Why local automatic transmission is difficult to produce

China Automobile Industry Association statistics show that in the first half of 2010, China's imports of automobile transmissions 2.88 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 35%, and transmission import value reached 3.666 billion US dollars, an increase of about 101%, much higher than other automobile parts and components.

Since 2007, the transmission has surpassed body accessories, parts and engine accessories, and parts, and has become China's highest-valued auto parts. This change not only reflects the rapid growth in the demand for various types of automatic transmission market in China, but also verifies the fact that the localization rate of automatic transmissions with higher technological content is lower than that of engines and manual transmissions.

In recent years, the continuous increase in the value of imports shows that in 2005 and 2006, body accessories and parts were the highest value imported auto parts in China, which were 2.9 billion U.S. dollars and 3.2 billion U.S. dollars, respectively. In the same period, the import value of the transmission assembly in China was 1.2 billion and 2 billion U.S. dollars, respectively, which was a big gap between the vehicle accessories and parts.

In 2007, this trend has changed significantly. While the value of car accessories and parts imports dropped slightly, the value of the transmission assembly surged to $3.28 billion. In the following two years, it has continued to be the highest valued auto component for China.

In 2009, the import value of transmission-based components of the transmission system reached US$5.556 billion, which was approximately US$1.8 billion higher than that of the second-row body accessories, which was “far ahead.”

"The high import value of the transmission is mainly due to the fact that a large part of the automatic transmission in China depends on imports," said Shi Zhaoyao, deputy secretary-general of the China Gear Professional Association.

In recent years, as the level of automobile consumption in China has gradually increased, consumers have become increasingly demanding in terms of driving comfort. Regardless of whether they are passenger vehicles or commercial vehicles, the ratio of automatic transmissions has increased substantially, especially in In the passenger car with a large market base, the automatic transmission is more popular. The data shows that the automatic transmission based on AT (hydraulic automatic transmission) and CVT (continuously variable transmission) has increased from 32% in 2004 to 39% in 2008 in the passenger car market in China. . In 2008, the sales volume of passenger cars in China was about twice that of 2004.

With the rapid growth of market demand, the production of automatic transmissions in China is not satisfactory. The lack of autonomous products and the insufficiency of localized production of foreign-funded products have led to large reliance on imports for automatic transmissions. According to statistics, from 2001 to 2009, China's auto transmissions increased by an average annual rate of 28.9%, which greatly exceeds the average annual growth rate of the vehicle's imports. In 2009, the value of imported auto transmissions reached US$3.723 billion, a year-on-year increase of 26%. %.

The lack of core technology is the key "The development of automatic transmissions is difficult, and it is the last and most stubborn "position" for Chinese cars in the development of powertrain systems. The foreign companies' technical blockade against domestic companies is severe." Zhang Shulin, chairman and secretary-general and chief advisor to the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, said.

“Passenger vehicles are generally composed of several major systems such as bodywork, powertrain, chassis, and electrical and electronic systems. China’s automotive industry made breakthroughs in body technology earlier. In the 1990s, the past century (quotation image parameters) was accumulated through Sino-foreign joint ventures and cooperation. A group of talented people have mastered certain technologies, and as of the beginning of this century, the vehicle body development technology has matured.Before 2000, the development of the powertrain system represented by the engine has become the focus of China’s automobile industry. Currently, there are representative Both vehicle and engine companies have strong technical development capabilities. At this stage, the focus of technical research in the industry is on automatic transmissions.” Liu Minghui, vice-minister of basic research at FAW Technology Center, simplified the development of key automotive assembly in China. History, "At present, the domestic automatic transmission has a variety of technical routes, and its technological strength is far from that of foreign countries. There is no industrialization of independent products, including vehicle companies and independent transmission plants, and they do not have corresponding capabilities."

“The price of imported automatic transmissions is high and it is difficult for the self-owned branded vehicle companies that compete in the market to compete with cost advantages. Therefore, many self-owned brand models still rely on manual transmissions,” said Zhang Shulin.

"The lack of core technology has made the production of autonomous automatic transmissions in China basically in a blank space and does not pose any competitive pressure on imported automatic transmissions. This allows foreign-funded enterprises to have more choices in the industrial layout, and they can slow down the pace of localized production. While maintaining the core technology, it maintains high profits." Zhang Shulin said.

The status quo is difficult to change in the short-term. Facing the rapid expansion of the automatic transmission market, domestic companies are not inaction. In the past two years, news of industrialization of autonomous automatic transmissions has been frequently reported, including CVT and AMT (mechanical automatic transmission). However, from the current market performance of autonomous brand automatic transmissions, the status quo is not satisfactory.

“Autonomous automatic transmission is not a matter of good or bad, but whether it is a problem or not.” Shi Zhaoyao said, “At present, the current status of industrialization of various types of automatic transmissions developed by independent brand enterprises is not optimistic. China’s auto industry needs to develop and produce There is still a long way to go for a good automatic transmission, and the high value of transmission imports will continue in the future."

Globally renowned consulting company HIS Global Perspectives Corporation data show that as of 2009, China's own brand full vehicle automatic transmission fitting rate remained at about 10%, compared to no significant increase in previous years. However, HIS predicts that starting from 2010, the proportion of self-branded auto transmissions will increase year by year, reaching 30% by 2015. At the same time, the share of automatic transmissions in China's passenger car market will increase to 47%.

In the face of a huge market space, foreign-funded automatic transmission companies have begun to deploy in China. Many internationally renowned companies such as Gatco, Honda, and Marelli, Italy have successively established joint ventures or wholly-owned companies in China to achieve localized production of automatic transmissions. In May 2010, Volkswagen DSG (Dual Clutch Transmission) was officially put into operation at the Dalian plant.

Experts believe that the pace of foreign-funded transmission companies accelerating their local production in China will not change the status quo of the increase or maintenance of China’s transmission import value in the next few years. "The market is developing rapidly, and the proportion of the locally produced automatic transmissions and imported automatic transmissions will change, but the import value of transmissions will increase." Shi Zhaoyao believes.