In the past few days, an industry insider told the CBN 1℃ reporter that some manufacturers of dash cams have adopted two standard models of sending products for inspection and selling products. They are shoddy.
A 1℃ reporter survey found that there are not many domestic leading companies that produce driving recorders. Many of them are small and medium-sized service providers lacking R&D capabilities and low-end OEM manufacturers, and the product quality is uneven.
At the same time, numerous complicated inspections increase the cost of using the driving recorder in disguise.
High-standard inspection and low-standard sales
The 1℃ reporter visited a company that produces Beidou traffic recorders. It is located in an office building with two to three hundred square meters of floors divided into consoles, office areas and reception areas.
A large number of dash cam Fara capacitors are piled up on the workbench in the production area. The factory personnel said: “You only need to send it to the factory for processing for further installation, and then it can be sold out of the factory.”
It has not yet been possible to verify where the Beidou driving recorders of the above-mentioned factories are sold.
However, the Internet is flooded with a lot of sales information of driving recorders. Many products known as 4G cost only between 300 and 800 yuan, and most of them claim to have functions such as positioning and video shooting.
According to Lao Li, the person in charge of a driving recorder manufacturer, the current 4G driving recorder with video function costs thousands of dollars in production, and since the Spring Festival this year, the price of raw materials has skyrocketed. If the price is lower than this price, maybe Quality has to be a big question mark.
According to the 1℃ reporter, the raw materials needed to produce a taipei driving recorder include chips and electronic components, memory, wireless communication modules, PCB boards, hardware parts, and customized cameras and cables.
These raw materials, the Shenzhen market has inherent advantages, so a large number of driving recorder manufacturers have taken root here.
According to a person familiar with the production of Beidou driving recorders, a driving recorder terminal equipment includes communication modules, video modules, positioning modules, and main control chips. "Among these major types, the video module is the most expensive. Responsible for the compression and processing of video data. If this piece is not done well, it will put a lot of pressure on the subsequent use of traffic."
In recent years, the implementation of the Beidou driving recorder policy for heavy-duty trucks in various places has further released market demand.
"Some companies in the industry ignore the basic product quality, in order to be able to win in the market competition, they use shoddy and cut corners to continue to lower product sales prices. Some customers with lower requirements for their own management simply meet policy requirements and are keen on cheap prices. Therefore, the continuous disorderly competition in the low-end product market has caused the problem of homogenized competition in low-end products, which has affected the development of the industry to a certain extent.” Lao Li said.
According to Lao Li, some manufacturers produce high-quality driving recorders only to cope with the pre-sale access inspection. Once they get the inspection report, they may relax the quality control of the product.
This statement is also corroborated by Liu Neng, another person in the industry who sells dash cams.
The results of the 2020 road transport vehicle Beidou navigation on-board terminal quality supervision spot check results announced by the General Office of the Ministry of Transport in December last year showed that after a total of 30 batches of products produced by 27 companies in 8 provinces were sampled, the sampling pass rate was 70.4% .
"In our industry, the products tested by the regulatory authorities are not consistent with the final commercial products. If the actual products sold by the company under random inspection are included this time, the product qualification rate may be less than 50%." Liu Neng said.
On the other hand, starting from last year to now, the prices of raw materials such as electronic chips, electronic components, resistor-capacitors, processors, etc. have all increased globally.
Liu Neng worries that the upstream supply chain continues to increase prices, and some small and medium-sized manufacturers may only be able to further reduce costs in order to make profits, and the quality of the final product will face a test.
The manufacturer tried every means to reduce the cost, even shoddy, in order to win in the price war.
However, the reporter's investigation found that from production to sales to the market, a dash cam must undergo various complicated tests and pay various expenses for this, which greatly increases the cost.
In the end, end consumers have to pay higher costs for this.
Pushed up prices
"The driving recorder industry has a strong policy, and the products need to be certified by the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Transport and other departments. On this basis, relevant provinces in various places have formed local technical specifications for driving recorders." Lao Li told 1 ℃ reporters, such as Su Biao (Jiangsu Technical Standard), Guangdong Standard (Guangdong Technical Standard), Chongqing Standard (Chongqing Technical Standard), etc. The local traffic management departments and related agencies play an important role among them, responsible for the local driving recorder standards. The entry standards are formulated, and equipment manufacturers can only be shortlisted to obtain certification qualifications and record public announcements only after passing the testing of the testing agency.
"Over the standard" is a popular term in the sales of dash cam industry. Manufacturers can only win the market sales "tickets" if they pass the technical specifications and standards for dash cams formulated by the provinces.
Before passing the standard, it must first be tested.
Before the driving recorder is sold on the ground, more than ten items such as the function, performance, low temperature work, high temperature work, temperature test, electric strength, conduction disturbance, electrostatic discharge immunity, and radio frequency electromagnetic field radiation immunity of the sample need to be carried out. test.
"Only after passing the test can you get the local sales qualification, and passing the test link generally requires an investment of 300,000 to 600,000 yuan." Lao Li said that the registration fee is more than 200,000 yuan, and then the venue fee and Repeat test fees and car rental fees, etc.
Testing generally requires a test playground. However, once testing is performed, it is also necessary to pay for repeated testing.
"We tested in a certain place in China before, and tested the ESD immunity for dozens of times. At that time, we spent tens of thousands of yuan to pass the test." Lao Li said that the testing agency is strictly working and there is nothing wrong with it, but often Will encounter the "bone picking" thing in the egg.
"Sometimes hundreds of thousands of yuan are invested in local inspections, and finally the inspections are over, but a piece of equipment cannot be sold, or the equipment sold has not been able to earn back the inspection fees." Lao Li said.
However, obtaining certification is only the first step. In the follow-up, local location service providers will be required to network the vehicle-mounted device data with the transportation department and perform installation and maintenance services.
This is why the drivers of large trucks in various places reported that after installing the Beidou driving recorder, they still have to pay several hundred yuan in equipment maintenance fees each year.
According to Lao Li, location service providers in various places often play the "middle role" in the sales process. On the one hand, they have the resources of the transportation department to install and debug equipment; on the other hand, they have the resources of truck owners and logistics companies to sell. Terminal Equipment.
In Liu Neng's view, the service awareness of many local location service providers is not enough. "The government's management and supervision of location service providers needs to be strengthened, and the online rate of vehicle terminal equipment and installation standards need to be improved."
"To be honest, if there are not so many local standard certifications and operator links, the terminal products will eventually fall on users such as car owners and transportation companies, and the price will not be so expensive." Lao Li said that the manufacturer has a model in hand. The driving recorder with a production cost of only 1,000 yuan, after being tested by various provinces and by location service providers, is finally sold to end-user truck drivers at a price of up to 4,000 yuan.
In recent years, Lao Li and Liu Neng frequently went to various provinces to participate in product testing and bidding.
"I am struggling to deal with standard tests everywhere. This has caused a large area of small, medium and micro enterprises like us to not have so much time, energy, especially funds, to really use for enterprise management and technological innovation." Lao Li said.
(Lao Li and Liu Neng are both pseudonyms)
Author: Wu Mianqiang