I spent 10 days in Chine with part of the DVN team, to visit DVN members and take in some Chinese exhibitions.
I signed a partnership last year with Enmore, to co-host their lidar event, part of the EAC (Enmore Automotive Conference) in Suzhou. The EAC lidar event is the biggest one in China (and worldwide). More than 200 exhibitors, more than 1,000 visitors, and two parallel conference rooms for lectures and panel discussions.
EAC was at the Suzhou conference Centre, A 40,000-m2 venue with over 30 conference rooms. Suzhou is a city of about 10 million inhabitants, about 100 km from Shanghai.
The next week, we went to ALE, the Automotive Lighting Exhibition, at Huaqiao International Centre in Kunshan—50 km from Shanghai. That’s another 40,000-m2 venue, and there were again 200 exhibitors and 60,000 visitors during three days.
Here are my top five takeaways:
- Size: you cannot really imagine if you are not there. It is quite impossible to visit the complete event even in three days. No quiet room, no time to sleep between conferences, networking, and booth visits.
- High level of technical content with focus on new technology, speed to enter into the market, and cost.
- Local event for local market: people who attended, spoke, and exhibited were almost all Chinese; if you are not a Chinese native speaker, you can feel a bit lost. Almost all the lamps on display were for Chinese cars, and it was a real surprise for me not to see some of the biggest suppliers like Koito, Valeo, SL, Mobis, Magna, Stanley, Varroc, OP Mobility, and Marelli. Only Forvia Hella and ZKW were there from Europe. There was a large place for Chinese tier-1s: Hasco, Xingyu, Mind, Anrui Wipac, Liaowang, Utas Nova, Jiali, Depo, Yishan, Luye, and more.
- Vertical integration: most lighting tier-1s produce tools in-house. A lot of LED makers are also selling semiconductors or even lamps (Sanan and Anrui, APT and Linway, HongliZinhui with Yoshan, etc). Tier-1s may also be owned by automakers, like BYD or Great Wall.
- Consolidation may happen sooner or later. There are around 50 Chinese automakers. For vehicle lighting, market value is above €10bn. Only Hasco and Xingyu have revenue above €1bn in China. Most lamp suppliers have a revenue between €100m and €800m, with a lot of players around €200m to €300m.
Sincerely yours,
