Some time ago I wrote an article "Abandoned by Europe and the United States, the plight of the Russian truck market, is it an opportunity for Chinese truck companies?" It mentioned some of the problems that Chinese trucks need to solve to attack the Russian market. Because of the limited space, I have only made some observations on the situation in Russia, but there is actually a deeper question worth exploring - "How far is the Chinese truck to become world-class?" ”
Before we can explore this issue, we need to clarify the question "What is first-class"? In my opinion, if Chinese trucks want to become world-class, the core indicator is one: whether Chinese trucks can be recognized as a "genre" like Ouka, US card and Japanese card. As far as the current situation is concerned, the tool attributes of Chinese trucks of various genres around the world are far better than the brand attributes. To put it ugly, foreign users who buy Chinese trucks are better than "picture word of mouth". This is a very embarrassing reality, aside from the objective reason of late start, there are many reasons that prevent Chinese trucks from becoming world-class, in this regard, I roughly summarize the following three points:
There is still a lot of room for improvement in quality.
In fact, looking at the configuration parameters alone, the gap between Chinese trucks and well-known products such as Oka is not large. But when it comes to stability, reliability, durability, etc., Chinese trucks are timid. Among them, the attitude of car manufacturing is a big problem, such as the wire harness is not in place, the screw bolt is not tight enough, and so on. The consequence of this is that there are many small problems in Chinese trucks, which should be deeply understood by domestic car owners.
On the other hand, we can not get rid of the overall domestic industrial strength is relatively backward environment, in terms of processing technology and materials, Chinese trucks are indeed "inferior to people". And this problem can only be solved through development, relying on time. It will be easier to change the attitude of car building.
Lack of experience in internationalization.
Manufacturers in Europe, the United States and Japan generally have decades of international experience, and the real mass export of Chinese trucks to the world is the last ten years. China's truck manufacturers not only lack international experience, but also lack relevant talent reserves. Here's a case that illustrates the problem:
A domestic truck company, more than a decade ago exported a batch of heavy trucks to the Middle East A country (hereinafter referred to as A country), the early stage relying on a very high cost-effective export volume once reached four figures. However, the second year, the reputation collapsed, because the heavy truck brakes of that batch had a large area of problems. Why is there no problem with heavy trucks with the same performance in China, and problems in country A? The original desert climate in country A is both dry and hot, and the local driver drives very "wild", and the brake system suitable for domestic cannot be carried at all in country A.
Didn't that truck company do research in Country A? People have really done it, but there are very few people who go to the survey, and many of the data are given by local dealers in country A, plus the delivery time is tight. In the case of inaccurate data and insufficient research, the manufacturer hastily exported heavy trucks to country A, and eventually encountered major setbacks, which severely damaged the reputation of Chinese trucks. In contrast, European truck companies are extremely rigorous and solid in terms of adaptive development, model verification, and market research.
Looking back at the trucking company at that time, if there was a professional to guide or learn from the experience of European trucking companies, it would not make this mistake. Unfortunately, there is no if, some "tuition fees" have to be paid, but the problem of paying more and paying less.
There is a problem with the style of doing things.
After more than 40 years of rapid economic development, the mainland's economy has made achievements that have attracted worldwide attention, and at the same time, it has also formed a "pompous wind." Everything pursues scale, everything seeks speed. So we can see that many Chinese truck manufacturers in the sea, the usual "low price" this killer to quickly conquer the market to expand the scale, but the after-sales service often can not keep up, in the early years often appeared "pipe selling regardless of repair" situation. It has brought great losses to foreign dealers and customers, and users in some countries directly evaluate that Chinese trucks are a pile of scrap iron. Although the words are ugly, they are telling the truth. In recent years, after-sales service has begun to be valued by Chinese truck manufacturers, and the situation is gradually improving, but there is still a long way to go.
In many countries, Chinese trucks have already dried up Japanese and Korean trucks (at this stage, our direct competitors overseas are Japanese and Korean trucks), but they are often caught in the chaos of Chinese brands dumping each other. Low prices, simple matches, malicious slander and other inferior means are used in their own families. This is really particularly painful, a group of disunited Chinese truck manufacturers, how can it maintain a good image of Chinese trucks. Not all Chinese truck manufacturers are eligible to do export business, which is why I have been calling on the state to establish a white list of truck exports. For those manufacturers whose knife edge is inward, it is really necessary to rectify it well.
The short-sightedness and "little cleverness" of some Chinese truck manufacturers are also very harmful, and there is also a very classic case here: the laws and regulations of a Southeast Asian B country (hereinafter referred to as country B) are not sound enough, and the trucks exported by a domestic truck manufacturer to country B play a big policy. A large "modification margin" was reserved for the truck, and the "overload capacity" of its own products was openly and secretly promoted at the time of sales, bringing this bad wind in China to foreign countries. As a result, the brand's trucks were heavily overloaded with traffic accidents and crushed bridges, frequently appearing on the TV news of country B and were viciously rated as "road killers". It not only affects the image of its own brand, but also gives the B country media a pretext for attacking Chinese trucks. This kind of behavior of focusing only on short-term sales and not paying attention to long-term brand image building is still common in the process of Chinese trucks going to sea today.
The worst may just be the attitude
In the article I mentioned at the beginning, I said that with the technical strength and quality of today's Chinese trucks, they should not have enjoyed such a low evaluation worldwide. But the reality is that the "wind evaluation" of Chinese trucks is indeed not high, and a large part of the reason for this is that they are paying for the mistakes made in the past. It's hard to build a good image, but it's easy to destroy it.
I have always wondered whether Korean trucks are not as good in performance and configuration as Chinese trucks, but they can be more expensive than Chinese trucks (generally 30-50% more expensive), is it not because the after-sales service of Korean trucks is a little better, and the stability and durability are better. For today's Chinese trucks, it is really not difficult to catch up, but the attitude and determination. At present, the domestic truck market is so seriously involved, export has become the only way for Chinese truck manufacturers, it is time to consider the image of the problem.
Text/Keep moving forward