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The China auto market in 2026 is still undergoing deep adjustment: overall sales under pressure, price wars have not ceased, profit margins continue to be compressed. However, under this background, some enterprises still deliver good results. Over the past few years, global leading technology enterprises in the connection and sensing fields -- TE Connectivity (TE Connectivity, hereinafter referred to as "TE"), has maintained high-speed growth in the China automotive connector market. Besides technical reverse empowerment globally, TE's factories in Morocco, Europe, Brazil, and Thailand are providing support for more and more Chinese OEMs' overseas layouts.
Observation and summary suggest that what enables this connector giant to maintain growth momentum when the industry is under pressure, besides continuous technical innovation and breakthroughs, is also deep strategic thinking -- reconstructing the growth logic with a "Boundary Expansion" mindset. At the Electronica Shanghai held recently, TE directly used "Expanding Boundaries Together, Creating Value Co-operatively" as the theme, exhibiting jointly with ecosystem partners, demonstrating its multi-dimensional boundary expansion concept. Let's take a look together.
Breaking Technical Boundaries: From Small Wire Gauge to Comprehensive Aluminum Replacing Copper
The two characters "Boundary Expansion" have multiple meanings in TE's context. The most intuitive layer is its own capabilities, especially technical breakthroughs of boundaries continuously. Sun Xiaoguang, Vice President and General Manager of the Automotive Sector and Industrial & Commercial Transportation Sector China Region of TE Connectivity stated directly that coping with Involution cannot rely solely on sacrificing profits, more importantly it is to continuously break technical bottlenecks from the industry perspective, make products "smaller, lighter, better", and maximize cost reduction and efficiency increase.
Sun Xiaoguang, Vice President and General Manager of the Automotive Sector and Industrial & Commercial Transportation Sector China Region of TE Connectivity, Image Source: TE Connectivity
In 2024, TE launched a small wire gauge solution -- 0.19 mm² multi-win composite wire. Based on existing test data, this solution successfully achieved about 60% copper reduction, 37% weight reduction, at least 10% cost reduction. It has currently been applied in 18 models from 14 OEMs.
In 2025, the company also proposed low-voltage current carrying circuit "Aluminum Replacing Copper". The reason is that intelligent electric vehicles are developing rapidly, the demand for wire harnesses per vehicle is getting larger, leading to a rapid increase in copper usage, and costs are getting higher. The most direct benefit of aluminum replacing copper is reducing copper usage, reducing weight and cost, while reducing carbon emissions (copper is heavier than aluminum and more expensive, and smelting copper generates a large amount of carbon dioxide). And this year at Electronica, TE directly announced the implementation of the "Comprehensive Aluminum Replacing Copper" solution.
Image Source: TE Connectivity
At the exhibition site, TE displayed a full series of innovative applications of aluminum replacing copper technology in the vehicle connection field: new generation low-voltage alloy aluminum wire, high voltage full series aluminum wire and aluminum busbar connection solutions, aluminum material system assembly solutions, etc. According to Zheng Rong, Senior Sales and Marketing Director of the Automotive Sector China Region of TE Connectivity, innovative solutions can help customers achieve 18% to 100% copper reduction in electro-electric loops, estimated that after scale promotion, China can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over one million tons annually.
Zheng Rong, Senior Sales and Marketing Director of the Automotive Sector China Region of TE Connectivity, Image Source: TE Connectivity
Both small wire gauge and aluminum replacing copper are excellent solutions that the industry has known for a long time but is difficult to implement. Taking aluminum replacing copper as an example, 20 years ago European companies attempted to introduce aluminum wires into automobiles, but problems such as electrochemical corrosion and aluminum creep have never been fundamentally solved.
Sun Xiaoguang stated in media exchanges that the problem in the past was "not returning to first principles". Traditional solutions tried to compensate for aluminum defects by improving terminal capabilities without changing the aluminum wire -- equivalent to patching a solution with inherent deficiencies. TE's approach is to redesign from the bottom layer: develop high-strength aluminum alloy materials to fundamentally solve the potential difference and electrochemical corrosion problem between copper and aluminum.
However, Sun Xiaoguang also frankly stated that the most worrying thing in the market promotion of aluminum replacing copper is "bad money driving out good" -- if the industry uses low-end aluminum wires to pretend to be high-end aluminum alloys, once large-scale problems occur, this strategic direction of aluminum replacing copper may be completely locked. Therefore, hoping the industry maintains quality bottom line while reducing costs.
Ecosystem Boundary Expansion: Co-creating Cooperation, Connecting Key Nodes of the Industrial Chain
TE recognized early that breakthroughs in the connector industry bottlenecks are never completed by a single enterprise, so in recent years it has always led "multi-win" cooperation, ecosystem co-creation.
