Car counting conundrum
- Source: Global Times
- [09:34 January 10 2011]
- Comments
Traffic jam on Chang'an Avenue in Beijing on December 25, two days after the municipality issued new policies to deal with the congestion. Photo: IC
In an article, entitled Driving to the Future: Can China - and the World - Afford 2 Billion Cars? published on the Scientific American's website this week, the magazine's energy and environment editor David Biello asked, "With China potentially heading towards a billion vehicles alone in the next few decades the question is: can China build the clean car of the future or will it remain stuck in the muck and mire of the past?"
"In 2010, some 1.2 billion cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles are driven worldwide, including roughly 200 million in China," Biello said.
He cited transportation expert Daniel Sperling from the University of California, Davis as saying, "The industry and the market are trending toward smaller, cheaper vehicles, not just in China and India, but elsewhere as well. If you think we have problems now due to oil security and climate change, it is going to get a lot worse unless we do something about the increasing number of vehicles."
Passenger vehicles sold in China in 2010 are estimated at 11.6 million units, a 35 percent rise on 2009, according to an analysis by Roland Berger, a Munich-based consulting firm.
Although this may constitute a slowdown after the whopping 51 percent increase seen in 2009, which was fueled by the government stimulus plan for car consumption, the growth number is still significant, matching the seven-year compound annual growth rate recorded between 2001 and 2007, according to the analysis.
Roland Berger further predicted that passenger vehicle sales in China would exceed 18 million units by 2015, but that growth rates would see a major decrease (See chart).
Car sales grow in China
Prior to the release of national annual sales figures by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers next week, major industry players have posted growing China sales numbers in 2010.
SAIC Motor, the nation's biggest carmaker, announced Thursday a sales rise of 31.5 percent for 2010. SAIC, which has joint ventures with US auto giant General Motors (GM) and German automaker Volkswagen, sold 3.58 million vehicles in 2010, compared with 2.73 million units the previous year. A Chinese media report said that these sales would put SAIC in the world's top 8 automakers for yearly sales.
With the global revenues of European auto suppliers returning close to pre-crisis levels, almost 20 percent of their revenues now originate from China, Roland Berger said.
Showcasing China's rise in importance to foreign brands' global strategies, Volkswagen AG decided to extend its CEO Martin Winterkorn's contract by five years, Bloomberg News reported earlier this week.
Winterkorn plans to double production capacity in China with two new plants as well as opening a factory in the US this year. Volkswagen is seeking to edge out Toyota in sales and profitability by 2018, the report said.
