Engineering Thinking: The Core of China's Automotive...

From Production Powerhouse to R&D Leader Over the past few decades, China's automotive industry has achieved truly remarkable progress. From humble beginnings to becoming the world's largest automotive market by production and sales, we have manufactured countless products to be proud of. As the industry pioneer Meng Shaonong once wisely observed, building a large vehicle is primary school level, while building a compact vehicle is university level. By that measure, today's China automotive industry has certainly earned its university qualification. However, behind these achievements, we must remain clear-eyed and honest about our challenges. The current state of the industry reveals a troubling imbalance: production technology has developed far faster than product R&D capability, and reverse engineering capability has far outpaced forward development capability. This lame duck phenomenon, if left unaddressed, will seriously constrain our transition from a large automotive nation to a truly strong one. What Is Engineering Thinking? Engineering thinking, in its simplest definition, means understanding a product from an R&D perspective — defining problems and finding answers through rigorous technical analysis. In the user's eyes, every product has three core attributes: function, functional safety, and functional durability. Users expect the product to work reliably under any condition throughout...