Over the past three decades, China has grown into a powerhouse for powder metallurgy (PM) parts production. Supported by a thriving and diversified domestic market for PM parts, the domestically-owned PM companies are now competing with the international market leaders. China’s PM industry, however, faces the same challenges as the rest of the world’s producers — the transition to vehicle electrification. China is a huge market and PM applications in China are diverse. The rapid development of new energy vehicles is a challenge, but it will also bring new development opportunities. Under the background of automobile industry transformation, the development and current situation of China’s PM parts industry were analyzed in this paper, the development trend of China's automobile industry and the impact on the PM industry were summarized, the coping strategies with the transformation of the automobile industry were proposed, and the future development prospects of the PM industry were prospected.
Figure 1. Trends in total sales of PM part sales in China based on the data from CMPMA
Figure 2. Markets for China’s PM parts in 2021 by weight
Figure 3. Number of cars sold in China during 2001~2022
Figure 4. Quarter-by-quarter changes of the new energy vehicle sales in China over the past four years
Figure 5. Sales of the new energy vehicles (including BEVs) showing the consecutive growth in China and reaching a record sales volume of nearly 2.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2022
Figure 6. Images of NBTM powder metallurgy plant
Figure 7. PM parts produced by NBTM: (a) Variable valve timing (VVT) rotor/sprocket; (b) aluminum alloy sprocket; (c) soft magnetic stator; (d) rubberized intake/exhaust camshaft housing sprocket; (e) hammer with density ≥7.53 g·cm−3
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