2016-7-12 11:07:12
As a durable consumer product, cars often need to be replaced and repaired during use. However, many drivers report that their car's performance is significantly inferior to before after replacing parts, and some even cause trouble, directly threatening the safety of drivers and vehicles. In order to uncover the mystery, the reporter conducted a follow-up investigation on the production, sales, and maintenance of automotive parts.
Who occupies half of the automotive parts market
The Santana sedan, with a total ownership of nearly 20 million units, has the highest market share in the domestic sedan market. According to normal estimates, the total demand for accessories is approximately 6 billion yuan per year. However, according to last year's statistics, the market share of legitimate automotive parts was only 36%. So, which products occupy 64% of the automotive parts market?
On Xujiang Road Auto Parts Street in Suzhou, the reporter casually walked into several auto parts stores. At the Great Wall Auto Parts Store, the owner quickly brought samples from the back warehouse when he heard that the reporter wanted to buy Santana's headlights.
Boss: "Lighting is my strong point
Reporter: "How much is it for one
Boss: "55 (yuan). If you want to buy more, I'll give you a cheaper price. This is from a subsidiary factory, a replica, and a genuine factory
Reporter: "Compared to the regular factory, how is the quality
Boss: "Compared to others, the quality is much worse, but the optometry may not be able to detect it. If you want to go for a car inspection, it's best not to use this type of lamp and replace it with a genuine factory lamp. After the inspection, you can replace it
In the car parts store on this street, the reporter found that when bosses sell goods, they usually first ask whether they want the main factory or the auxiliary factory, and the products from the same auxiliary factory have different prices.
Reporter: "What is a subsidiary factory
Boss: "The accessory factory is made by the factory that usually makes lighting fixtures themselves, not by the manufacturer designated by the Santana Volkswagen maintenance station. If you can't tell anything from the original factory, you can fake it. There are also differences that cannot be compared to the original factory
The products of these so-called subsidiary factories are indeed labeled with the same trademarks and certificates as regular supporting factories. The boss here told reporters that all the people who come here to pick up goods are car repair shops. Generally, drivers go directly to the repair shop to replace parts, so how does the repair shop sell the parts to the driver? In order to understand the true situation of the car repair shop, the reporter and accompanying anti-counterfeiting personnel decided to smash their car headlights and personally take them to the repair shop to experience it.
This is a repair shop located on Yangshupu Road in Shanghai. Upon entering the yard, the reporter saw that there were already 7 or 8 cars waiting to be repaired. The person in charge of the repair was busy answering the customer's phone call and said, "I have provided you with the original factory. Don't worry
The staff quoted 150 yuan for the front headlights of the car that the reporter wanted to replace, and immediately took out the headlights.
Reporter: "Is this from the factory
Maintenance personnel: "Why isn't it from the main factory, from Xiaoshi (factory)
The supporting manufacturer of Santana car lights is indeed Shanghai Xiaoshi Car Lights Co., Ltd. However, this staff member is not sure if due to negligence, they did not pay attention to the car lights he sells. On the certificate of conformity, Xiaoshi's "series" character is written as a related "series" character.
Anti counterfeiter: "This is fake. First of all, there is an extra apostrophe in this character
After bargaining, it ultimately cost 120 yuan to replace this headlight, but in reality, the factory price for a regular matching headlight is 147 yuan.
Reporter: "How much is the actual cost of this lamp
Counterfeit cracker: "In the Xiaohe counterfeiting area, it only costs 25 to 30 yuan. In order to seek profits, the repair shop sells counterfeit products from the subsidiary factory as genuine products and products from the supporting factory, with a profit of 3-4 times and no invoice issued
In this small office, the reporter noticed that nearly a hundred types of car accessories for various models such as Santana, Jetta, and Audi were placed on shelves in different categories. The accompanying anti-counterfeiting personnel checked and told reporters that most of these accessories were fake.
