China’s Automotive Industry Growing by Leaps and Bounds
2008-07-30 Source：english.chinabuses.com
Summarize：“China does not want to be an auto colony and depend on the West’s obsolete tooling; China wants to build its own auto industry,” reveals Tao, a plant manager.
To that end the central government ...
“China does not want to be an auto colony and depend on the West’s obsolete tooling; China wants to build its own auto industry,” reveals Tao, a plant manager.
To that end the central government intends to implement a policy that 50 per cent of all vehicles must be domestically made by 2010, including the technology that goes into the vehicles.
China’s auto industry started in 1953, when the First Automobile Works (FAW) was set up. In 1957 the first truck was made independently by China. In 1964 the first self-designed, developed and mass-produced automobile came from the Beijing Automobile Factory. By 1978, the Second Automobile Works and a group of components factories were built. China’s auto industry grew slowly but steadily until the early 1990s, mainly producing commercial vehicles.
Since joining the World Trade Organization, technology introduction and high-tech integration in China’s auto industry recorded remarkable progress. The proportion of sedans increased rapidly and improved greatly; Automobile manufacturing has become the pillar industry for China’s economy.
Remarkable mileposts occurred in growth – yearly production surpassed 1 million units in 1992 and 2 million in 2000; in 2008 production will top 10 million vehicles, half sedans, half commercial.
Three main auto makers dominate China, the First Automotive Works, Dongfeng Motor Corporation and Shanghai Automotive, and numerous joint ventures with ‘foreign’ car-makers add variety.
Chinese automobiles have been on display at auto shows around the world; the companies Geely, Chery and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp (SAIC), having bought the Rover assets, come to mind. China insists on lightweight, fuel-efficient and low-emission vehicles that would rival any vehicle in existence, or on the drawing board, around the world.
The first true ‘Hypercars’, perhaps?
China has “identified” the need for a plastic-bodied people’s car, and their investors approached a number of composites firms in the West, settling on Automotive Design & Composites (ADC). “We learned that the objective was to leap past existing automotive technology, because the Chinese are tired of having old tooling and vehicle designs dumped on them by other automakers. They want completely new technology to make a jump to modern day”, said ADC’s Michael Van Steenburg.
Now, equipped with state of the art composite technology, Chinese investors intend to change the way automobiles are built.
The planned new car, ‘Paradigm’, is an 850 kg mid-size, four-door hybrid-electric vehicle with a composite chassis and composite body. The chassis has evolved from a heavier and more time-consuming fiberglass chassis to the ‘pultruded’ version that is now over four times as strong, half the cost at just $600 and down to 38kg. (Pultrusion: A process for producing continuous fibers for advanced composites which involves pulling reinforcements through tanks of resins, a pre-former, and then a die, where the product is formed into its final shape.)
When the pultruded chassis is finished, a molded, thermoplastic body drops over the rails and is bonded in place, creating a uni-body with pultruded stiffeners. The interior is also plastic intensive. A pultruded seat frame is lighter than steel or aluminum and costs less. Polymer body panels for Paradigm are thermoformed with molded-in colors to eliminate the need to paint. Paradigm’s suspension is made of composite materials similar to the Corvette.
Generally, the use of polymers in vehicles has increased from les than 30 kg in 1970 to almost 200 kg. Examples are front and rear bumpers of most cars on the road. Saturn is using extremely resilient plastic panels on most exterior surfaces. Countless low-production cars have been made entirely of ‘fantastic plastic’.
Newer materials and methods now allow high-volume mass-production.
China is planning a new factory on 500 acres that will be surrounded by production facilities from 30 to 50 suppliers. It will have vacuum forming machines, extrusion machines, assembly robots – but only a few hundred workers producing almost 100,000 cars a year. Conversely, the production process can be scaled for micro-manufacturing plants, capable of building 1,200 vehicles a year from a 12,000 square-foot facility.
Plastic cars are no longer a possibility, but an assured reality from which we all will benefit, because they have demonstrated compelling advantages over traditional materials.
So much for the body, but what about the soul of the cars, the engine?
Plenty is published about diesel, bi-turbo or supercharged engines, about hybrid, battery and plug-in electric and ultimately fuel cell powertrains. We want more power with less fuel and no CO2 or other emissions.
What will it be? Every carmaker has a different plan; Hypercars will be as varied as birds.
For the centenary of the Model T, Ford has contracted with five Technical Universities around the world to develop a revolutionary vehicle concept for the 21st century, for the “sustainable solution to individual mobility”; a reliable, lightweight, two-passenger vehicle below seven thousand dollars.
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