LEILI Puts Bus Wiper Systems in Front of European Buyers at IAA Transportation 2024

Hannover, Germany — Zhejiang Leili Auto Parts Co., Ltd. (“LEILI”), a manufacturer of automotive windshield wiper systems and bus door locks since 1989, exhibited at IAA Transportation 2024, held from 17 to 22 September 2024 at the Hannover Exhibition Grounds. The company showed bus wiper systems and wiper motors for the European commercial vehicle market at Booth J18-03.

A technical inspection more than a trade fair

The German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) sets the agenda here. It covers trucks, buses and coaches, rail vehicles and municipal and special-purpose vehicles, which means one floor carries the whole commercial vehicle industry rather than one segment of it. Buyers arrive from vehicle manufacturers, bodybuilders, fleet operators and their supply chains.

The 2024 edition ran under the motto “People And Goods On The Move”, and the substantive theme underneath it was how transport reaches climate neutrality. That framing sets the tone of every conversation at the show: buying decisions were argued in terms of what a component contributes to the vehicle’s energy and emissions account, not only its function.

For a supplier, Hannover works less like a marketplace and more like an examination. Battery-electric and hydrogen drivelines were presented side by side this edition, and both change the design premises around the cab.

Camera-monitor systems replacing conventional mirrors rewrite the wiping requirement, because areas that were never glass before now have to stay clean. Driver assistance systems have become a starting assumption rather than an option. Any of those three moves the specification for something as ordinary as a wiper motor.

Chinese exhibitors come here because the requirements are stated most plainly on this floor. Seeing them close, even at arm’s length, is worth the trip.

Exhibition facts

Six days at the Hannover Exhibition Grounds. Around 1,699 exhibitors from 41 countries, roughly 145,000 visitors through the doors.

• Official name: IAA Transportation 2024
• Dates: 17–22 September 2024
• Venue: Hannover Exhibition Grounds (Messegelände Hannover), Germany
• Organiser: German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA)
• Motto: “People And Goods On The Move”
• Exhibitors: around 1,699 from 41 countries, up 21% on the previous edition
• On the floor: more than 145 vehicles shown, upwards of 80 manufacturer launch events
• Visitors: roughly 144,000–145,000, up 9–10%
• LEILI stand: Booth J18-03

Sources: IAA Transportation official closing press release ｜ IAA Transportation 2024 official final report (PDF)

LEILI at Booth J18-03: bus wiper systems for Europe

A European supplier assessment does not stop at the sample. Buyers usually ask for volume-production process records, batch consistency evidence, endurance results and salt-spray reports before they ask for a price — and those four decide whether they ask at all. That was what LEILI brought.

There was less on this stand than on most LEILI stands. The sequence compensated: drawing first, then data.

• Bus wiper systems: five layouts, with mounting interface drawings prepared for every model
• 12 V and 24 V wiper motors, 30 W–180 W, accompanied by endurance and salt-spray verification reports
• Wiper linkage: centre distances from 400 mm to 2,000 mm, supplied with the layout calculation method rather than dimensions alone
• Blades covering 400 mm to 1,000 mm, together with washer systems, wiper arms and bus door locks

The point was not how the stand looked. It was whether a visitor could see how this factory produces the same part the same way, batch after batch, and check it against their own requirements before going home.

European purchasing tends to run in stages, and this stand was built for the second one. Stage one happens without you: a website, a catalogue, a certificate scan.

Stage two is where Hannover sits — drawings, test reports and process descriptions, checked by people whose job is to find the gap between what you claim and what you can evidence. Skipping to stage three, which is price, only works for parts nobody has to answer for later.

On paper LEILI brings what a European purchasing department asks for first: ISO 9001, IATF 16949, and a long list of Chinese OE programmes behind both.

Bus programmes are the larger part of the catalogue, but the same wiper systems also go onto rail vehicles and marine craft — the which rail and marine vehicles LEILI covers are listed separately.

European buyers start from that list and add to it: electromagnetic compatibility, environmental testing, ingress protection on the motor. Those three came up most.

Our explanation of bus wiper motor standards (ECE R10, ISO 16750, ISO 20653) sets out what each of those actually asks for.

What visitors asked

Six days, and the stand worked mainly as a place to be questioned. The technology picture came first. Battery-electric and hydrogen were not alternatives to argue over — both were already in production, and several visitors were working on both.

Camera-monitor systems came up repeatedly in connection with wiping. Once the mirror is gone, the areas that have to stay clean sit outside the windshield, on pods and lens housings, with different geometry and different drainage. Designing a wiping envelope for that is not the same job as sizing a windshield sweep: the five standard sweep layouts were worked out for glass, not for camera pods.

Then the question list, which keeps getting longer. Visitors still asked about performance, but that is where the conversation started rather than stopped. The share of recycled material, whether the assembly can be separated for recycling at end of life, and what carbon footprint figure can be put against it are now asked in the same breath as torque and voltage. Buyers asked for verification documents before they asked for a quote, as a matter of routine.

None of these has a short answer, and the visitors know that. What they are testing is whether you have thought about it already — whether you can be developed, or only bought from.

Out of those two comes the one that decides everything here: you do not get to discuss price until you can describe your process. A sample gets you in the door. Documentation is what lets you stay.

Our harvest from this edition was modest in coverage even where it was high in quality. Hall location and visitor flow put us further from the main aisles than the German manufacturers, so we met fewer people than we would have liked. Their questions were unusually specific, though, and the trip served its purpose: the European threshold is now visible in detail, along with what still needs building.

Reach of the expo

Roughly 145,000 visitors attended the six days, a significant share of them drawn from outside Germany, and both exhibitor and visitor numbers reached new highs. In the organiser’s own post-show survey, satisfaction ran above 90%. European transport is in the middle of a driveline transition, and demand for technical and supply-chain information rose accordingly.

Six days is unusually long for a commercial vehicle fair, and it shapes how the halls are worked. The first two draw executives and press; the middle days carry the purchasing and engineering traffic; the last two are quieter and better suited to the longer technical conversations. Suppliers who judge the show on Thursday alone come away with the wrong impression.

The Chinese exhibitors had a hall to themselves, off the main aisles, and it saw less traffic than the halls the German manufacturers sat in. Two things are true there at once and neither cancels the other: this industry is now too big for the market to wave away, and a share of its buyers still walk in sceptical. Thicker process files are the only answer we have found.

LEILI’s other stops that year were the Busworld Türkiye coach fair and ComTrans Moscow 2024 — the first aimed at coach manufacturers, the second at cold-climate failure modes.

Closing

Sample testing and data-pack submission for the European contacts made at IAA Transportation 2024 are under way in Pingyang. Work on strengthening the technical documentation behind its bus wiper systems is running in parallel, driven by the questions raised there about material composition and process auditability.

Yang Hao, spokesperson for Zhejiang Leili Auto Parts Co., Ltd., said: “Selling components in Europe is not a contest over who quotes lowest. It is about who can explain the process. By the third round they always ask why this batch matches the last one, and you have to have an answer. We are glad to have those conversations, because they push a factory to work in finer detail.”

About Zhejiang Leili Auto Parts Co., Ltd.

Founded in 1989 as Pingyang Automobile Wiper Factory and based in the Yuyang Industrial Zone of Pingyang, Zhejiang, LEILI operates a 13,000 sqm facility and has spent more than three decades on two product lines: electrical windshield wiper systems and bus door locks. The company is certified to ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 and supplies both OE and aftermarket customers. Website: leiliautoparts.com. Further reading: wiper systems FAQs.