At 2 o'clock in the morning, Ms. Zhang held her sleeping child and was forced to walk down from the 12th floor - both elevators in the community were shut down due to broken wire ropes. This is the fourth malfunction within six months. Similar scenes are constantly unfolding across the country. The total number of elevators in China has exceeded 10 million, of which more than 30% are old equipment. According to regulatory records from a second tier city in 2022, a total of 12000 incidents of trapped people were handled within a year, of which 65% occurred on elevators that had been in use for over ten years. It is worrying that despite this, over 70% of elevator buyers still prioritize only price.

The price of low price

Cheap elevators are like opening blind boxes, "said Li, the property engineering supervisor, helplessly. Among the 15 communities he is responsible for, three of them have to spend millions of yuan on maintenance every year because the developers chose low-priced brands. In a high-end residential area, an elevator suddenly dropped from the 15th floor to the 3rd floor. Although there were no casualties, an investigation found that the maintenance party used non original parts, resulting in a 30% decrease in brake sensitivity. In order to reduce expenses, the property management even split the contract into three parts and subcontracted it to three unqualified companies. Experts point out that elevator safety is a systematic project that cannot be compromised from the entire machine to a single screw.

Attempt at intelligentization

In order to change the current situation, some companies have launched health monitoring systems that use over 200 sensors for real-time monitoring, which can predict 90% of faults 72 hours in advance. But the penetration rate is less than 5%. The reason is that over 60% of property owners find the renovation fees too high, and over 30% of homeowners are concerned about data privacy. An old residential area in Shanghai has proposed a solution: government subsidies+self financing by property management+crowdfunding by residents. After upgrading 20 elevators that have been in service for 15 years to intelligent ones, the failure rate decreased by 92% and maintenance fees decreased by 40%.

Conclusion

Every morning, thousands of elevators restart, carrying not only people and goods, but also the civilization level of the city. Only by getting rid of low price competition, returning to quality and prevention, can elevators truly become synonymous with safety. After all, no one wants to live in the fear of being trapped at any time.