Behind the heavy truck dilemma revealed the dawn


I. The unipolar pattern of the development of the truck industry in China has been broken, and the heavy truck industry has entered a period of rapid growth

Experience at home and abroad shows that economic growth, economic structure, road conditions and the intensity of competition in the transportation industry are the most important factors affecting the demand for heavy trucks. Due to the combined effects of the above factors, US heavy trucks emerged from the mid-1950s and experienced roughly two stages of development: the steady growth phase before 1974 and the fluctuation growth phase after 1975. As a whole, China is still in the midst of industrialization and urbanization. Therefore, in recent years, China’s economy has continued to grow rapidly, while the primary and secondary industries still maintain a relatively large proportion of output value; the total mileage of China’s highway network has also jumped. The world is in the forefront and has become a ring network; then the rapid development of the modern logistics industry has made the competition in the transportation industry more and more adequate, and the country’s “super cure” is gradually increasing. Together, these factors have given rise to major changes in China's transportation structure: the “unipolar” transport structure with medium- and light-duty trucks, especially light trucks, is undergoing dramatic changes, and the “two poles” of the development of trucks (ie, the trend towards lighter and heavyer Development) is gradually established.

One of the most obvious signs of a change in the truck industry is the rapid growth in the demand for heavy trucks with a distance of over 200km. There is a trend to replace medium trucks with heavy trucks (capacity above 15T). Although China's heavy trucks started late, but after the market acceptance test in the last decade of the 1990s, the heavy-duty truck market showed an explosive growth, and the market production and sales volume was less than 50,000 in 1999 and quickly enlarged to 2004. 350,000 vehicles. Although starting from last year, due to factors such as macro-control and production cost increase, the production and sales volume of heavy trucks have declined significantly. However, this adjustment is a temporary rational adjustment of the industry in response to the environment, certainly not a trend. Undoubtedly, with the continuous growth of China's economy during the “11th Five-Year Plan” period and the continuous advancement of industrialization and urbanization, the production and sales volume of heavy trucks will also continue to rise rapidly. For example, the famous Roland Berger International Consulting Company predicts that China's heavy trucks will grow at a rate of 15-20% from 2005-2008.

Second, the international heavy truck giants have marched down the city and are starting from their global strategy to accelerate their full integration of China's heavy truck industry and further control the Chinese market.

Faced with the rapid growth of China's heavy truck market and lucrative profit returns, major international heavy truck giants are entering China's heavy truck industry and heavy truck market in a variety of ways. China's heavy truck industry has emerged and the sedan industry has been dominated by foreign car giants. Similar situation. If Sinotruk cooperated with Austrian Steyr to produce heavy trucks, it signed a cooperation agreement with Volvo in 2003; FAW Group and Volvo cooperated to share China National Heavy Duty Engine Project; SAIC Huizhong signed cooperation with General Motors and Wuling The agreement was formally expanded from the field of passenger vehicles to heavy truck commercial vehicles; Dongfeng first cooperated with Nissan, and in 2003 it signed an engine production license agreement with Renault to produce Kerax trucks; Shaanxi Automobile Group and Cummins of the United States established a long-term strategic partnership. Relations, and Volvo, Germany's cooperation with the company is also in depth in depth; Beiqi Foton and Daimler - Chrysler reached a cooperation agreement; Qingling Group and the Mayling cooperation in the production of engines and the FORTRAN FORWARD series of heavy trucks and so on.

People in the industry believe that the current domestic market is at a critical point, and that market changes are conducive to the development of multinational companies. The advantages and influence of multinational companies and their partners in China's heavy truck industry are increasing. For example, Sinotruk and Shaanxi Auto, which have benefited from cooperation with multinational companies, have become dark horses in the heavy-duty truck market. The growth rate of production and sales in the past two years has been rapid, and it has already become the first phalanx in the industry.
The above indications indicate that in the heavy equipment manufacturing industry such as heavy trucks, the international giants are stepping up their own implementation of China's strategy, through acquisitions, joint ventures, and in-depth control of China's heavy equipment manufacturing industry and related markets including heavy trucks.

Third, the dawn behind the dilemma: China's heavy trucks are facing the gradient transfer of the heavy truck industry world-wide, and further dominating the world's historic opportunities!

