Rebirth 99 to become a car giant.

Chapter 275 Can’t even get a stabilizer bar?

In 2004, the localization rate was still a topic that every joint venture car company would pay attention to when reporting internally.

However, as the models launched by various car companies all meet the standards, the importance of this data is slowly declining.

For a Chinese private enterprise like Xingchen Automobile, normally no one cares about your localization rate.

But if the boss has a request, someone will naturally take care of it.

Not to mention that the parts purchased directly cannot be imported from overseas. Even some parts purchased from China are also hoped to be 100% truly domestically produced as much as possible.

Obviously, there are difficulties and difficulties, so there are such requirements and goals.

Otherwise, who would care about this data?

"Minister, I'm not quibbling. In fact, the hollow stabilizer bars produced by any domestic stabilizer bar manufacturer are all imported from abroad, without exception."

"We found Deutsche Mubea and ThyssenKrupp, as well as Japan's Yangcheng Rizheng, plus local enterprises Yangcheng Huade and Huaxia Spring Factory, five suppliers to compete for quotations."

"Although the prices of the latter two are relatively cheap, they have never done the business of hollow stabilizer bars. I think the prices have no reference value."

"The hollow tubes of the first three companies are either imported from Germany or Japan. There is no domestically available tube material that can be used as a hollow stabilizer bar."

Lu Feng, the buyer in charge of chassis parts, is giving Su Mingxing a report on the localization of parts.

Most of the parts in the chassis field are made of iron.

With the cooperation of Nanshan Special Steel, basically no materials need to be imported.

But I didn't expect that a part like the hollow stabilizer bar, which doesn't look that complicated, would fall apart.

This made Su Mingxing a little annoyed.

Lu Feng also felt a little wronged. It was not his fault.

After searching all the manufacturers in China, no one has domestic hollow pipes. So what can I do?

"Isn't it just a pipe?"

"Is it that difficult?"

“Why does everyone need to import?”

Su Mingxing suppressed his anger and prepared to clarify the situation first.

"Minister, before answering this question, let me briefly introduce the situation of the stabilizer bar."

"The function of the stabilizer bar is to prevent the car from rolling over when turning or when the left/right wheels are subject to different loads, and to improve the car's operational stability."

"At the same time, it can also improve the ride comfort of the car."

"The current stabilizer bars mainly come in two specifications: solid and hollow."

"Based on the stress characteristics of the stabilizer bar in actual work, the institute designed it as a hollow stabilizer bar, which can achieve a weight reduction of about 40%."

"The stabilizer bar of a car can be said to be a part that survives in the cracks. Usually, the spatial arrangement of the stabilizer bar needs to be completed after the spatial arrangement of the subframe, steering gear, swing arm, shock absorber and other parts is completed."

"In order to meet the safe clearance distance from surrounding parts, most automobile stabilizer bars have different shapes and bends."

"This hollow stabilizer bar with a complex shape needs to meet 20 durability tests under specific experimental conditions, which requires it to have high strength and low stress."

"And it must meet the design requirements for stiffness and cannot break under the conditions of the ultimate test."

"And for the purpose of weight reduction, the wall thickness cannot be set too high."

"As a result, the tube manufacturing process of the hollow stabilizer bar is very complicated."

"And the processing of hollow stabilizer bars is also different from that of solid stabilizer bars."

“The solid stabilizer bar is thermoformed and requires a special thermoforming machine to bend the stabilizer bar, and then undergoes heat treatments such as quenching and tempering, while the hollow stabilizer bar is cold-bent based on the spatial direction of the stabilizer bar. Then there are processes like heat treatment.”

"This cold bending process also has very high requirements for the pipe, otherwise it will break or have some hidden defects if you are not careful."

"So if we want to achieve localization, we must either change to a solid stabilizer bar, or we can only import pipes from abroad."

Lu Feng obviously made a lot of preparations.

For the parts he was responsible for, he personally went to several manufacturers to conduct on-site research. After confirming that there was really no way to localize the parts, he could confidently report to Su Mingxing.

"According to your statement, there is no way to domestically produce hollow stabilizer tubes. The main reason is that the domestic tube manufacturing process is not up to par?"

After listening to Lu Feng's explanation, Su Mingxing basically understood the current situation.

But if you understand it, you understand it. Whether you accept it or not is another matter.

"Yes!"

"With a simple hollow stabilizer bar base material, Nanshan Special Steel can produce products that meet the requirements."

