Heavy-duty truck sector enters new growth era

• Source: Ce.cn
• [14:30 May 06 2009]
• Comments

By Li Tiezheng

In traditional heavy-duty truck producing workshops, it must be dim and dirty everywhere, with workers being stained with filth on their faces and bodies. Due to the less technology content than sedans, heavy-duty truck gives us a "silly, huge, dirty and rough" impression from the producing mode to product. However, walking into the workshop of Jiangbei Heavy-duty Truck production base newly built in Chongqing by SAIC-Iveco Hongyan Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd., the correspondent's face was suddenly brightened. Even if all lights shut off, the modern single layer zigzag-shaped factory buildings can keep necessary brightness in the room; in the workshops, the light-green floor is accompanied with the milk-yellow walls spotlessly; on different working positions, numerous robots dances flexibly and precisely along with the background music, which seems like a world of transformers. Soon after its trial operation in January 2009, this only modern, automatic production base in China realized fineness, agility, flexibility, and modularity, that is to say, it can produce world-level heavy-duty trucks just as they produce cars, and the design capacity reaches up to 40,000 sets annually. The base has also an engine factory with a design capacity of 200,000 sets, which is oriented to both the domestic and international markets.

Insiders commended that the birth of the SAIC Iveco Hongyan base not only showed the fundamental change of the heavy-duty truck manufacturing level, but also will drive the Hongyan Factory, which has ever ranked the seventh in the industry previously, to the first legion, or we can say it will become a black horse in the heavy-duty truck industry in China.

Heavy-duty truck refers to cargo vehicles with the load capacity over 15 tons. The industry is small. Even in the peak season, the domestic market capacity is only 500,000 odd sets, and there are only 20 around manufacturers in China. Except those manufacturers in the first legion such as SINOTRUCK, Dongfeng, Jiefang have an annual output over 100,000 sets, Shaanxi Automobile Group, Auman of over 50,000 sets, Beiben, Hongyan of 20,000 sets, other manufacturers only produce around 10,000 or thousands sets of trucks annually. According to the technological features, modern trucks must have the top 4-gate cam, common rail, and variable geometry turbocharger and rear transmission. However, Chinese heavy-duty truck industry is just beginning along this road. SAIC-Iveco Hongyan Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. has begun to overall introduce the world's most advanced heavy-duty truck manufacturing technologies and march for the goal of comprehensively improving the R&D and manufacturing of the heavy-duty trucks in China near two years later than its establishment.

There was a "blank" for SAIC in the fields of the manufacturing of commercial vehicles including truck in the past. While after SAIC acquired Nanqi, the commercial vehicle brand Iveco cooperated by Nanqi and Fiat gives SAIC an opportunity to fill this "blank". Subsequently, SAIC-Iveco Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. and Chongqing Heavy-Duty Truck Co., Ltd. joint reorganized Chongqing Hongyan Automobile Co., Ltd., and the three parties jointly founded a joint venture-- SAIC-Iveco Hongyan Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd., and also built a new production base in Chongqing. The base included also SAIC Fiat Powertrain HongYan Co., Ltd., a joint venture invested and set up by SAIC-Iveco Hongyan Commercial Vehicle Corp., Chongqing Heavy-Duty Truck Co., Ltd. and Fiat Powertrain Technologies, which is another subsidiary of Fiat. The two factories kept their independent brand "Hongyan" and jointly produce the complete series of GENLYON heavy-duty trucks and C9 engine.

Why SAIC chose Hongyan which ranks the seventh in the industry, rather than another more powerful partner? There must be some reasons.