Introduction | lost trust is hard to regain
A few days ago, Shengrui held a mass production off-line ceremony for its first independent commercial longitudinal 8AT gearbox. This is also another bombshell that ShengRui has put into the automotive market after the last time it claimed to launch a 13AT gearbox. Of course, the 13AT at that time was only mentioned, and there was no follow-up.
Official expectations for the new 8AT transmission are high, claiming that it can be used for commercial vehicles such as pickup trucks, light trucks, and medium-sized buses, as well as SUVs, MPVs, and large off-road vehicles. And has reached cooperation with a number of automobile factories, a number of models are already eligible for listing, this new gearbox will become a new fist product of Shengrui.
But in addition to being happy for it, Che Jujun couldn't help but think that Sheng Rui, which was once known as the light of domestic transmissions, seemed to have not heard it for a long time. What has it been through over the years? How high are the expectations for a new gearbox? Let Che Jujun take everyone to see it together.
1 Debut is the peak, but now it is rejected
ShengRui is actually not a traditional gearbox company, before entering the gearbox industry, its "own job" is actually a diesel engine parts supplier. It is said that Liu Xiangwu, the chairman of Shengrui at that time, went to Beihang to listen to a lecture on the transmission system, and then decided to build a gearbox.
In 2007, the Shengrui horizontal 8AT transmission project was officially launched, and in 2013, the Shengrui 8AT transmission was officially put into production, the first model was the land wind X5, and then the land wind X7 also chose the Sheng Rui 8AT, which was quite trusting of Sheng Rui.
At that time, Shengrui could be said to be very beautiful. After all, in the three mainstream gearboxes of AT, dual clutch and CVT, the technical difficulty of the AT gearbox is recognized as the highest, but the stability and reliability are the best. In the era when the 6AT gearbox is still popular and the 8AT gearbox is exclusive to high-end models, the emergence of shengrui 8AT can be said to have achieved a major breakthrough in the domestic high-end gearbox from 0-1. The key is that the purchase price of Shengrui 8AT is much lower than that of Aisin 6AT, which greatly encourages domestic car companies.
Even in 2016, Shengrui won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award in recognition of its contribution to the development of independent technology.
But soon everyone found the problem, that is, the torque withstand range of Shengrui's gearbox is only 180-300Nm, that is to say, the engine with the maximum torque of more than 300Nm will "burst", which means that it can only match the general 1.5T, 1.6T engine, or low-power 2.0T engine.
And its transmission ratio range is actually only 6.547, in contrast, Aisin 8AT and ZF 8AT transmission ratio range are more than 7, that is to say, its theoretical economic speed range is still not as wide as the joint venture competitors. The reality is also the same, matching the fuel consumption performance of the Shengrui 8AT model, it is indeed not as good as imagined.
In addition, fuel consumption is actually only one aspect, the original Shengrui 8AT gearbox slowly exposed a series of problems, the most prominent is the serious low-speed setback, many users feedback that it is more like a dual-clutch gearbox, and abnormal sound, oil leakage problems also appear from time to time.
Therefore, ShengRui soon launched the second generation of 8AT in 2017, but this gearbox is a bit "overcorrected", and indeed greatly repairs the problem of low-speed setbacks, but in order to achieve smoothness, it greatly reduces the speed of shifting, and users generally feedback to open up "meat", especially when high-speed re-acceleration, the gearbox always has to fall into "thinking about life" for a second or two, comparable to CVT, but there is no CVT fuel saving.
As a result, Shengrui launched the third generation of 8AT in 2019, this time it will increase the maximum withstand torque to 380Nm, which has improved in the shift rate, while the structure is more compact, and the transmission efficiency has also improved a lot.
But it is a pity that during the period of Shengrui 8AT replacement, its customer base has been passing, and there are very few new customers, so it has slowly disappeared.
2 Internal and external attacks, Sheng Rui's living space is getting tighter and narrower
In the Shengrui 8AT turned out to be that, the purchase of its domestic car companies is still quite a lot, in addition to the land wind, Zotye, Bisu, phantom speed, Lifan, Benten, and even Chery's Jietu, also use the Shengrui 8AT gearbox, the biggest factor is of course cheap, but also can see the trust of these car companies for Shengrui.
However, it can also be seen that these brands are mainly third- and fourth-line independent brands, even if they are shortcuts, they are also Chery's side products. It also coincides with the cold winter of the market in recent years, and several of these brands have even faded out of the market.
