Every emission upgrade will promote technological upgrading, and the most stringent emission standard ever, the Euro VII emission standard, is expected to be implemented in 2025, and many industry insiders said that this set of standards is already challenging the limits of the internal combustion engine, and may become the biggest obstacle to the subsequent development of the internal combustion engine.
In the face of such strict emission regulations and various opportunities that may arise in the future, many manufacturers have quietly begun to lay out their own industrial chains and seek not to fall behind in the possible future technological competition.
Earlier this year, Cummins spent $3.7 billion to acquire Michi, not only to acquire advanced axle technology and braking technology, but also to successfully achieve a layout in the field of new energy drives with the electric drive axle technology owned by Mánch.
Coupled with the previous joint venture between Cummins and Eaton, it is possible to integrate the engine and transmission. Under such a series of layouts, Cummins has a complete power chain, and the three most important parts of the truck, the machine, box and bridge can be controlled by themselves, which is not only more convenient for the overall matching, but also more confident in the face of more unknown competition in the future market.
○ Figure 丨 are all bo
In addition to the layout of the three major parts, Cummins also acquired a leading supplier of engine braking, cylinder stop, start-stop and thermal management technology this year, further strengthening its advantages in the field of internal combustion engines and helping Cummins continue to develop products with market-leading technology and emission advantages.
In recent years, these large-scale investments can be seen that Cummins is constantly building its own moat, no matter how the future world changes, Cummins has enough ability to cope, but also to give major OEMs more powerful technical support.
Coincidentally, ZF, a giant automotive supplier in the European market, has also been continuously laying out the industrial chain in recent years. In 2015, ZF acquired the TRW Automotive Group for US$12.9 billion, becoming the world's top component supplier, and in 2020, ZF officially completed the acquisition of WABCO for US$7 billion, strengthening its technology in electronic braking, stability control and suspension control systems in the vehicle sector.
For the field of commercial vehicles, WABCO's electronic brake safety system is the first choice for many high-end heavy trucks in China, and at the same time in the field of automatic transmissions, there are also a large number of products in China that use WABCO solutions, it can be said that WABCO in these segments, the leading position of technology is unshakable.
○ Figure丨 ZF and WABCO are combined to completely master the technology of chassis components except for the engine
The acquisition and integration of leading parts suppliers by these parts giants not only helps to expand their product series, but more importantly, through the acquisition of parts suppliers in other fields, further fill their own shortcomings, carry out technological complementarity, and achieve the effect of 1+1>2 in market share and manufacturer matching, which can not only enhance the advantages in future technology and product competition, but also play a huge value in business collaboration and build a more stable moat.
For the industry, the combination of strong and powerful is also more conducive to technological innovation, facing the more stringent emission policies in the future, the performance of trucks with higher requirements can be more easily achieved, to meet the future requirements for environmental protection, transportation efficiency, and energy consumption.
As for the product level, for example, the completion and maturity of the machine (Cummins engine), the box (Eaton transmission) and the bridge (Mei chi axle) owned by Cummins will also be upgraded to a level, so that it can more easily match the whole vehicle and ensure the economy, reliability and power, eliminating a lot of workload of the vehicle company.
It is good for the industry, but it is a crisis for domestic truck manufacturers
The acquisition and integration of head parts suppliers is a good thing for them for the industry, but for domestic vehicle companies and parts suppliers, there is a hidden crisis.
Domestic heavy trucks in the engine matching can be Bo exhaust brake, brake system matching WABCO ABS/ EBS, automatic transmission using WABCO to provide liberation solutions and automatic control components, which are very common configurations in the industry, before being acquired, these suppliers as independent enterprises, but also easier to cooperate, and even share a part of the technology, so that domestic parts suppliers, automakers to develop rapidly.
For example, in the field of automatic transmissions, due to the rapid development of the control system provided by WABCO, the assembly volume of automatic transmissions on domestic heavy trucks has also increased steadily in recent years.
But after being acquired, WABCO can still provide technical support and products to domestic parts and components companies so simply? Does ZF not want to increase its market share in China? It all depends on what these head part suppliers think.
In fact, far more than the automatic transmission control mechanism, exhaust braking system, braking system these need to rely on European and American parts suppliers to provide, in the domestic is the field of commercial vehicles, high-pressure common rail system, fuel injector, urea injection system, chip, more or less have European and American parts and components enterprises involved, these core technologies, in fact, we do not fully grasp, in the context of the integration of European and American parts suppliers, the domestic commercial vehicle industry is facing will not be an opportunity, more should be a crisis.
The concept of mastering core technology has been said for many years, but how much can it really be mastered? In recent years, the upgrade of domestic commercial vehicle products in terms of comfort, safety and power configuration has been obvious to all, but how many of these core technologies are ours? In addition to these superficial upgrades, in fact, we should pay more attention to the upgrading of some core components on some vehicles, which is the basic disk of competition in the future. (Text/Chen Fengchuan)