Chinese heaters

[mikash]

Often because .of lower manufacturing costs associated with much larger production runs,more capital investment and by no means least less greedy fingers in the pie...many things leave china for pennies but once branded and sold by the west sell for many pounds and as long as the western marketing machine stays that way Chinese direct sales will replace both western retailers and manufacturers..If we agree webasto are better made does that justify a 10/15 or even 20 fold price difference? And for the average user either they or the van won't be around long enough to benefit from the longer life of the brand name and it will never get close to the cost of the Chinese equivalent in use per hour cost.
There are many many more businesses that do install the Chinese heaters than don't and also many more worldwide that install Chinese than western,not to mention self installers some of who use them to heat their cabins in the properly cold parts of the globe leaving them running 24/7 for many months...so they should be upto keeping a van warm for what for most is a few days or even hours a year

I don't know how much Webasto makes per heater but I do know that designing, certifying and manufacturing a heater in EU costs a lot more than copying said heater design and producing it in China with 0 product liability. So it's a bit of an unfair comparison.

 

[oldiesontour]

I don't know how much Webasto makes per heater but I do know that designing, certifying and manufacturing a heater in EU costs a lot more than copying said heater design and producing it in China with 0 product liability. So it's a bit of an unfair comparison.

Maybe but it was designed and certified many years ago ,and retailers 30% share and the vat are far greater in £ on a £2k sale than a £60 sale..and a .a manufacturers say 10% on cost has the same effect,further to say the Chinese have copied can't be right they have changed the original design to reduce manufacturing costs and have continued to do so particularly the controller side

 

[Pausim]

Just make sure that whatever you have is acceptable to your insurance company. If not bin it or live with the risk. I have just upgraded my front door lock to meet insurance requirements. Read the small print!

 

[gus-lopez]

Just make sure that whatever you have is acceptable to your insurance company. If not bin it or live with the risk. I have just upgraded my front door lock to meet insurance requirements. Read the small print!

Here,fortunately or maybe unfortunately, everything has to be homologated in a 'project' & all added to the ficha tecníca logbook which details everything on the vehicle that is mechanical. I'm doing one at present.
That said there are still many loopholes.
One that fascinates me is fridges & fridge freezers. many manufacturers fit Alpicool which is known as being a decent make. The exact same fridge & fridge freezer is also sold as CZ or Coolzone & are absolutely identica ,made in the same factoryl
. Yet although they have the EC homologation they lack the ECE R10 electromagnetic certificate for fixed installation. This is bypassed by saying that it is plugged in on a 12 v cigarette plug & is "not a fixed installation"

It is all nonsense.