The ongoing dispute among leading home appliance brands regarding the use of "genuine copper materials" has taken a new turn. On April 20th, in response to Gree Electric's statement on the "aluminum wire motor air conditioner" issue, Yang Xiangxi, Brand Director of Hisense's Air Conditioning Division, stated plainly, "The era when an air conditioner could be sold for 500 yuan more just by adding a few hundred grams of copper is gone forever."
This controversy was sparked by an advertising slogan. On April 14th, Zhu Lei, Marketing Director of Gree Electric, posted on Weibo, accusing Hisense air conditioners of "plagiarizing" Gree's original "genuine copper materials" promotional phrase. He also questioned Hisense's use of aluminum wire in motor windings, asserting they were "not qualified to claim genuine copper materials." Hisense responded forcefully, even attaching Gree's application form to join the "Air Conditioner Aluminum Strengthening Application Research Working Group."
Subsequently, the two parties engaged in a back-and-forth exchange, escalating from Weibo to video platforms, from late-night posts to physical teardown comparisons, dragging what should have been a technical discussion about air conditioner technology into a marketing spat.
The eruption of this marketing battle reflects the deeper challenges facing the home appliance industry. Against a backdrop of intensifying competition in a saturated market and fierce price wars, companies are caught in a dual dilemma of "innovation anxiety" and "marketing dependency." Data indicates that in the fourth quarter of 2025, overall demand in the domestic home appliance market declined. Companies faced profit pressures under high costs, forcing brands to seek differentiated competitive advantages.
A significant reason for the high costs is the continuous rise in the price of copper, a core raw material for air conditioner production, impacting the entire supply chain. Monitoring data from a business intelligence platform shows that in 2025, the spot price of copper rose from 73,830 yuan per ton at the beginning of the year to 99,180 yuan per ton by year-end, an increase of 34.34%.
In this context, the choice between copper and aluminum as materials for core air conditioner components has become a focal point for the industry. In fact, copper holds significant advantages in conductivity, durability, and safety, while aluminum has its own unique strengths in terms of lightweight properties and cost-effectiveness. For instance, Professor Chen Jianmin, Founding Dean of the Reliability Research Institute at Xi'an University of Technology, analyzed that China is "poor in copper but rich in aluminum," noting that aluminum is not an inferior substitute material. With improved reliability, aluminum can replace copper in air conditioner heat exchangers. This suggests that aluminum has a legitimate path for technological evolution.
What should be a technical trade-off based on performance, cost, and application scenarios has instead become a weapon for brands to attack each other. Companies expending significant energy on such spats is essentially marketing infighting, which does nothing to enhance product performance.
More notably, both parties involved in the dispute are participants in the "Air Conditioner Aluminum Strengthening Application Research Working Group," yet they present completely opposing stances in the court of public opinion. This disconnect between "research" and "marketing" precisely exposes the essence of the controversy: a battle for marketing influence.
The harm of marketing infighting is evident. Firstly, it confuses consumers, leading them into the cognitive trap of "material supremacy" while overlooking core indicators like overall performance, energy efficiency ratio, and noise levels. Secondly, it erodes trust in the industry; when leading brands expend energy on verbal battles, consumers may question the entire industry's innovation capabilities.
Confronted with the copper versus aluminum debate, companies urgently need to return to rationality, transcend marketing involution, and build a genuine moat through hardcore technological innovation. For example, they should abandon the simplistic "black and white" binary view of materials and establish a product evaluation system based on the entire lifecycle. Proactively disclosing key information such as core performance parameters, energy efficiency indicators, and durability test results would allow consumers to make rational choices based on their own needs.
From a technical perspective, companies need to invest more resources in core technology areas like compressors, inverter controls, and intelligent algorithms. From an industry development standpoint, leading enterprises should play a guiding role by opening patents and sharing technologies to lower the barrier to innovation industry-wide, collectively promoting the upgrade of technical standards and industry progress.
Whether copper or aluminum, they are ultimately just material choices. What truly determines the quality of an air conditioner is always the core technology, system optimization, and real-world performance. In an era of saturated competition, only by focusing on hardcore technological innovation and being guided by user value can companies break free from marketing involution and build a truly competitive moat.
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