Discuss anything have to do w/Chinese automakers or their auto market here. I was inspired partly by http://priuschat.com/forums/environmental-discussion/108004-china-big-suvs.html which I'd seen the other day. I'll start. I listened to Carmakers In China Rev Up As Industry Shifts East : NPR thanks to the NPR app. It didn't have a lot of depth but was somewhat interesting and amusing. The piece mentions that the Chinese bought 18.5 million cars last year (I presume these are "light" vehicles). In contrast, from what I've read (like at Strong Finish for 2011 U.S. Auto Sales - WSJ.com, may need to Google for U.S. Auto Sales Finish Year Strong site:wsj.com), 12.8 million light vehicles were sold in the US last year.
my son just got back from ethiopia and said it was mostly chinese cars in addis ababa. he heard the chinese were making large investments in the country and there was no surcharge on their vehicles.
BTW, related to cars in China, http://priuschat.com/forums/freds-h...c-capitalism-being-rerun-starting-2-21-a.html was excellent. I think one probably has to rent/buy it on DVD or see if it exists on your favorite streaming services.
It's the world's biggest car market by a considerable margin. And there's the occasional bit of good innovation: BYD's electric cars are interesting, for example. But most domestic-brand cars are still pretty clunky, and there's a worrying - and arguably illegal - lack of imagination when it comes to design. If you want the simplest-possible overview of the market at the moment, you could do worse than the recent Top Gear China Special, which was far less silly than I'd expected. It's Season 18, Episode 2 - the China bit starts at about 40 minutes.
This was interesting... CNBC/NY Times: Chinese Cars Make Valuable Gains in Emerging Markets: News Headlines Not surprised about the quality result survey. This quote below might explain why we've seen Chinese cars do so badly in crash tests. Consumers there didn't have it at the top of their priority list, so there was no reason for their automakers to have it up there either.
Too bad the report mentioned at EXCLUSIVE: Bernstein Research Literally Dissects Chinese Cars, Auto Industry In 200-Page Report | The Truth About Cars was pulled before I got to it.
