The Olympic flame was alight and the Olympiad inspires all the people with a strong passion. Under such circumstances, the SAIC components subsidiaries have seized a new elevation of the auto parts supply market centering their effort on the “three major tasks” with the Olympic spirit of being “faster, higher and stronger.” In the first half of the year, SAIC components manufacturers, over 60 in all, were faced with a situation of “material price rise while product price drop”. Despite of the dual pressure, they overcame all difficulties and took active steps to provide excellent and timely parts supply service for the vehicle makers according to the synergistic requirement of the strategy for the vehicle and parts supply business, and made their great yet silent contributions to SAIC’s creation of a new sales record of 990,000 vehicles in the first half year.

Looking back to the development of the auto industry in Shanghai, we remember that at the beginning of the localization for “Santana” model when there were only “four minor parts”, such as antenna, radio player and tyre that were locally sourced, the total percentage accounts for about 2% merely. After over 20 years of technological introduction and innovation, quite many SAIC components manufacturers have ranked themselves among the most competitive forerunners of the entire Chinese auto parts industry. In the recent years, with a strategic view to raising their international competitiveness, the SAIC components manufacturers have exerted their utmost and in this way they have remarkably enhanced their capability as “neutralization, zero-level, globalization” parts suppliers and built up their unique and characteristic competitive edge.

Efforts have been intensified to build up neutral suppliers and constantly raise the market share. Scale advantage and mass production are the foundation for the components manufacturers to reduce their cost while improving economic efficiency. In the recent years, Shanghai Yanfeng Visteon, Shanghai Sanden Behr Automotive Air Conditioning Co.,, Shanghai GKN, Shanghai Koito Automotive Lamp Co., United Automotive Electronic System Co. (UAES), Shanghai Automotive Braking System Co., Volkswagen Transmission (Shanghai) Co. etc. have not only supplied parts to the SAIC vehicle makers, but also set up branches across the country to supply parts to non-SAIC Chinese vehicle manufacturers in their vicinity, thus raising their market share. In the first half of the year, owing to the neutralization development many SAIC components manufacturers over-fulfilled their output and sales targets for the half-year period. Now the total number of SAIC components manufacturers whose exterior business rate has reached 30% -- 50% is increasing.

Endeavors are made to keep raising the innovative R&D capability to meet the customer requirements. Now it has become a trend to supply the vehicle makers with integrated or modular sub-assemblies to meet their needs for “lean production.” Recently, quite many SAIC components manufacturers have continuously raised their capability to develop integrated assemblies and their ability to supply modular sub-assemblies via technological introduction and innovation. In this way they have not only got long-term orders from the vehicle makers, but become their strategic partners for simultaneous product development as well. Being capable of providing the vehicle makers with the EFI system and the power train adaptation service, UAES is highly favored by the vehicle makers. The automobile dashboard of Yanfeng Visteon, the door system of Shanghai SIIC Transportation Electric Co., the lamp system of Shanghai Koito, the air conditioning system of Shanghai Sanden Behr, the chassis system of Shanghai Huizhong, etc. have all become the first choice of the vehicle makers for their modular sub-assembly supply.

Greater efforts have been made to go global and enlarge overseas OEM market. Whether or not the locally-made components and parts are supplied to the OEMs worldwide is a touchstone to test if the components manufacturers are internationally competitive enough. Over the past years, many SAIC components manufacturers have undertaken explorations in this regard and opened up overseas markets via various channels. Now such products as engines, auto lamps, compressors, drive shafts, springs, generators, seat covers and so on have been exported to the overseas market as the OEM supply parts, bringing continuously increasing amount of foreign exchanges, which is expected to reach 1 billion US dollars this year.

With the enlargement of their capability to build themselves into “neutralized, independent and globalized” components manufacturers, SAIC parts manufacturers have laid down a solid foundation for the SAIC Group to raise its core competitiveness and its capacity for transnational operations.