China VII & Euro VII Dual Standards Drive Industry Transformation: Shandong Huaruifeng Leads The New Track Of Brake Pad Environmental Upgrade
In 2025, the global automotive emission standards have entered a stringent upgrade cycle. The EU Euro VII standard has been officially implemented, and China's National VII standard has entered the final formulation stage. For the first time, both standards have included brake pad particulate emissions into mandatory control, marking the comprehensive acceleration of the brake pad industry's transformation from "safety priority" to the dual core of "safety and environmental protection". Against this backdrop, Shandong Huaruifeng Machinery Co., Ltd., relying on years of technical accumulation, has launched innovative products to respond to industry changes, providing full-scenario compliance solutions for the commercial vehicle and passenger vehicle markets.
The upgrade of this emission standard has brought three core industry demands: First, the particulate emission limits have been significantly tightened. Euro VII requires that the PM10 emissions of passenger vehicle brakes shall not exceed 3mg/km from 2026, while National VII focuses on PM2.5 control simultaneously, with a reduction of more than 40% compared with the existing standards. Second, the popularization of new energy vehicles has spawned special performance requirements. The high acceleration characteristics of electric vehicles and the low utilization rate caused by kinetic energy recovery have put forward higher requirements for the response speed, anti-corrosion ability and noise reduction effect of brake pads. Third, the "dual carbon" goal has driven material innovation. Copper-free and asbestos-free have become the mainstream direction of product research and development, which not only reduces environmental hazards, but also lowers the carbon footprint throughout the life cycle. Industry data shows that the global brake pad market size reached 83.11 billion yuan in 2024, and is expected to approach 91 billion yuan by 2031. However, the gap in high-end environmentally friendly products is significant, with the import dependence still reaching 34.7%, providing a breakthrough opportunity for local enterprises.
Faced with the opportunities brought by the structural adjustment of the industry, Shandong Huaruifeng has built core competitiveness featuring "material innovation + intelligent manufacturing + full-scenario adaptation". On the R&D side, the company has jointly tackled the key technologies of copper-free hybrid friction materials with university laboratories. Through the innovative proportioning of natural minerals and recycled raw materials, the particulate emissions have been reduced by more than 30% compared with the industry average, and the coefficient of variation of friction coefficient has been controlled within 5%, perfectly meeting the requirements of both Euro VII and National VII standards. To address the pain points of new energy vehicles, the developed low-noise and anti-corrosion brake pads adopt special surface coating technology, solving the corrosion problem in coastal areas, improving the braking response speed by 25%, and controlling the noise decibel below 60dB. On the production side, the company has deployed an industrial internet flexible production line, introducing AI visual inspection and online spectral analysis systems, which has stabilized the product qualification rate above 99.5% and reduced the unit energy consumption by 20% compared with traditional processes, achieving the dual breakthrough of environmentally friendly production and cost optimization.
At present, Shandong Huaruifeng's environmentally friendly brake pads cover three major segments: commercial vehicles, passenger vehicles and new energy vehicles. Relying on the strict CCC certification qualification and international EPD carbon footprint declaration, the company not only serves the supporting market of mainstream domestic automobile manufacturers, but also exports to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other regions through the localized adaptation strategy for markets along the "Belt and Road", maintaining an export gross profit margin of over 28%. The person in charge of the company's technology stated that in the future, the company will continue to focus on the R&D of intelligent braking system compatibility technology, lay out the braking redundancy solutions required for L3+ level autonomous driving, and deepen the vertical integration of the industrial chain to build a closed-loop ecosystem from raw materials to remanufacturing, helping the industry shift from price competition to a new stage of value competition characterized by "technology-compliance-sustainability".
With the full implementation of emission standards and the continuous improvement of the penetration rate of new energy vehicles, the brake pad industry is undergoing in-depth reshuffle. Enterprises with environmental compliance capabilities and technological innovation strength will occupy a dominant position in the market. Taking this industry transformation as an opportunity, Shandong Huaruifeng will continue to increase R&D investment, promote the dual upgrading of product performance and environmental protection standards, provide safer, more environmentally friendly and more reliable braking solutions for global users, and help the green transformation and high-quality development of the automotive industry.
