LEILI Brings Cold-Climate Wiper Systems to ComTrans Moscow 2024
Moscow, Russia — Zhejiang Leili Auto Parts Co., Ltd. (“LEILI”), a manufacturer of automotive windshield wiper systems and bus door locks since 1989, exhibited at ComTrans International 2024 in Moscow, held from 10 to 13 December 2024. The company showed wiper assemblies and wiper motors built for cold-climate operation at Booth F-192.
Russia’s largest commercial vehicle exhibition
ComTrans is Russia’s largest and best-known trade fair for commercial vehicles and automotive components. Its scope runs past bus into trucks, rail vehicles and special-purpose vehicles, together with their parts.
The reason overseas parts suppliers keep coming back is straightforward: the vehicles working on Russian roads skew old, and the replacement demand created by renewal and servicing is sizeable. Ageing stock generates work every winter, and it generates failures that are not subtle.
That condition shapes what has to be brought. Parts are expected to fit vehicles designed before most current supply relationships existed, and operators keep machines in service well past the working life a temperate-market schedule assumes — which makes the fitted part, rather than the newest part, the specification that matters.
URBANTRANS 2024 ran alongside the fair this edition, covering urban passenger transport equipment. The two shared the venue and fed visitors to each other.
Running the two together broadens who comes through the door. City transport vehicles spend their lives stopping, starting and clearing snow at low speed, which is a different duty from long-haul work and produces a different list of worn parts.
Over the past two years, the shifting geopolitical situation in Europe has raised Russian demand for Chinese automotive parts. LEILI took a stand in that context, aiming to build direct contact with local distributors and end users while demand for both renewal parts and aftermarket replacement is running high.
Exhibition facts
Four days in Moscow, sharing the dates with URBANTRANS 2024. Exhibitors came from four countries — Russia, Belarus, China and Türkiye.
- Official name: ComTrans International 2024 — International Trade Fair for Commercial Vehicles
- Dates: 10–13 December 2024
- Venue: Moscow
- Co-located fair: URBANTRANS 2024
- Scale: 227 exhibiting companies from 4 countries; more than 12,000 professional visitors over four days
- LEILI stand: Booth F-192
Sources: COMTRANS 2024 exhibitor and visitor figures — ITE Group (organiser)
LEILI at Booth F-192
Cold regions ask something entirely different of a wiper system compared with temperate markets. Each of these five items needs its own verification, and together they come down to one requirement: the part has to be working before the driver leaves the depot.
- Blade rubber hardens as temperature falls, so wiping behaviour at cold start is not the behaviour measured at room temperature
- Under ice and snow load the motor can stall, and stall protection has to intervene without cooking the windings
- Repeated de-icing wears the arm spring long before the blade is due for replacement
- Linkage joints need a grease specification that stays workable below freezing
- Washer lines have to survive antifreeze chemistry and a washer fluid that does not turn to slush
What was on the stand
The display ran on physical samples alongside the condition each one is built for:
- Bus and truck wiper assemblies: arm pressure selected according to how often the operator clears ice
- Wiper motors and their cold-start behaviour: 30 W–180 W, 12 V and 24 V — start-up at low temperature and stall protection under ice were the two specifications asked about most often
- Wiper linkage with low-temperature grease: centre distances from 400 mm to 2,000 mm, with a separate grease requirement below freezing
- Cold-rated wiper blades: 400 mm to 1,000 mm
- Washer systems for freezing conditions, wiper arms and the bus door lock range
Pipework freezing and washer fluid compatibility came up on their own agenda. Nobody raises those questions in a warm climate; here they are part of the daily routine, because a frozen washer bottle makes the rest of the system decorative.
Each of those five failure modes fails at a different temperature and in a different order, which is why none of them can be covered by a single test result. Answering them one at a time is also how the stand was worked.
The same assemblies run on buses, coaches, trucks and construction vehicles. The certificates are ISO 9001 and IATF 16949, and OE supply goes back more than thirty years.
What visitors asked
Almost every question over the four days carried a temperature attached to it.
The market’s shape is clear once you hear those questions. Vehicles in service skew old, so renewal and aftermarket replacement form the main entry point; and the demand structure itself has been changing, with greater willingness to buy Chinese parts than a few years ago.
What customers asked for clustered tightly: cold-start data, motor behaviour under ice load, how the blade copes with an iced surface, and the cold-climate test verification report. Whether it works is asked first and answered before anything else.
The trip settled the sequence for approaching this kind of market. Get it working first, discuss terms afterwards — the reverse order produces a sample that arrives, fails in January, and ends the relationship. Russian-language parameter sheets and technical support in the local language were written down as basics that have to be put in place.
Hall zoning and visitor flow limited what this edition produced on the spot. The concrete results it did leave behind are those two things: the cold-climate data set assembled for it, and the start made on Russian-language technical documentation.
Reach of the expo
More than 12,000 professional visitors came across the four days, mainly from Russia and neighbouring countries. Against the big Western European fairs there were fewer exhibiting companies, though conversations ran denser — many visitors were the people directly responsible for purchasing or technical selection, so discussions moved to samples and terms without much preamble.
Chinese exhibitors had the downstairs hall to themselves, and it was quieter than the halls upstairs. We stopped reading that as a verdict some time ago. The people who climb the stairs to find you have already decided they are interested — so the useful thing to bring is data, not an argument about the stairwell.
With the hall position fixed and visitor flow not in our favour, what remained available were the products themselves and data that can be checked.
The year had been full: Busworld Türkiye in May and IAA Transportation 2024 in September, then Automechanika Shanghai 2024, which closed the week before ComTrans opened. Entry into Central Asia came the following year, described in the report from Tashkent. The reasoning behind cold-climate specification is set out in our bus wiper configuration guide by climate zone.
Closing
Product work on cold climate wiper systems has moved into development, with samples aimed at low-temperature duty and a cold-testing programme both started. Russian-language data sheets and a Russian-language after-sales line are being built alongside it.
Yang Hao, spokesperson for Zhejiang Leili Auto Parts Co., Ltd., said: “Russian customers usually open with ‘how many degrees below zero will this work at’. That is not them being difficult — it is what they face every day. So we put the samples in a freezer and run them again and again. Data measured that way is worth more than anything we could say.”
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: climate-zone bus wiper configuration guide.
