Originally Posted by Reddy45
PPG is no longer in the business. They were renamed to PGW and I believe are currently owned by LKQ Corp. If you buy any PGW windshields now, they all seem to have a DOT563 mfr code which is XYG based out of China.
Pilkington was bought by Nippon Sheet Glass, which is potentially OK since NSG still makes decent quality glass in their Japanese plants.
Fuyao is the one you're probably talking about where the Chinese billionaire owner opened up a plant in Ohio to produce glass here. Some of their stuff is OK, some of it is meh. I detailed a Honda Civic recently that had an OEM Honda windshield made by Fuyao and it was flawless. The Fuyao windshield on my vehicle has terrible distortion at the edges.
Fuyao/FYG's Ohio plant was the former GM Moraine plant. FYG has been winning OEM contracts left and right from GM, Hyundai, Honda, Subaru and VW. Even BMW and Mercedes are using FYG glass. I think I've seen Toyota-marked FYG glass on a new Avalon, but Toyota is usually very loyal to Asahi Glass. The FYG on my parent's car is OK, some distortion at the edges. The OE rain-sensing wipers don't work right, as they still wipe with a bone dry windshield. I blame the Safelite hack for trying to reuse the OEM rain sensor without installing a new gel pad.
PGW's OEM arm is now part of Vitro who also bought out the remainder of PPG's glass business. LKQ and Vitro worked out of a deal that the former buys more glass from the latter in order to use their trademark. Vitro is OEM on Mexican GM/Ford and Nissans.
Safelite has improved the quality of their installs like banning long knives and using Sika 30-minute drive-away time adhesive but they still cut a few corners here and there. But, it must be a fluke that the last two times I've called Safelite for glass, Pilkington windshields were installed? A Safelite tech said XYG/Benson is junk. I was on a bus that used XYG glass for its windows - you can see the visual distortion on what should be a perfectly flat pane of glass. I've been in cars with AutoTemp or XYG side windows. If the tint(the OEM-style UV-reducing or privacy green/blue/gray tint) doesn't match, it's the distortions that you can see.