Gas guzzlers a hit in China, where car sales are booming

"The Chinese consumer is still back on the curve of satisfying their basic need for transportation," said John Parker, Ford Motor Co.'s executive vice president for Asia, "rather than looking at being green."

Because green cars do not satisify that basic need? Wth, it's not like Chinese families have 6 children like subsaharan African families.

 

Here in this remote corner of China I see a bimodal distribution. The larger # of cars are small rather cheaply made (if I may say so) and with engines from 1 to 1.6 L. They probably get fuel economy expected for that size engine in a lightweight sedan, though I cannot report field data.

The smaller # of cars are SUVs and lux sedans. The average citizen might wish for them, but the price is far out of reach. Still this is the only segment of the vehicle population that merits media attention.

More interesting to me is the very large number of electric scooters. Such could be of great utility in urban commuting worldwide, but so far I guess they are not widely used outside of Asia.

 

The problem is that even if only 0.5% of China's population can afford to buy large SUV and gas guzzling luxury cars that is still 500,000 people. And considering that truly rich people buy more than one car, if these 500,000 people buy three vehicles each, that's 1,500,000 gas guzzlers. Now imagine if that is 2-5% instead of 0.5%... I am glad that not all Chinese can afford those cars!

 

While that's certainly true, GM is also about to introduce a Two-Mode Buick sedan in China, about a year before we see Two-Mode sedans...

 

Buick sells more in China than in the US, so that's not surprising...

 

I'm not aware of any gas-guzzling Buicks...

Plus, in China, they have smaller Buicks that we don't have here.

 

The Enclave, the LaCrosse, the Lucerne... wait a minute, that's all of them! Any car that gets less than 30 mpg is a gas guzzler in my book, so Buick almost makes it...