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Reported by China Bus website: Hunan CSR Times Electric Vehicles Co., LTD. has been officially changed to “Hunan CRRC Times Electric Vehicles Co., LTD., simply called “CRRC TEV”. Meanwhile, the company logo is adjusted from “CSR” to “CRRC”.
In fact, after the incorporation of CRRC by merging CSR and CNR (China Northern Locomotive and Rolling Stock Industry (Group) Corporation), change of name and logo is only part of the adjustment. “Of course, there is deeper meaning.” Said Li Qunbo, deputy general manager of CRRC TEV, “This name change shows the great importance attached to the new energy vehicle industry by CRRC Group and also its hope to build the new energy vehicle industry as another ‘Gold Business Card’ besides rail transport.”
For building this “Gold Business Card”, CRRC TEV seems every confident. Li Qunbo discloses, by the end of the “13th Five-Year Plan” and the year of 2020, CRRC TEV plans to realize an industrial scale of 10 billion yuan.
In the matchmaking meeting of Hunan new energy vehicle industry, the deputy general manager of CRRC TEV, Li Qunbo, is reporting to the leader of Commission of Economy and Informatization.
Cost Reduction
Currently, new energy vehicle industry faces new development situation. On one hand, the reduction of state financial subsidies forces the company to consider its survival. On the other hand, high manufacturing costs restrict its market competitiveness. Meanwhile, along with factors such as technical and price competition, the complete vehicle enterprises continuously adjust strategic plans to adapt to the changes of markets.
As a matter of fact, new energy vehicle industry is still in the period of transforming from infancy to industrialization. The formation of this situation is more like the strategy of companies to seek to expand market share. Seeing from the ratio of traditional vehicles in the whole market is over 95%, the market space for new energy vehicle has great potential.
For this, as a new energy vehicle manufacturer, like most companies, CRRC is considering how to decrease cost, so as to reduce its dependency on subsidy policy and further capture the market high ground. “CRRC TEV launched a major initiative”, introduced Li Qunbo, “By integrating the existing resources and facing the whole industry chain, we can pull the overall cost down.” In his opinion, maturity of the industry chain is a measure to show the effectiveness of downslope financial subsidies, and also the basis for companies within the industry to continue to open up markets. Therefore, CRRC focuses on every link of the new energy vehicle industry chain, “not the whole vehicle, but the whole industry chain.” He emphasized again.
Motor and Controller by Independent Research and Development of CRRC TEV
It is understood that currently CRRC has basically formed a manufacturing system for elements and components, key parts like electrical motor control, powertrain platform and whole vehicles, and introduced the cloud platform technology to improve product identification. In terms of production scale, from several data, we can see the idea of CRRC to arrange the whole industry chain,: invest in and build manufacturing bases for new energy Buses, with an annual capacity to produce 10000 whole vehicles and 20000 sets of systems and key parts; benefiting from lean management, present production capacity reaches 30 sets/day, 6 times of original production efficiency 5 sets/day; CRRC Zhuzhou, the parent company of CRRC TEV, built a IGBT production line, the fourth such line in the world, filling the gap of independently producing IGBT in China; meanwhile, the industrialized base for drive motors was also completed in 2015.
In addition, he thinks, the mass and standardized production, complementary to cost reduction, is also worth of study. For example, accessories, including whole vehicle controllers, can realize cost reduction by standardized operations.
Alliance between Giants
“Jointly reducing cost by alliance between giants is also a way.” Li Qunbo pointed out that alliance between giants is not only restricted to technology upgrade and can better achieve win-win for both parties on level of economic benefits and markets.
Deputy general manager of CRRC TEV, Li Qunbo, being interviewed at matchmaking meeting of Hunan new energy vehicles
On 29 April, 2016, CRRC TEV and Hunan Corun New Energy Co., LTD. signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement. The agreement content is that both parties will jointly promote the 5000 sets of hybrid buses that are equipped with Corun nickel-hydrogen battery within 3 years.
“By directly cooperating with upstream companies and jointly reducing costs, the effect is obvious.” Said Li Qunbo.
As a matter of fact, CRRC and Corun has a long history of cooperation. In 2009, both parties united Central South University, Hunan University and Hunan Vaquong in establishing Hunan Province Electric Vehicle Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance, and declared Hunan Province Technology Project Development of All-electric Drive Electric Buses and Key Components. Afterwards, CRRC TEV developed two types of hybrid city buses equipped with Corun-powered battery, which entered the announcement and recommendation list of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
This cooperation, with both parties making use of their own resource advantages and strengthening their cooperation in products and markets, just confirms the win-win opinions of Li Qunbo, and is the strategic reflection of CRRC deploying the whole industry chain.
Make Foundation Solid
Since 2016, industry experts repeated stress the focus on technical quality. How to reduce costs and ensure quality when faced with market temptation is worth deep thinking. Li Qunbo also thinks, “The development of new energy vehicles is not a competition form of purely reducing costs, or with the sacrifice of production quality and technological innovation.”
CRRC TEV united about a dozen of companies in Hunan for jointly building Hunan Province New Energy Vehicle Industry Technology Alliance
CRRC has been ensuring product quality with high-speed-train-level technical level and has obtained the standard certification of many quality systems. In terms of service, CRRC has learned lots of experience from big events such as 2008 Beijing Olympics and Shang Expo, and successfully expand from Hunan Province to over 20 other provinces. All these has laid a solid foundation for CRRC TEV to expand the whole industry chain.
It is worth mentioning that, not long ago, CRRC TEV and Canada Loop Energy fuel cell company signed a drive system product development agreement in US, and jointly launched large-scale fuel-cell logistical vehicles. This is the first time China exports fuel cell system products to a European/American county.
CRRC always maintains the vitality of innovation to pursue technical quality. Take the core product, the independently developed pure ePower pure electric drive system as an example. It has experienced four generations of upgrading. Compared with previous three generations, the new generation drive system has features such as permanent magnet, highly integrated control, interconnectedness and intelligence, total weight reduced by 30% and energy consumption reduced by 50%, and its safety protection performance has reached the military product level. It is revealed that the CRRC 5th generation pure electrically driven system project development has come close to an end. The completion of this project will bring new structure to the whole industry.
Actually, about “basis”, CRRC has a wider sense of understanding. CRRC united a dozen of companies in Hunan Province for creating Hunan Province New Energy Vehicle Technology Alliance, so as to promote the objective of new energy vehicles “Made in Hunan, Having Hunan Core”.
New Products of CRRC TEV
It is not difficult to see that CRRC is playing a chess game with a larger pattern. In this chess game, Li Qunbo uses “high quality” to describe CRRC TEV, and proposes the idea of “Based in Hunan, Facing China and Going All over the World”. Meanwhile, he hopes more excellent companies like CRRC can participate in this chess game and play against each other, forming market rules and value system, finally achieving the healthy development of the whole industry chain, and guiding the faster and better development of China’s new energy vehicle industry.