At present, there are almost no domestic companies that can professionally produce hydraulic valve bodies and solenoid valves for automotive automatic transmissions.
The automatic transmission is the core component of an automatic car. The solenoid valve and the hydraulic valve body are both the core components of the automatic transmission of the automobile and the key basic components of the construction machinery, agricultural machinery and machine tool industries, and have large demand.
On August 26th, 2012, Dr. Xue Dianlun, an associate professor of the School of Mechanical and Vehicle Engineering of Hunan University, said in an interview with reporters: “The domestic independent brand solenoid valve and hydraulic valve body urgently need to break through the design and manufacturing technology difficulties to achieve high-volume, low-cost industrialization. Otherwise, the domestic autonomous brand automatic transmission industry chain will be difficult to form."
Enterprises in developed countries monopolize the hydraulic valve body and solenoid valve market
At present, the domestic automobile automatic transmission hydraulic valve body and solenoid valve market are monopolized by multinational companies such as BorgWarner and Eaton in Germany, Bosch in Germany, and Dongzhi in Japan. These wholly-owned companies or joint ventures established by these multinational companies in China have purchased their original hydraulic valve bodies and solenoid valves from developed countries.
China's independent development of hydraulic valve body and solenoid valve companies include Jiangsu Jinrun Automotive Transmission Technology Company, Xi'an Aerospace Power Research Institute, and Guizhou Honglin Vehicle Control Technology Co., Ltd. These enterprises were suppressed by the enterprises of developed countries in the process of exploiting the market.
"As the automotive automatic transmission develops into multiple gears, the solenoid valves are designed to be smaller and smaller. In this way, the weight can be reduced and more space can be provided, and the manufacturing cost of the solenoid valve can also be reduced. At the same time, most of the control in the valve body is slippery. Valves are also designed to be smaller and the material is changed from steel to aluminum to make the control spool more sensitive, capable of efficient movement at higher signal frequencies, providing faster response and higher oil control stability. Professor Xu Xiangyang, Associate Dean of School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Beihang University, introduced the development trend of solenoid valves.
The diversified needs of the domestic auto transmission market will inevitably bring about the characteristics of industrial auto-transmission components such as hydraulic valve bodies and solenoid valves. The existing production modes and technological equipment of hydraulic valve bodies and solenoid valves in developed countries are not entirely suitable for the actual situation in China. Therefore, Xue Dianlun predicted that the domestic hydraulic valve body and solenoid valve market will inevitably be composed of three major components: First, direct import products for Tianjin Aisin Aida, Gatco (Guangzhou), Nanjing Bangqi, Shanghai ZF and other developed National enterprises' wholly-owned brands and joint-venture brands in China's auto transmissions; Second, foreign-owned enterprises and Sino-foreign joint ventures are used in Shanghai-GM joint ventures, Dongan Mitsubishi Motors, Chery Automobile Co. and other Chinese-foreign joint venture brands and domestic self-owned brands; third, domestic self-owned brands. Products used in Shandong Shengrui, Dongying Taiensi and other domestic auto brand auto transmissions.
Lack of user support for independent brands
For a long time, a lot of domestic vehicle companies have adopted the doctrine of donation and do not pay attention to training their own brand suppliers. This has led domestic companies to independently develop hydraulic valve bodies and solenoid valves that lack the support of downstream users of the auto transmission industry chain, that is, the lack of markets. In this way, domestic independent brands of hydraulic valve bodies and solenoid valves have no engineering opportunities at all and will not be able to achieve industrialization.
“Although domestic companies have certain hydraulic valve body and solenoid valve manufacturing capabilities, the industrialization of self-branded automobile automatic transmissions is still in the market introduction period, resulting in low output of hydraulic valve bodies and solenoid valves, high costs, and poor quality. The demand for batch vehicle production. This is the basic reason why there is almost no auto brand hydraulic valve body and electromagnetic valve specialization manufacturing enterprise for self-branded automobile automatic transmission in China.” Li Shengqi, Secretary-General of China Gear Professional Association and secretary-general of China Automotive Automatic Transmission Innovation Union regret.
At present, China has become the country with the most car sales in the world. The authoritative department forecast results show that in 2015, domestic self-owned brand passenger vehicles require 4.5 million automatic transmissions, and each automatic transmission requires at least 6 solenoid valves. Therefore, there is almost no need to change the status quo of hydraulic valve bodies and electromagnetic valve companies with automatic transmissions of independent brands in China.
The key is to jointly develop with users
Since 2006, Jiangsu Jinrun Automotive Transmission Technology Co., Ltd. has invested a lot of manpower and financial resources, and has overcome the hydraulic control valve plate structure design and optimization, electro-hydraulic control module design and development platform, valve plate die casting mold design, real-time die casting, thin-walled porous Technical difficulties such as complex parts precision machining and valve body assembly test and testing have been developed. The hydraulic valve body and hydrodynamic transmission hydraulic valve body developed by the continuously variable automatic transmission are well received by users.
At present, Jiangsu Jinrun 8AT valve samples have passed preliminary tests, and ON/OFF solenoid valves, PWM modulation valves, pilot-type proportional solenoid valves and other products have started small-scale production.
Jiangsu Jinrun solenoid valve and hydraulic valve body industrialization encountered the following difficulties: lack of high-tech talent, basic data and test standards are not perfect, lack of multi-variety large-scale production of the necessary process equipment. The main countermeasures are: to hire technical consultants from abroad, to recruit a large number of highly educated personnel, spend extra money to send people to the developed countries to learn, and gradually form a team; to strengthen the cooperation between production and research, increase investment in experimental equipment; to cooperate closely with customers and carry out a large number of experiments, In order to accumulate enough basic data; the United Nations equipment manufacturers, the development of technological equipment.
“Jiangsu Jinrun started from scratch, did not fear the difficulties, spent a lot of manpower and financial resources, experienced countless failures, and achieved gratifying results, accumulating valuable experience for the domestic auto transmission industry's independent innovation.” Li Shengqi was delighted.
The simultaneous development with users and advance development is the weakest link in the domestic auto parts industry. Xu Xiangyang stressed: "Intensifying cooperation with auto transmission companies, jointly researching and sharing risks, is the key to Jiangsu Jinrun's independent development of solenoid valves and hydraulic valve bodies. This spirit is worth carrying forward."