The Jietu X70, which Shengrui was proud of, also chose to replace its own DCT gearbox from 2019 onwards. Nowadays, ShengRui can still come up with things, probably only the Pentium T99, and the biggest reason why it chooses Shengrui 8AT is probably just cheap. After all, the high-end model Offic Hongqi HS5, which also belongs to FAW, even uses aisin 6AT gearbox, which shows that in FAW's heart, it is likely that Aisin 6AT is also more high-end than Shengrui 8AT, and the technology is more mature after years of testing, even if the latter's parameters are obviously stronger.
In fact, in recent years, the first and second-line independent brands have basically used their own DCT gearboxes. After all, the cost of the dual-clutch transmission is low, the gear shift is fast, the transmission efficiency is high, and after so many years of development, there are many mature technical solutions that are desirable, and the low-speed setback has also been greatly improved. Moreover, most of the domestic cars use wet double clutch, and the reliability is not bad. Comparatively speaking, Shengrui's 8AT has not had much advantage. For entry-level models, the Wanliyang CVT is enough, and it will not consider carrying an 8AT.
What makes Shengrui even more passive is probably the price reduction of international giants such as Aisin. In recent years, high-end domestic SUVs, such as Changan CS75 PLUS, even the 1.5T version have used the Aisin 8AT gearbox, which shows that the price of Aisin 8AT has also come down.
The low-end uses autonomous DCT, the high-end uses Aisin 8AT, and then mixed in front and back are Wanliyang CVT and Aisin 6AT, leaving the living space for Shengrui 8AT is indeed not large.
3 Switching to commercial use, can Shengrui vertical 8AT succeed?
Therefore, for the shengrui longitudinal 8AT that has just been mass-produced, its scope of application may be narrower, after all, there are very few passenger car companies that use the longitudinal platform in China, and the number of red flags and tanks is probably red flags and tanks, and it is obvious that the probability of these two purchasing Shengrui longitudinal 8AT is extremely small.
In order to adapt to its own hardcore off-road vehicles, Great Wall has independently developed a 9AT gearbox, the maximum load torque reached 600Nm, and the speed can be hung into 9 gears when it is about 90km/h, and the fuel consumption is also at a low level of the same level, only from the parameters of the international first-line transmission. Of course, this does not mean that the technology of the Great Wall is really mature, but at least it has an advantage and can use its own car to "bring goods" to itself.
Great Wall's early self-developed 1.5T, 2.0T engine, 7DCT gearbox is not so good, but after generations of optimization and improvement, today's performance has been remarkable, at least few users take them as a point of deduction. Its 9AT is the same, at least the tank 500 such a car to take out, 300,000-level mid-size hard-core SUV, cheaper than the joint venture model of the same level more than half, basically do not worry about selling, but also let it have enough time to improve its own products.
And Shengrui may not have such an opportunity, find it are all third- and fourth-tier car companies, they do take Shengrui 8AT as a highlight of publicity, but their own marketing, service, sales are not outstanding, can not play the effect of "with goods", so the final result is likely to be a loss. Sheng Rui did not make this money, and the sales and premium capabilities of these car companies did not improve.
Switching to commercial vehicles is a good idea, especially now that Weichai Power has entered Shengrui, it can bring a lot of resources in commercial vehicles. However, models such as light trucks and medium trucks are still dominated by manual transmissions, and in recent years they have slowly begun to popularize AMT mechanical automatic transmissions.
Compared with the complex AT transmission, the power loss of the AMT gearbox is less, it is shifted through the clutch, and there is no oil immersion requirement of the TORQUE converter of the AT transmission, the transfer efficiency is also higher, and the maintenance is relatively simple. Although the AMT transmission has a large impact on gear shifting, it will affect the driving experience and is not suitable for passenger cars, but it can greatly reduce the cost of using the car.
Therefore, in the field of commercial vehicles that are extremely cost-conscious, the competitiveness of AT transmissions will not be too strong, at least in a short period of time.
Car gathering summary
Objectively speaking, Shengrui has made great contributions to the development of autonomous transmission technology. It is with the efforts of these companies that the gearboxes of foreign manufacturers will reduce prices, and more high-end gearboxes such as 8AT and 9AT will be introduced, otherwise 5AT and 6AT will be enough to eat. As a private company, ShengRui once carried the banner of domestic AT transmissions, which is still worthy of praise.
However, in the business of business, Shengrui's early product problems are still more numerous. Although a lot of progress has been made now, it has been marginalized in the entire domestic car sequence, and it is undoubtedly very difficult to restore the glory of the past. Now that the vertical 8AT has been introduced, it is also very difficult to transition to the sequence of commercial vehicles and high-end vehicles.
Or hope that it can succeed, if it can really stand out again in such a fierce market environment, then it will leave a strong mark in the history of China's automobile industry.