can only rely on imported equipment, but after all, the cost is high, plus the core technology is still subject to Germany and the United States, for example, a car has about 20,000 parts composition, and more than 60% of the parts are stamping parts, want to reduce costs, in the stamping process technology, machine tool equipment, mold selection, material selection and other aspects are difficult.
In other words, these difficulties of domestic car companies for European and American industrial powers, has become their own advantages, domestic cars want to seek survival in the cracks, the focus is also on cost control, moderately reduce the process of automobile production, reduce the standard of materials, in short, within the controllable range, can be reduced will be reduced.
It is precisely because of this that the domestic cars at that time gave many car owners an impression of "shoddy manufacturing", and naturally they were not as good as the joint venture cars in terms of anti-rust treatment, parts selection, and processing precision.
Second, the "three major pieces" technology is a hard wound
Machinery industry base to a certain extent determines the development of high and new technology, the domestic industrial base is weak, naturally in the car engine, gearbox and other technology research and development has been affected, domestic car companies technology "congenital deficiency", which has "imitation", have to say that the domestic car companies reverse research and development technology is very strong, from "0" to new car mass production, a number of car companies only spent less than 5 years.
For example, the first generation of Haval H6 reverse imitation of Honda CRV chassis technology, Geely began to reverse imitate the Toyota 8A engine, and then Boyue imitated the Volkswagen EA888 engine, and like the Mitsubishi 4G63T engine, is the world's car companies reverse research and development of the most target.
However, due to the uneven reverse research and development technology, some car companies have indeed built engines, and low-power operation is normal, but in the middle of the operation, the power gradually increases, the engine noise becomes larger, fuel consumption increases, a variety of small problems follow, to the high power stage, and even directly pull the cylinder, which is only a gap in technology.
In fact, the automotive industry fights for comprehensive strength, technology is on the one hand, more depends on the mutual cooperation between material engineering, machine tool industry, manufacturing process, quality control and other disciplines, which requires enough time, experience, and the market to verify and improve, which is the real hard wound of domestic cars.
However, in recent years, the progress of domestic car companies in the "three major pieces" is obvious to all, has long been from the reverse imitation of more than 10 years ago to today's independent research and development, such as Geely, Changan, Great Wall, BYD and other domestic car companies have independent technology, on the technical strength is not necessarily lost to the joint venture car companies.
In the field of engines, such as BYD hybrid technology, SAIC Group relies on the blue core power developed by Volkswagen, the blue whale engine independently developed by Changan Automobile, the B42 series engine of Geely Lynk & Co, etc., but the main technical achievements of domestic engines are also in the low-power, low-displacement stage, in the 2020 Ward Top Ten Engines and Power System Rankings, the general list is large-displacement, high-power engines, and there is still no seat for domestic engines.
In the field of gearbox, domestic car companies also have a good performance, such as FAW Besturn equipped with the Shengrui 8AT gearbox, Haval F7 equipped with the Honeycomb Easy to create 7 double clutch transmission, but from the domestic engine, gearbox corresponding to the production model, the thermal efficiency is low, the fuel consumption is high, the use rate of mass production models is less, the Shengrui 8AT is almost abandoned, although the Great Wall, Changan said that the use of dual clutch transmissions, but the core components and technology are still provided by BorgWarner and Getrag.
In short, in the field of engines and transmissions, domestic car companies have certain advantages in small displacement models, but their comprehensive strength is still defeated.
Third, the mountain of "patents" that cannot be avoided
For the protection of intellectual property rights, not only in the automotive field, various industries around the world have always been very strict, and there are often various "patent" infringement cases, and many companies have paid high patent fees.
In the field of engines and transmissions, German, American, Japanese and other car companies have applied for their own technology patents in the field of core technology after decades of technological development and precipitation, especially in the field of gearboxes, THE gearbox comprehensive performance is better, but more than 80% of the technical patents are in the hands of Japanese Aisin and German ZF manufacturers.
Under the strong technical barriers, car companies can only turn to the research and development of CVT stepless transmission and DCT dual-clutch transmission, of which the public loves DCT, the Japanese love CVT, and domestic car companies are more difficult on the road to the gearbox, affected by a variety of factors, and finally only rely on the introduction of transmissions.
In this way, the autonomous engine with other people's gearbox, there will always be a situation of "water and soil dissatisfaction", but also need to rely on the level of tuning and time to slowly digest and absorb, which is one of the reasons why some domestic cars have abnormal noise, obvious frustration in gear shifting, engine noise, and many small problems in the gearbox.
Fourth, quality control and brand power are weaknesses
Speaking of quality control, German, American and Japanese car companies have formed a perfect product system after years of research and development, including from model design, manufacturing, quality certification and acceptance system, supplier system, sales and management, etc., of which the overall control of product quality is particularly important.
On the one hand, it is necessary to rely on the car company's own "platform" technology, such as Volkswagen's MQB platform, Toyota's TNGA platform architecture, Great Wall's independent research and development of the lemon platform, etc., which is a complete set of product quality system, starting from the model design, including parts design needs to be carried out according to the platform certification standards, the production link, on the one hand, the host manufacturers, each parts manufacturer is required to strictly follow the standard, and then also need to carry out quality testing of the product, each link is very important.
For domestic car companies, the system structure in the past few years is not perfect, there is a "chaotic" situation in the entire link, quality inspection management, the Chinese people pay attention to human feelings, "water release, lower standards" and other phenomena occur occasionally, resulting in the final product tolerance is slightly larger, although it can be assembled normally, but after the vehicle time is long, various small problems are naturally highlighted.
Many Chinese people buy things, like to pay attention to the brand, and even have a kind of "foreign, imported" products are better than the domestic, a very simple truth, budget 250,000 to buy a pure electric car, this price many car owners may compare Xiaopeng P7, BYD Han EV, Extreme Kr 001, Tesla Model3 These models, the final choice is very unexpected.
Through detailed understanding, test driving, but also know the same price, power performance, interior, functional configuration, cost performance, etc., some domestic pure electric vehicles comprehensively crush Tesla, but in the end still chose Tesla, the reason is very simple and simple, Tesla is after all a big foreign brand, there is "face", sales are far ahead, higher reliability.
This kind of thinking itself is not wrong, but do not consider the brand factor, only look at the comprehensive performance of the vehicle itself, that high sales and large brands do not mean that it must be a good car, the choice or need to combine personal preferences, car scenes, vehicle performance and other aspects of the comprehensive view.
Most people buy a car mainly to consider the economic cost, practicality, in this case, if the budget is within 150,000, then the choice of domestic cars will not let you down, on the appearance, interior, space layout, functional configuration, vehicle cost performance, and even power performance are the advantages of domestic cars.
If the budget is more than 150,000, more may pay attention to power performance, handling performance, comfort, then the joint venture car will be a good choice, and the domestic car in the red flag has become the "ceiling" of the high-end car.
As for the quality stability of domestic and joint venture vehicles, there is no need to worry at all, although in the early years of traditional fuel vehicles because of various factors led to word-of-mouth deviation, but after years of catching up, there have been qualitative changes in technology, the stability of the whole vehicle has also been verified by the market, in other words, now the car is replaced so fast, a car has been driven for more than 10 years will only become less and less, once the pursuit of durability has become obsolete.
All in all, in the field of traditional fuel vehicles, domestic car companies still have a big gap with European and American car companies in the "three major pieces" technical level, it can be said that they have completely lost the opportunity, there is no need to struggle, but in the field of new energy vehicles, joint ventures and domestic production are on the same running line, we wait and see.