“But I couldn’t find a suitable pipe manufacturer.”

"With such high-strength carbon steel, it is very difficult to produce small-diameter pipes."

"This tube also needs to be cold-bent into a stabilizer bar with complex shapes, and the requirements for the tube have been raised several levels."

"Otherwise, manufacturers like Mubea and ThyssenKrupp would not choose to import."

"Even a few years ago, the hollow stabilizer bars common to Spring City Volkswagen and Modu were directly imported from overseas."

"Now it has at least evolved to the point where pipes are imported and the assemblies are processed in domestic factories."

Lu Feng explained further.

However, when he said this, Su Mingxing immediately thought of another question and said, "There should be many places on our chassis that need to use pipes, right?"

"For example, some components on the steering column are made of pipes, and even the shock absorbers also need to use pipes."

"Isn't there a demand for pipes in other parts, such as dashboard beams and seat frames?"

"Don't all these pipes need to be imported from overseas?"

When Su Mingxing asked this question, Lu Feng immediately felt guilty.

How do you answer this question?

It is not a part that I am responsible for. If my answer causes them to add additional reporting work, they will definitely be complained by then, right?

After all, whether it is a seat frame or a shock absorber, there are many components on it.

Under normal circumstances, Su Mingxing would not pay attention to a single pipe part.

Regardless of the hollow stabilizer bar, [-]% of the cost is in the pipe. It is difficult to avoid this problem.

"I'll confirm this again."

Even if he didn't answer, Lu Feng had no choice but to resort to delaying tactics.

However, Su Mingxing did not intend to let this matter go.

Instead, after finishing this report, he went to find Xie Lingyun of Nanshan Special Steel.

……

"Mr. Su, are you suggesting that we set up another pipe-making factory?"

Xie Lingyun is also a member of the Xingchen 1 new model project team, and he is relatively familiar with the development of new models.

"Yes!"

"Lightweighting of cars will be a general direction in the future, and more and more parts will take this aspect into consideration when designing."

"If you design parts such as stabilizer bars to be solid, the weight of a bar may reach 6 kilograms, but if it is made hollow, 4 kilograms or even lighter can meet the requirements."

"Counting the front and rear poles, the lightweight effect is still worth looking forward to."

"In addition to the hollow stabilizer bar, there are many places on the entire vehicle that also require the use of pipes."

"Our pipe-making factory can even consider making stainless steel pipes in addition to steel pipes, and get back this part of the profit."

When Su Mingxing explained this, Xie Lingyun was also a little moved.

As the general manager of Nanshan Special Steel, he naturally hopes to make the company larger.

But according to his understanding, Cao Yang should have no intention of expanding the production capacity of special steel plants in the near future.

In this way, it is worth considering from another dimension and building a pipe making factory.

For Xie Lingyun, who is proficient in steelmaking, the pipe-making process is no stranger.

It's basically a matter of a pipe making machine. Nanshan Equipment may be able to help with the design.

There is even a pipe-making factory. In addition to using the steel pipes produced by Nanshan Special Steel, it can also make full use of Shaogang's production capacity to process some relatively ordinary carbon steel into pipes.

After all, for most pipes, the base material does not need to have very high properties.

This can be regarded as a disguised expansion of Nanshan Special Steel's business.

"Hollow stabilizer bar pipes have not been domestically produced for so many years. It is estimated that there are some unique difficulties in the pipe manufacturing process that we have not mastered."

"If the situation in this regard is not clarified and we rashly propose to the group to open a new factory, it is estimated that it will not be approved."

Although Xie Lingyun also knows some basic knowledge about pipe construction, he is not specialized in this after all.

So even if he was a little tempted, he would not immediately agree to Su Mingxing's suggestion.

"Mr. Xie, your concerns are indeed justified."

"However, I think the lack of localization in the past was more due to various coincidences."

"Early models generally used solid and stable ones, and there was no need for this."

"It is only in the past few years that more and more models have begun to be equipped with hollow stabilizer bars. It is not surprising that domestic pipe manufacturers have not caught up in time."

"In other words, for some pipe manufacturers, it is more profitable and easier to produce ordinary large pipes. Why produce such pipes that require high technical difficulty and the demand is not that big?"

Su Mingxing obviously still wanted to persuade Xie Lingyun to take the initiative to approach Cao Yang about setting up a pipe factory.

As long as this pipe-making factory is established, the relevant pipes for Xingchen Automobile can be domestically produced.

Even Nanshan Auto Parts can further utilize these pipes and produce some parts by itself.

