Speaking of this DSI company, Li Yifan is still very impressed, this company is a well-known automotive transmission manufacturer in Australia.

In the early years, it was once a subsidiary of BorgWarner, a large American machinery manufacturer, and later in the 80s of the last century, it was sold by BorgWarner to British Rubber and Tire Company for reasons of profit.

Recently, however, due to poor management, British Rubber and Tyre Company is planning to sell the Australian company that specializes in the production of transmissions.

Speaking of this DSI company, which specializes in manufacturing automotive transmissions, it is also well-known in the automotive industry, founded in the twenties of the last century, with a history of more than 80 years.

In the past, it was mainly for some agricultural machinery companies in Australia to produce accessories, and later with the rise of Australia's own automotive industry, it began to gradually change careers and began to specialize in the design and development of automotive transmissions.

Later, as the American auto industry giants entered Australia, they were also acquired by BorgWarner, a giant American automobile manufacturer, and brought them big customers such as Ford and Chrysler.

Later, as the American auto industry giants lost in the Australian market, the company was sold by BorgWarner to the British rubber and tire company.

In Australia, their car market was dominated by their own brand, Holden Motor Company, until Holden was acquired by General Motors, and the arrival of Ford and Chrysler became a three-way world.

Later, with the large-scale invasion of Japanese automobiles, the Australian automobile market gradually began to be occupied by Japanese car manufacturers.

The local brand Holden is still selling well. However, Ford and Chrysler's living space has been squeezed out a lot. As a result, DSI's living space began to shrink.

British Rubber & Tyre Company. After taking over the DSI company, although they still maintained customers such as Ford and Chrysler, the British were unable to hold on in the face of the aggressive Japanese.

No, they are planning to sell the transmission manufacturer in their hands recently.

According to the original history, the DSI company, zuihou was acquired by a company called ION, but in the increasingly competitive automotive market, DSI is capable. It's really limited.

As one of the three most important components of the automobile industry, the transmission is generally manufactured by large automobile manufacturers, such as General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda, Nissan and other enterprises, they have their own transmission production and R&D departments.

There are only two transmission manufacturers on Shijie that are independent of automobile manufacturers. One is Aisin Seiko in Japan, and the other is DSI.

But compared to Aisin Seiko's ability. DSI produces transmissions that do not have the upper hand either in terms of the overall quality of the gearbox or in terms of shift logic.

In this way, he can't do it at all, like Aisin Seiko, to the point where he is comfortable in front of the major automobile companies, you must know that the Japanese Aisin Seiko occupies a very high dominant position in front of the major automobile manufacturers in Shijie.

The gearboxes of most of Toyota's models are provided by Aisin Seiko, and even Volkswagen of Germany is buying gearboxes on a large scale from Aisin.

DSI can't do this, because of the backwardness of its involvement and production capacity, and their position in the automotive industry is becoming more and more marginalized.

The company that acquired them also had some problems in terms of operation, and by 2006, ION, the owner of DSI, had to declare bankruptcy and collapse.

After that, the company had to struggle to stay afloat, and they didn't have the resources to partner with a company like Toyota.

So they had to go around looking for a suitable partner, Zuihou they found South Korea's Ssangyong Motors, but with the strong rise of Hyundai-Kia, Ssangyong Motors also had a hard time.

Their cooperation lasted only three years, but Zuihou had to be embarrassed, Ssangyong was on the verge of bankruptcy, and DSI Transmission was in a similar situation.

In February 2009, DSI had to file for bankruptcy protection because it was facing huge cash pressure due to unpaid wages.

Not long after this incident, the company was acquired by Geely, a Chinese automobile manufacturer.

At the time, it cost less than 400 million yuan, or about 70 million Australian dollars, and the acquisition did not cause much of a stir at the time, because the Chinese automobile company, which was later staged a snake swallowing elephant, swallowed another giant in the Shijie automobile industry, Volvo Inc. in one gulp.

Because of this acquisition, this company has been very popular in Shijie for a while.

