Big but not strong, where is Chinas robot manufacturing card

The 2015 China World Industrial Expo recently concluded in Shanghai. At this year's Industrial Expo, intelligent production equipment represented by robots has become a highlight. At that time, the entire world had already entered the threshold of the era of robotics. As a seeking power, China naturally had to make a difference in the era of robotics. However, where were the bottlenecks and breakthroughs in the development of China's robotics industry? 

According to calculations from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), in 2013, the global sales of industrial robots were approximately 179000 units, with approximately 37000 units sold in China. This number has made China surpass Japan and become the world's largest consumer of robots. In 2014, this number reached 57000 units, accounting for a quarter of global sales and still ranking first in the world. 

In China, which is the world's largest consumer market for robots, whose products are sold? Taking 2013 as an example, out of the 37000 robots sold in China, foreign companies sold a total of over 27000 robots in China. According to the news released at the second China Robot Summit held in June 2015, domestic robots account for only about 13% of the domestic robot market share. 

It is worth noting that China's independent industrial robots mainly use coordinate robots with three or four axes and planar multi joint robots, and mainly use transfer and loading and unloading robots, which are in the low-end category of the profession; The proportion of six axis multi joint robots from independent brands in the national sales of industrial robots is less than 6%. And foreign robots are mainly focused on industrial robots with six or more axes, which almost monopolize the Gao end fields such as sedan manufacturing and welding. There are reports that the main manufacturers of large robot equipment in our local area together only account for 5% of the market share in our country.

China has become and will continue to become the world's largest consumer market for robots, but it is not a strong country in robot production. Being large but not strong is the current situation of China's robotics industry. Many deep-seated questions, such as inadequate central technology, weak independent brands, low market share, reliance on imported central components, lack of high-end products, and overcapacity at the low-end, must be given sufficient attention.

In fact, not all of China's robotics industry is indispensable, but only in terms of central components and key technologies. The central components and key technologies are not up to standard, making it difficult for China to produce Gao end robot products. Even if produced, the prices for the key components are significantly high because they are imported, making it difficult to compete with similar products from world-renowned brands.

Robots have four key components: high-precision reducers, servo motors, servo drives, and controllers. These four key components account for over half of the total cost of the robot. By grasping these "four major items", one can grasp the "pricing power" of the robot. The reality is that these central components of domestic robot devices are mainly imported from Japan, the United States, and Europe, with prices in China mostly more than twice the price of the origin. Due to the reliance on imports for crucial components, many domestic robot products offer significantly higher prices than foreign products. Taking the 165kg six axis joint robot as an example, the total cost of foreign products is about 169000 yuan, while the cost of domestic robots is as high as 299000 yuan; The procurement price of domestic companies for only the gearbox is nearly five times that of foreign companies, with a price difference of over 70000 yuan. From this, it can be seen that if the issue of key components of high-performance centers relying on imports cannot be resolved as soon as possible, China's robotics industry will be subject to long-term constraints.

Selling crucial components to our country is even more expensive. Who makes it impossible for us to independently produce them! The more pressing question is that many high-performance critical components are not sold to our country at all, and some countries have even legislated to ban their sales in our country. In this way, not only will global robotics giants monopolize China's Gao end market for a long time, but it will also be even more difficult for China to break through in the field of Gao end robots.

Together, we also need to be soberly aware that robots belong to high-end and cutting-edge industries, and it is difficult to rush to success and blindly engage in robotics. Nowadays, domestic robot companies are blooming everywhere, with over 400 companies related to robots, while there are only a dozen foreign robot companies. From this perspective, for our country, the urgent need is not to establish more robot companies or fabricate more fancy concepts, but to combine production, learning, research, and utilization efforts, carefully develop, occupy central technology, and create crucial central components. In addition, any amount of fancy renovations may be a manifestation of impatience.