For example, for hollow stabilizer bars, domestic manufacturers still need to use imported materials, and there is definitely no cost advantage.

Can Nanshan Auto Parts work harder to capture this market?

"Su Bu, your analysis makes sense."

"I'll arrange for someone to go investigate with your purchasing department to see if a pipe-making factory needs to be set up and whether it can be set up."

……

"Lu Gong, it's not that we don't cooperate, it's just that we can't find pipes that meet SPEC requirements in China, so we import them from Deutsche Mubea."

"As for our current quotation, I dare not say it is the lowest, but it should be quite competitive in the industry."

"As far as I know, ThyssenKrupp's factories in China also use pipes imported from Germany."

“I guess their pipes are more expensive per kilogram than ours.”

Qian Jun, Mubea's sales manager, seemed very confident at this time.

Before entering the Chinese market, they also investigated the situation of China's automobile suspension spring and hollow stabilizer bar business.

Except for the competitiveness of Thyssen, they feel that they have no rivals in the industry.

Even in terms of hollow stabilizer bars, they have done some cost comparisons themselves and feel that the current price is enough to obtain orders from OEMs such as Volkswagen and General Motors.

Xingchen Automobile, a newly established local company, has a planned output of only 1 units.

The price I gave is already very good.

Now I still dislike this and that, and want to force myself to find a domestic stabilizer bar manufacturer.

They were even asked to submit a report explaining the differences between the hollow pipes they used and those in China.

Mubea was naturally unwilling to respond to these requirements.

"I understand what you're saying."

"Hollow stabilizer bars are a relatively cutting-edge technological application, and the experience accumulation of various domestic manufacturers is indeed lagging behind."

"But I think the future trend is definitely to achieve 100% localization."

"You also know very well that compared with labor costs in Europe, domestic labor costs are not at the same order of magnitude."

"The same parts produced in China are definitely cheaper than in Europe."

"I even think that after it is produced in China, it can be exported to Europe."

The localization of hollow stabilizer bars cannot be completed in a short period of time, but Lufeng's work has not stopped.

On the one hand, we need to find ways to reduce costs.

After all, the important purpose of 100% localization is mainly due to cost considerations at this stage.

The issue of supply is not that sensitive yet.

On the other hand, Nanshan Special Steel has begun a project review of the pipe making plant.

Nanshan Equipment is even preparing to launch a research and development project for pipe making equipment.

Because after a round of investigation, I found that all the pipe-making equipment used by domestic pipe-making manufacturers is imported.

Even one with relatively low technical content costs several million per unit.

As for some more difficult and high-tech pipe-making production lines such as stainless steel pipe making, each one costs more than 1000 million.

But in the eyes of many people at Nanshan Equipment, building pipelines is actually not that complicated.

As long as the welding parameters and roll forming parameters are set, the other costs are very low.

A pipe-making production line worth 1000 million yuan, even if it is sold for 800 million yuan, will still make at least 200% profit.

This business can be done.

"I understand what you said, but at this stage we have no way to do more."

"If the demand for hollow rods in China increases in the future, maybe the headquarters will consider investing in a pipe making production line in China."

"In the short term, we will definitely continue to use imported materials."

Qian Jun's attitude was already a little impatient.

The orders Mubea currently receives are mainly from European and American manufacturers such as Volkswagen, BMW, and General Motors.

For projects of China's own brands, currently very few hollow stabilizer bars are used.

It can even be said that there is no one at all.

That is to say, Xingchen Automobile was the first to propose the use of hollow stabilizer bars, so both Mubea and ThyssenKrupp just want to win this first place.

"If we go to your pipe-making factory in Germany to confirm various production processes and ensure that the performance of the parts meets the drawing requirements, is it convenient for your company to arrange it?"

Lu Feng knew that there would be no results if the discussion continued, so he changed the question to a new one.

If Nanshan Special Steel wants to build a pipe-making factory, it would be best to see how others do it.

When the time comes, if you can learn from others, the difficulty of doing it will be reduced a lot.

After all, no domestic manufacturer can produce this kind of pipe material for stabilizer bars.

It is probably of little significance to learn from domestic production lines.

Besides, German steel pipe manufacturers, whether Mubea or ThyssenKrupp, are indeed world-class.

Not to mention anything else, the barrel of the Krupp cannon is the most convincing evidence.

"I need to ask for advice on this, but I can't answer you right now."

