Japan is an overlord in household air-conditioner field worldwide thanks to its most advanced technology in the core upstream component–compressor. Many Japanese enterprises, including Daikin, Hitachi, Panasonic, Toshiba, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Electric, are the key players in compressor industry. As such, American enterprises still have competitive strength in high-power air-conditioning compressor industry, represented by Carrier, Trane, Copeland and York. Accordingly, the automotive air-conditioner field is dominated by Japanese enterprises and American counterparts.
Denso continues its leading role in the sector. Together with Toyota Industries, which is the largest manufacturer of automotive air-conditioning compressor in the world, the collective market share of the two surpasses one third of the total. Automotive air-conditioner or compressor products of Denso have been used by the world’s well-known automakers. At the early stage, Denso built massive business in compressor sector. After 2000, Denso began to transfer compressor business to Toyota Industries and focus on the design and sales of the whole system of air-conditioners. Besides, Denso cooperated with Toyota Industries to establish compressor base in overseas country. And Toyota Industries holds always as high as 65% shares of the project. Toyota Industries only produces compressor.
The auto air-conditioner technology of Valeo stems from ZEXEL which originated from DKK. As the biggest producer of diesel fuel injection in Asia, DKK was founded in 1939 with its technology from Bosch. In 2000, ZEXEL was purchased by Bosch, and Bosch only retained diesel injection business and it sold in 2005 its compressor business to Valeo with €100 million. Since then, the joint venture had become the wholly-owned subsidiary of Valeo. Although the compressor business is not its core operation, ZEXEL still boasts the exceedingly excellent compressor technology.