How can we guarantee the safety of car parts like this
The car lights are the eyes of the driver and directly affect their safety. In order to understand the quality difference between regular products and so-called by-product products, the reporter sent these products to the national authoritative testing agency.
Lamp is a product subject to mandatory national testing. In on-site experiments in the light distribution room, two types of lamps, including matching products from legitimate manufacturers and counterfeit products discovered during the anti-counterfeiting process, exhibit different light shapes.
Zheng Ying, a senior engineer at the Shanghai Automotive Industry Quality Testing and Research Institute, gave an on-site explanation: "For headlights like this (counterfeit), the obvious light is very uneven and scattered, which can cause glare to the driver's eyes. If they cannot see the car coming from here clearly, it is easy to cause accidents. However, if the high beam brightness is not enough and the illumination distance is relatively close, it can also cause some accidents when driving at high speeds
To produce car lights that meet national standards, strict technical conditions and process requirements must be met. On the production line of regular products, reporters see that each finished product must pass two tests, namely optometry and sealing, in order to automatically go offline.
So under what conditions are counterfeit car headlights produced? Not long ago, the reporter, together with the law enforcement officers of Jiangsu Provincial Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision, seized a fake manufacturing dens in Mount Huangshan Village, Xiaohe Town, Wujin City. The rainproof shed in this rural courtyard is the warehouse for counterfeiters, filled with lamp wicks, lamp shells, and light distribution mirrors. The first floor of the house is the assembly workshop for the headlights, where counterfeiters use simple tools such as screwdrivers and glue to assemble batches of Santana 2000 car headlights.
It is understood that there are dozens of such lamp factories in Jiepai, Danyang City, Jiangsu Province, and Xiaohe District, Wujin City. Some of them produce parts and some conduct assembly. Less than a hundred meters away from this counterfeiting stronghold, law enforcement officers seized the warehouse of another factory and discovered counterfeit headlights, fog lights, reversing mirrors, and wheel rims from Audi and Santana.
According to Sun Zhaolan, Deputy Chief Engineer of Shanghai Automotive Industry Quality Inspection Research Institute, the overall quality situation of the automotive parts market is currently not ideal. "For sedans, taking Santana as an example, two-thirds are counterfeit or inferior
Why is it difficult to crack down on counterfeit and inferior automotive parts? With the development of China's automotive industry, the fight against counterfeit automotive parts has a history of more than ten years. At present, automobile parts counterfeiting is mainly distributed in relatively concentrated areas, and the means of counterfeiting are becoming increasingly covert.
According to years of market research, the production centers for counterfeit and inferior automotive parts are mainly concentrated in the following regions:
The Qinghe area in Hebei Province mainly produces rubber parts, brake pads, and three filters; The Xiaohe and Jiepai areas in Jiangsu Province mainly produce lamps, plastic interior parts, and bumpers; The Yuhuan area in Zhejiang Province mainly produces ball heads, shock absorbers, and carburetors; The Rui'an area in Zhejiang Province mainly produces power components, electrical components, and chassis components.
Due to the continuous strengthening of anti counterfeiting efforts in recent years, counterfeiters are also constantly changing their methods of counterfeiting.
Xiang Songnian, General Manager of Shanghai Xiaoshi Car Lamp Co., Ltd., said, "Their tactics are now more covert and their methods are more ingenious. Originally, they were all counterfeiting our trademarks and packaging. They now have their own trademarks and packaging, but the quality is fake and inferior, which poses the same harm to users
It is understood that in some developed countries of the automotive industry, there are already hundreds of catalogs for automotive safety components, while currently there are only 43 mandatory standards for automotive accessories in China, which have not yet covered many safety components such as steering systems and braking systems. Replacing counterfeit and inferior auto parts with their own trademarks poses great difficulties in investigating and punishing some products according to existing standards, without constituting trademark infringement.
At present, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China is organizing relevant departments to accelerate the improvement of standards for automotive parts, and the crackdown on counterfeit automotive parts products has also been included in the focus of this year's crackdown.