"But our steel pipes in Germany have been used in many European car companies. Xingchen Motors actually doesn't need to worry."

Qian Jun couldn't help complaining, wondering why Lu Feng was so troubled.

"Then please help us communicate. Our quality and R&D department want to go to the site to confirm so that further testing can be carried out."

Lu Feng felt the other party's impatience and did not continue to ask further.

However, what he didn't expect was a hollow stabilizer bar, and there were more and more things happening behind it.

"Mr. Cao, there seems to be no problem with these process parameters. We can now arrange for personnel to start producing the pipe making machine."

Unless it's something trivial, it's rare for things within the Nanshan Group not to be reported to Cao Yang.

Things like reviewing and developing a brand new piece of equipment or building a new factory will naturally be reported to Cao Yang as soon as possible.

Otherwise, if your boss doesn’t agree and you start investing resources in this area, what do you want to do?

After hearing the idea of ​​Nanshan Equipment, Cao Yang directly set several key parameters for the pipe making machine proposed by the other party within a few days, and also gave out the drawings of the most critical welding machine.

As for where these drawings came from, Pan Jinxing did not ask.

Even if I asked Cao Yang, he wouldn't answer.

In Pan Jinxing's view, Cao Yang should have trained a group of commercial spies who were able to obtain information from some manufacturers.

In other words, Cao Yang arranged for people to use illegal means to buy these drawings.

"Although the pipe-making machine is not a large-volume piece of equipment, if the pipe-making needs of all walks of life are gathered together, the demand will be very considerable."

"All automobile exhaust pipes require the use of a large amount of stainless steel pipes, and this market will not be small."

"There is also a demand for pipes for various hollow stabilizer bars, dashboard beams, seat frames, shock absorbers and other parts. If it can be provided domestically, I think the relevant OEMs will be interested."

"In addition, if the steel pipes used in various pipelines can also use our equipment, then the demand can be expanded many times."

"This pipe-making equipment shouldn't be that difficult for ordinary ones."

"For very small pipes and very large pipes, the pipe-making equipment they use is the most difficult."

What Nanshan Equipment does best now is presses, which can basically be said to be the best in the world.

Then, in terms of various machine tools and equipment, it has been able to meet most of Nanshan's own needs, and the next step is to prepare for external promotion.

But overall, the presence of Nanshan Equipment in the industry is far lower than that of Nanshan Auto Parts.

Cao Yang obviously also wants Nanshan Equipment to keep up with the group's development pace.

If Nanshan Group wants to completely become the backbone of China's automobile industry, it will definitely not be enough to build cars alone.

The production of various parts and components is only a supplement.

The production equipment and materials of related parts and components are actually more critical core technologies.

Just like presses, Nanshan Equipment can produce various excellent PRG presses and TRF presses, which means that Nanshan actually has a deep grasp of the technology of stamping parts.

Otherwise, you won't be able to produce a good press at all.

"Mr. Cao, speaking of this, I have a suggestion."

Pan Jinxing thought about the promotion of various equipment and thought he could take this opportunity to raise it.

"Now the sales of each company are basically managed by the group in a unified way."

"Of course this has certain benefits, but as more and more products are sold, factories often need to have their own sales in order to better promote products to customers."

"So I think in terms of sales business, the group can have someone specifically responsible for connecting with the sales departments of each branch, but the specific customer follow-up is the responsibility of each factory itself."

"Even in addition to the research and development of some basic sciences and cutting-edge technologies, the research and development work of the group research institute can also be divided into various branches."

"As long as the headquarters takes care of human resources, procurement and finance, other specific tasks will be left to the corresponding departments of the branches."

Pan Jinxing is not a power-loving person.

He knew that Cao Yang knew his character.

Otherwise, we would not dare to propose such a bold plan.

After all, this plan intends to increase the power of the heads of each branch.

"The sales are handled by each branch. I don't think it's a big problem. We can do this first."

"But in terms of research and development, because different branches will use a lot of similar technologies, the group research institute will coordinate and coordinate, so the efficiency will be higher."

"Of course, the general manager or deputy general manager of each branch can concurrently hold a position in the corresponding project team of the research institute to facilitate and timely grasp the progress of research and development. This is also necessary."

Cao Yang is not the kind of person who can't listen to other people's opinions.

Nor is he someone who does whatever others say.

Pan Jinxing's suggestion made sense and he directly adopted it.

If it felt inappropriate, a more flexible solution was used to deal with it.

Pan Jinxing didn't have any objections to this.