However, anyone who knows the industry actually knows that Geely's investment in Volvo is far less cost-effective than their acquisition of DSI, a transmission company.

Because from jishu's point of view, the acquisition of DSI can be said to fill a big gap in China's automobile manufacturing industry.

Before entering the new millennium, there have been a few private independent automobile manufacturing enterprises in China that have quietly entered the domestic automobile manufacturing market.

These companies are the Great Wall, Geely, and Chery, but because of their fame and scale, they have not done much, and then when the new leadership team came to power and formulated the established national development strategy for the new decade, the automotive industry immediately ushered in a hot decade.

However, when these domestic independent automobile brands were preparing to usher in the golden age of the automobile industry, they were embarrassed to find that they could not produce automatic transmissions in China.

In the next few years, with the expansion of the scale of the city, road traffic began to become congested, and the popularization of automatic transmissions is also an inevitable trend, so it has become a top priority for these manufacturers to equip their own cars with a suitable automatic transmission.

But after looking around, they found that there is no company in China that can independently produce automatic transmissions, even if they are themselves, and those state-owned enterprise big brothers are also not.

Speaking of this automatic transmission, in this year, in fact, it has begun to be popularized in a large area in the shijie range, but the more popular in this year is the four-speed automatic transmission, the more advanced is the five-speed automatic transmission, and the top luxury cars have begun to assemble 6 when automatic transmissions.

However, domestic automobile manufacturing enterprises, but can only produce manual transmission cars, although manual transmission cars have the advantages of easy maintenance, cheap and affordable, but compared with automatic transmission cars, there is still a big gap in driving comfort, especially in the face of increasing traffic congestion pressure.

So these domestic companies began to ponder their own production of automatic transmissions, in fact, to say production, it is not difficult, as long as you buy some mature gearboxes to disassemble, and then reverse research.

But when everyone was ready to do this, they were dumbfounded, because the first thing they had to face was the patent blockade of automobile powers such as Europe, the United States and Japan.

It is indeed not difficult to do reverse research, but it is rare how to overcome it, people have long arranged haode patent barriers, a small gearbox, Japanese and Americans and Germans, you can apply for a patent for some parts, the whole set of gearbox down, people have applied for no less than thousands of patents.

When the time comes, if you produce, the patent alone can make it difficult for you to die, although in China, some things can be done specially, we don't play cards according to the rules is not a day or two, there are many leaders of automobile companies, gritting their teeth and simply planning to give him a special event, but they are just dumbfounded.

Because after everyone disassembled the gearbox they bought, they found that this thing should not be looked at smallly, but even if everyone understands how it works, even if everyone wants to imitate it, it will not work.

Because this small transmission requires a lot of precision machining means, such as the hydraulic valve inside, as well as the inductor components, as well as the powerful TCU shift logic, etc., which are not something that domestic companies can play with now.

Zuihou everyone is out of the way, so they can only pinch their noses and talk to the Japanese where to import this automatic transmission, but the Japanese are not stupid, such a good opportunity will not kill you?

If you want to buy it, you have to match the engine with our Japanese engine, or simply give you a hand in the price, so that your car will not be at all advantageous in terms of price after it is launched......

In this way, domestic cars have been stuck by foreign countries for ten years in terms of transmission, and it was not until 09 years after Ligi acquired DSI that this situation was alleviated.

But by this time, foreign automobile companies have begun to play with dual-clutch transmissions, or higher-level 8-speed transmissions.

But in any case, this acquisition still makes up for a gap in China's automobile manufacturing industry in the field of transmission production.

However, this acquisition did not reflect too many advantages later, and the 6AT transmission, which DSI is most proud of, did not gain rapid and large popularity in China, because by this time the situation in China had changed......

Li Yifan, who also has a general understanding of the history of domestic automobile development, can't help but feel a little sorry for this company every time he thinks of this time.

In this life, I happen to be planning to do something industrial, and now I am planning to find a suitable core enterprise for my family business, and this DSI happens to become the first icebreaker enterprise he looks at. (To be continued......)