Although the giants of international heavy trucks have come to power, they have set aside the fog. Is this not an international gradient transfer in the heavy truck industry? Isn't it hidden behind the huge historical opportunity that ordinary people can hardly see? In a comprehensive judgment, we have reason to cautiously draw an inspiring conclusion: China's heavy truck industry has initially assumed the conditions to undertake the gradient transfer of the world's heavy truck industry and then pass the internationalization strategy to rule the world. The first half of the conclusion can be seen clearly by the fact that international heavy truck giants have come to China for joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, but the latter part of the conclusion needs to be viewed with a profound historical perspective.

First, China's heavy truck industry has accumulated some advantages of further independent development and becoming bigger and stronger. First of all, China has established a complete heavy truck component system. For example, Dongfeng cooperates with Cummins of the United States to produce Dongfeng Cummins Engine; Shaanxi Automobile Group cooperates with France Fast to produce Fast Transmission; Weichai cooperates with Steyr Austria to produce Steyr engines; Valin Autonomous on Mitsubishi Technology Platform Heavy truck chassis was developed; Sinosteel and Steyr were joint ventures to introduce the Steyr platform. Secondly, China has trained a team of automotive technology developers whose quality is improving and has accumulated talent reserves for independent development of heavy trucks. This is a totally different joint venture with China's car industry when it was just started in the 1980s, and thus blocked the independent research and development of cars. Finally, China's heavy truck industry has a high rate of independent brands, and a group of heavy truck companies with independent innovation capabilities are rapidly emerging. According to the industry’s authoritative sources, China’s heavy truck industry’s self-owned brand rate is more than 60%, far higher than the auto brand’s own brand rate of 25%. For example, key enterprises in China's heavy-duty truck industry such as FAW, Dongfeng, CNHTC, Shaanxi Heavy Duty Truck, Chongqing Heavy Duty Truck and the newly emerging companies Hualing, Jianghuai and others have their own brands and corresponding development capabilities.

Second, the huge domestic market demand that has surfaced and is showing momentum of growth in volume will provide sufficient market base and capacity for the growth of China's heavy-duty truck industry. It will also provide heavy-duty truck companies with the ability to resist and absorb various potential market risks. Foothold.

Thirdly, the price advantage of domestic heavy trucks created by domestic and foreign price differences in the labor, land, and environmental factors will be gradually evolved into a strong competitive force in domestic and international market expansion of domestic heavy trucks.

Fourth, China's heavy truck industry through the internationalization strategy to highlight the three challenges facing the world

In terms of development trends, China’s heavy trucks will be the reshuffler for a new round of restructuring of the world’s heavy truck industry. However, this does not mean that China’s heavy trucks are already strong enough to subvert the current “world pattern” and does not mean that China’s heavy truck industry is international. The road to development has been smooth. In fact, there are still a series of difficulties and challenges waiting for the young Chinese heavy-duty card industry to overcome and resolve. To sum up, China’s heavy-duty truck industry is still facing three major challenges in order to gradually implement the international heavy truck industry's success through the internationalization of the market and the internationalization of production.

The challenge of core technologies and independent research and development capabilities is the first major challenge faced by China's heavy truck industry in fundamentally rewriting the world landscape. Automobiles are the products with the highest requirements for globalization, and they need to implement international standards in terms of safety, energy conservation, environmental protection, and recycling. For China's rising star of international heavy trucks, there is still a big gap between China heavy trucks and international brand heavy trucks in terms of fuel consumption, power, reliability, controllability, and comfort. At the same time, the lack of proprietary technology for heavy trucks in China has made the homogenization of products more and more serious. The heavy-duty truck market includes only a few series, such as the upgrade of the medium-sized cars of FAW Jiefang and Dongfeng, the Steyr series of 3 heavy-duty trucks, and the introduction of Mercedes-Benz technology of the North Mercedes-Benz. But whether it is the Steyr series or the liberation and east wind, how to further upgrade is something we cannot avoid. From the point of view of export strategy, China’s heavy trucks should currently export to countries with lower or lower economic development levels that have similar or even lower domestic demand for trucks, thus fully demonstrating the competitiveness of China’s heavy trucks. However, this is only the internationalization of China's heavy truck primary stage. If we want to achieve the internationalization of the export strategy upgrade into the advanced stage, thereby accelerating the development of the international market including developed countries such as Europe and the United States, our country's heavy truck industry must rely on price advantage to seek The transformation of quality advantage, through the integration with the international advanced level and even leading international standards, to fully participate in international competition and lead the international heavy truck market. Undoubtedly, this qualitative change that fundamentally stimulates the world's heavy truck structure will be a severe test for China's heavy truck independent research and development capabilities.

