In 2023, China will become the world's largest exporter of automobiles. For a time, Chinese automobiles have become an important technical force on the global automotive stage. A large proportion of the cars exported from China are electric models. For a period of time, there was even a time when the development of three major parts such as engine, gearbox and chassis was abandoned in China, and the era of pure electric vehicles was fully entered.
But in fact, in recent times, there has been a slowdown in electrification in Europe. Even Germany and Poland are interested in revising or even reversing the EU's previous decision to completely ban the sale of gasoline vehicles and hybrid vehicles by 2035.
In the domestic market, technologies such as range extender and plug-in hybrid are increasingly sought after by consumers, compared to pure electric vehicles, which are still subject to a series of problems caused by low battery energy density, and these may still be inseparable from traditional internal combustion engines.
Significant progress has been made in the field of engines
In the era of fuel vehicles, the internal combustion engine technology, which was once regarded as the highest threshold, is actually not so unattainable for domestic traditional car companies such as Chery, Geely, Changan, and SAIC.
However, in the internal combustion engine, several core component systems, such as fuel injection systems, are still controlled by suppliers such as Bosch. However, this is not a problem faced by domestic OEMs, even those multinational car giants overseas are also facing these problems.
But in terms of thermal efficiency, engines like Changan Blue Whale and Geely have reached 40%. This is a very remarkable achievement for an internal combustion engine.
There is still a long way to go to catch up with Aisin
In the era of new energy vehicles, due to the large-scale use of electric motors and the fact that the engine is often fixed in a region with the highest thermal efficiency in extended-range models, the function of the gearbox has been greatly weakened. However, in areas such as automatic transmission (AT), Aisin and ZF have a particularly huge advantage, making it difficult for domestic manufacturers to surpass them in the short term.
Previously, when domestic transmission companies were seeking breakthroughs in 6AT technology, Aisin established 6AT joint ventures with GAC and Geely, two leading domestic brands, to introduce Aisin's 6AT technology to the domestic market. As a result, the domestic transmission companies that have invested a lot of money in research and development have lost any competitiveness all of a sudden.
At the same time, Aisin's 8-speed automatic transmissions have begun to gain popularity in high-end fuel vehicle models.
In addition, CVT technology is mainly monopolized by Japanese car companies, and as for the dual-clutch transmission DCT technology, it is the first Volkswagen joint BorgWarner and Schaeffler products, which are relatively the most stable.
Chassis tuning that is gradually getting on track
In terms of chassis tuning, the gap between independent brands and foreign-funded car companies is also very obvious. Chassis tuning can often be regarded as a "metaphysics", without the accumulation of development experience in dozens or even hundreds of projects in the past, chassis tuning can easily enter a dead end.
In the early years, most of the independent brands were reversed from foreign-funded models of the same level, and even directly borrowed the design of hard points.
As independent brands began to realize the importance of chassis tuning, Geely, Great Wall and BYD have invested a lot of money in chassis tuning. Taking Geely as an example, the CMA platform jointly developed by Geely and Volvo, as well as the Lynk & Co models incubated on the CMA platform, are products that have done a good job in the development of chassis tuning.
The CMA is derived from Ford's EUCD platform, which was previously used by Volvo. Geely has developed the CMA platform in the shortest possible time by integrating Volvo's engineering team resources and understanding the EUCD platform, and has been reborn through a series of innovations.
Of course, the most important thing for Lynk & Co and Geely is that the development of the CMA platform has left Geely with a valuable asset, allowing Geely to go through a complete process of forward chassis development. Later, with the acquisition of Lotus cars, Geely also gained control of the Lotus project. The latter is also a world-renowned chassis tuning company, which gives Geely a deeper understanding of the development process of the world's top chassis tuning.
Compared with the three major parts, in fact, domestic manufacturers should pay more attention to the things that are missing in the entire automotive industry in addition to the three major parts. For example, Qualcomm's 8195 chip, the Android operating system, and even robots and machine tools on the factory assembly line.
Nowadays, domestic car companies have indeed achieved a very big lead in new energy vehicles. It is no exaggeration to say that looking at the world, except for Tesla, there are no other traditional multinational car companies that can come up with a few truly competitive models. However, domestic car companies also need to be wary of a situation: Toyota was also very leading in hybrid technology before, and once did not have any competitors in the world.
However, China and Europe have not provided any policy support to Toyota, and have instead tilted its resources towards pure electric vehicles. As a result, Toyota's hybrid technology, which was once regarded as one of the best technical solutions for energy saving and emission reduction of fuel vehicles, has been slowly marginalized. Domestic car companies should also be prepared for this.
In order to really do a good job in automobiles, the traditional three major parts may still need to spend time and endure loneliness in the next few years to concentrate on research.