China's auto industry regulations urgently need to be improved

The backwardness of the technological level of the Chinese auto market is inseparable from the development of the Chinese auto industry. The result of the later start is that the accumulation of self-technologies and experience is weak and the construction of various types of standards is lagging behind. But this does not hide the crux of all problems. The recent school bus accidents in Gansu Province and Jiangsu Province in China have triggered public thinking on car safety standards, including school buses, and their management.

What is the overall status of the Chinese automotive industry standard? Are there enough coordination among standard-makers, implementers, and supervisors? Focusing on these issues, Gasgoo.com recently conducted an industry survey for the automotive industry for a period of one week (December 12, 2011 to December 23, 2011, with a total of 1983 participants). The results show that during the rapid development of the Chinese auto market in the past few years, the efforts made in the development of China's auto standards have not been recognized by the industry. It is noteworthy that nearly half of the participants believe that the main reason behind the standard is the establishment of standards between the departments Lack of coordination, multi-headed management leads to inefficiency.

In the survey on the status quo of China's auto standards in Survey 1, we gave three descriptions. Among them, the positive answer that “the rapid development in recent years and the system has been perfected” was supported by only 5% of the people. And as many as 80% of the participants chose to consider that the Chinese automobile standards “have a significant gap with foreign countries and promote the development of industry technology is not sufficient”.

The automobile standards that we usually talk about can generally be divided into two parts: mandatory standards and recommended standards. The mandatory standard refers to the management system that legalizes the design and manufacture of automotive products. If the market competitors fail to meet the standards, the government can impose large fines on them and even sentence them; and the recommended standards generally refer to technological upgrades. There are guiding industry standards, but it does not have the mandatory effect of the law.

China's automotive mandatory standards (regulations) started in the early 1990s and began to be gradually implemented in 1995. By the end of 2005, China had issued 84 mandatory standards for automobiles (including motorcycles). This number has exceeded 100 in 2011. In addition, more than 200 national standards and more than 700 automotive standards have been issued. . If only from the change in this figure, China's auto industry standards and regulations have made no small achievements. However, why is it not recognized by most people in the industry? We have two reasons for interviewing experts. First of all, the development of China's auto industry is relatively late. Many standards and regulations are still in the stage of learning mature markets in the West. Standard institutionalization is naturally lagging behind. Second, although there are many standards and regulations in the Chinese auto industry, they are not fully developed due to lack of sufficient standards. Coordination and strong supervision do not follow the rules of the game, and there are many market competitors who produce and sell below the standard, leaving the standard to remain on paper only. As a result, the standard to promote the development of industry technology has become nonsense.

In addition, on the road to the development of alternative energy vehicles in our country, despite the large number of people who are just around the corner at industry and capital levels, and the media and the public also have a high degree of concern, due to the delay in the formulation of standards and regulations. The development of new energy vehicles, including electric vehicles, has not made any progress. This is interpreted by many as an erroneous fighter and misses the opportunity to use new energy to enhance the international competitiveness of China's auto industry. This status is also supported by 15% of participants in our survey1.

China's auto standards are lagging behind, and they may lag behind others in the standardization of new technologies such as new energy, even though people do not want to see such a situation. The discussion on the backwardness of the standard can easily be attributed to the reason that "China's auto industry is late in its development and lacks accumulation and research." On the second question of the survey, we can see that 27% of voters think this is the main reason that leads to the backwardness of China’s automotive standards. Admittedly, as a very complicated commodity, automobiles contain thousands of parts and components and the technologies attached to them. At the same time, automobiles are closely related to personal safety, social environment and resources. All aspects of it need to establish appropriate standards or regulations for supervision. This means that there is no enough data accumulation and research to talk about, and copying and copying is totally untenable. This is also doomed to standardization construction is a long-term work.

However, more participants have pointed out that the main reason for the backwardness of China's automotive standards is the lack of coordination between standard-makers, participants, and supervisors, which leads to a low effect of 30%. This result did not surpass our expectations, and the lack of coordination led to the existence of standards that could not be found everywhere. For example, when China is advancing higher emission standards, it faces the problem of unqualified oil products; the unregistered vehicle registration information has led to the inability of many industry studies to develop; lack of supervision from related agencies, and the use of school bus safety standards are virtually null and void, resulting in the recurrence of school bus safety problems; The “Three Guarantees” vehicle has been delayed due to the lack of an independent third-party testing organization. Problems such as these are due to lack of coordination or management confusion.