The second major challenge is the challenge in the development capabilities of the international market. In recent years, as domestic heavy truck companies have begun to implement their internationalization strategies, many auto companies have flocked to export, and the export target markets have been abnormally homogenous and overlapping. Export destinations are mainly concentrated in developing countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South America. And area. This highly overlapping target market and customer base eventually led to the rapid growth of domestic competition among domestic heavy truck manufacturers. The complications of excessive competition, low-price competition, and market chaos began to appear gradually; the more serious problem is that Many heavy-duty truck companies have no long-term export plans. They engage in a one-hundred-thousand-dollar trade, have no integrity, let alone have a good after-sales service. As a result, selling a little product makes us lose a little money, but it fundamentally worsens us. Heavy truck products' international image and international competitiveness. Therefore, there are two key points in the second challenge: First, we must rationally develop the international market. We must be disciplined and orderly, have a long-term perspective, and must not resort to vicious competition by our own people, and do not short-sightedly engage in one-shot sales; Due to the heavy colors of heavy-duty trucks' production materials, from a strategic marketing point of view, marketing activities and market development have not yet come to an end immediately after the products are sold to customers. At this time, convenient parts supply and a good after-sales service system should be immediately available. Imported to maintain customer relationships, and to create system value services for customers while gradually accumulating customer satisfaction and loyalty. To illustrate the gap between us and the international giants in terms of strategic expansion in the international market, to illustrate the development of the international market: As a loyal user of Volvo Trucks, Baohua Logistics, headquartered in Zhenjiang, signed another Volvo truck in March this year. The pen purchases 100 contracts for heavy trucks and plans to increase this figure to 500 in the near future. According to a person in charge of Baohua Logistics, before making a purchase decision, the company inspected almost all brands of truck dealers, but after a few comparisons, Volvo’s “Full Gold Process” comprehensive logistics solution successfully attracted the majority of companies. Domestic truck dealers sell only trucks, while Volvo sells methods that allow companies to operate safely and efficiently.

Under the premise of an irrational enterprise scale structure and low concentration of industries, how to speed up mergers and reorganizations to promote the industry consolidation of the domestic heavy truck industry is the third serious challenge faced by China's heavy truck industry. At present, the scale of China's auto industry is still relatively fragmented. Among the more than 200 vehicle manufacturers, there are more than 100 of them with an annual output of 10,000 or less. The sum of the largest five total productions is not equal to the total production volume of an international giant. According to customs statistics in 2005, there were 1,025 full-scale automobile export enterprises in China last year, of which, there were more than 600 companies that exported less than 10 cars, and 160 companies that only exported one car. Similarly, the problem of low capacity, unreasonable scale structure, and low concentration of industries in the heavy truck industry in China is also quite prominent. Taking the sales of domestic heavy trucks last year as an example: Dongfeng Corporation ranked first in sales of 18,852 vehicles, taking away 27.11% of the market; Beiqi Foton ranked second, selling 11,123 vehicles, with 17.04% market share; FAW The Group ranked third, sold 10,464 vehicles and had a market share of 15.89%; Shaanxi Zhongqi and Sinotruk also had a certain market share. It can be seen that the sales scale of the top three domestic heavy trucks is still far less than that of international giants such as Daimler-Chrysler, Volvo/Renault, Paccar, and Wuling, which are more than 100,000 vehicles. It is difficult to compete with these international giants. We compete in the deep-water area of ​​the highly competitive international market. In the face of an increasingly fierce international competition environment, how does China's heavy truck industry learn to do a good job of internationalized capital management while doing a good job of internationalized product management and implement strategic operations and optimize resources, especially international excellence, through mergers and reorganizations and industrial integration? The strategic allocation of resources in order to enhance the scale of the company and industrial concentration, and then enhance the competitiveness of the international market is particularly necessary! Through this effective way to achieve rapid expansion of enterprises and international operations, domestic heavy truck companies with leading position can break through the barriers of R&D capabilities and sales channels in the development process, and eventually integrate and command the entire heavy truck industry in the international scope. chain.

The author Lu Zhuoming is a Ph.D. student in National Economics at Guanghua School of Management, Peking University.



Reducing

Large Diameter Welding Reducer,Special For Marine Outfitting,High-Pressure Reducer,Head Reducer Available

TAIXING HAITAI GLOBAL TRADE CO.,LTD , https://www.jshaitship.com