Such as the implementation of aluminum replacing copper mentioned above, relying solely on material breakthroughs is far from enough. Welding processes, production line equipment, wire harness factory renovation -- any weak link will make the whole plan fail.
On July 2, TE signed a four-party strategic agreement with Bowei Alloy, Jiaocheng Ultrasonic, and Komax to jointly build a "comprehensive aluminum replacing copper" mass production ecosystem. Bowei Alloy is responsible for the development and supply of high-strength aluminum alloy materials, Jiaocheng Ultrasonic provides welding process solutions, and Komax ensures seamless switching at the equipment end -- wire harness factories do not need to spend huge sums to replace entire production lines, just replace modules to achieve upgrades from crimping to welding.
Image Source: TE Connectivity
And during this Electronica exhibition, TE displayed the low-voltage alloy aluminum wire ultrasonic welding solution created jointly with partners, compressing cutting, stripping, crimping, and welding speed to about 1 second, and seamlessly docking with existing automated production lines, resolving the pressure of wire harness factories' hundreds of millions of yuan production line renovation costs. Solved another major difficulty in the implementation of comprehensive aluminum replacing copper.
Image Source: TE Connectivity
"We are not just experts, but organizers who specifically consider value outside of experts." Sun Xiaoguang defined TE's role in the ecosystem this way, "Let the whole industry chain save money starting from OEMs, let every company not over-invest." This positioning is pragmatic and key: technical breakthrough is the premise, economic feasibility is the engine for large-scale promotion.
TE's similar co-creation is expanding in more dimensions. In July 2025, TE established a joint innovation lab with Geely Automobile Research Institute, and strategic cooperation with Li Auto is also underway. In the supply chain side, besides Bowei Alloy, TE also established deep joint R&D relationships with material companies like Kingfa Science & Technology and BASF. These cooperations no longer stay at traditional buying and selling levels, but are moving from independent efforts to collaborative incubation.
Image Source: TE Connectivity
Business Boundary Expansion: From Four Wheels to Two Wheels, to Embodied Intelligence
The results of technology boundary expansion must ultimately fall on business growth. And TE's expansion in business boundaries also embodies the "Boundary Expansion" thinking.
Two-wheelers are a strategically significant entry point in recent years. China's two-wheeler market scale is huge -- only domestic annual sales are at the level of tens of millions of units, but the quality in the connector field has long stayed at a low level. Especially in recent years, consumer demand for two-wheeler safety and intelligence has upgraded, and leading companies have begun to realize they must use automotive specifications and systems to reshape quality. TE's approach is to develop based on customer needs positively, solving pain points with minimum cost. Zheng Rong revealed that its "Laishiji" product has been widely used in the electric motorcycle fast charging market, and several leading enterprises have entered the strategic cooperation stage.
Image Source: TE Connectivity
Robots are another new blueprint being laid out. At the 2026 Electronica Shanghai, TE set up a humanoid robot solution exhibition area for the first time, covering connection solutions for four major systems: sensing, control, power, and joints. Sun Xiaoguang explained that from the technical bottom layer, robot sensing systems need cameras and LiDAR, control systems need wire-to-board, wire-to-wire connections, power systems involve battery packs and charging sockets, joints need wear-resistant wire harnesses -- these are highly homologous with automotive electro-electric architectures.
Image Source: TE Connectivity
Currently, the embodied intelligence market is still in the early stage, connectors are not the key variable for explosion. But TE chose to take position early, using existing resources and technical reserves to explore new specifications with customers together. "We walk towards the direction of how much value we can provide, one is disruptive value, one is extended value. Do the value well first, when opportunities come, we can amplify them anytime." Sun Xiaoguang said.
From four-wheel passenger cars to commercial vehicles, to two-wheelers and humanoid robots, TE is building an "AUTO+" business blueprint. This logic is not complicated: technical capabilities, manufacturing experience and quality systems accumulated in the automotive field can find new application scenarios in adjacent industries. The key lies in how to complete the migration of capabilities with the lowest cost -- and this is exactly the core competitiveness that TE has accumulated over the years in operational efficiency and large-scale manufacturing.
Image Source: TE Connectivity
Stay clear-headed amidst industry changes, find incremental value in limited space, explore co-creation beyond lone battles -- TE's "Boundary Expansion" thinking perhaps provides a sample worth reviewing for this industry undergoing deep adjustment. When "Involution" becomes the norm, the true way to break through may not lie in fighting harder on the same dimension, but in jumping out of existing boundaries and redefining the way value is created.