In addition, 22% of participants believe that Chinese car standards makers lack the participation of international standards, which is one of the main reasons leading to the backwardness of Chinese car standards.

The backwardness of standardization and backwardness caused by the late start of the development of the automotive industry, then the establishment of a reasonable and effective internal wall coordination mechanism as soon as possible to improve the standardization of institutionalization, and to look for leading external strategic opportunities, should be the focus, but this is obviously not easy.

So, where is the main direction of development of China's automotive standards? In the survey on this issue, we have given five options. Among them, the highest vote rate is "improvement of the technical regulations system as soon as possible," which was supported by 23% of the participants. In the foregoing exposition, we learned that regulations, that is, mandatory standards, are the basis of the entire industry standard. If the mandatory standards are too low, many cars that may pose a threat to the safety of people and property can be popularized in the market, but legally Impeccable. A few years ago, the Accord “Wedding Gate” incident, in the accident appraisal report finally submitted by the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Quality and Technology Supervision and Inspection, the involved Guangben Accord “conformed to the relevant automobile manufacturing standards”, so the matter was finally lost. .

Too low a mandatory standard may also bring down the overall industry standard. For example, since the national standards do not impose mandatory standards on the safety structure of the frame, it is legal for the entire vehicle manufacturer to “streamline” the structure such as the anti-collision beam of the body in actual production. When foreign-funded enterprises operating in China may have entered the Chinese market, they may implement the standards of mature markets in the West. However, they later found that competitors have adopted low standards. This, of course, can bring about significant cost savings and can also be sold very well. It will slowly reduce the standards that can be lowered. We can say that this is a hole in the law, but in the final analysis it is the law itself. It is imperative to improve laws and regulations.

Secondly, 22% of the votes were also awarded for "Strengthening the construction of parts standards." China's auto parts standardization has a long history. At present, except for a small number of products such as screws, bearings, and fasteners that have national standards, most parts and components in China do not have uniform standards. The direct impact of the severe lack of parts and components standards is that the quality of the vehicle cannot be guaranteed. At the same time, this will also have many adverse effects on the development of the entire industry. The lack of standards for the same parts and components leads to the need for parts suppliers to provide many standard products in order to meet the needs of different OEMs, greatly increasing management costs, making it difficult to achieve lean production, and hindering the domestic market. Free circulation and promotion.

The "Strengthening Standards for China's National Conditions" and "Strengthening Standards Research in the New Technology Fields" received support rates that were supported by 18% of votes.

At present, many of China's automotive mandatory standards system is mainly based on the European ECE/EC system, which eliminates the cost of repeated research and experimentation when setting standards, but many standards are out of date. For example, our test of automobile fuel consumption is still using the road conditions of Europe 20 years ago, and the road adhesion required for tire testing is also used before. This obviously does not meet the national conditions. How the standards are integrated with the national conditions of our country requires the reference and conversion of industry professionals. It also requires continuous verification of practice.

As for the standard research on new technologies, including electric vehicles, China has already started several years ago. At present, there are 9 items in the "Outline of Pure Electric Vehicle Standards" with more than 40 items, which are compiled into four volumes and can be promulgated after being approved by the National Standardization Committee. In addition, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced in May of this year the "Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's 2011 Standardization Key Work," and also proposed to focus on the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" and industrial development priorities, strengthen standard strategy research, accelerate the Internet of things, new energy vehicles, etc. The formulation and revision of standards in important areas will provide support for the stable and rapid development of the industrial communications industry. It is self-evident that the research of the new technology standards and the determination of the strategic direction should be as early as possible for China's auto technology upgrading. In addition, "actively participating in the formulation of international standards and regulations" is also considered to be one of the main directions for the development of China's automotive standards.

The essence of standardization is to balance the interests of various parties and reduce costs. Either the equivalent standard or the self-determined standard, the purpose of the formulation is to solve the problem. According to the latest news, the China Automobile Industry Association has established a labor standards committee for automotive standards and regulations. The working committee will immediately carry out research on the status quo of the automobile industry standards and regulations, and provide the basis for the next stage of research to determine common issues, which may be a good start.