GM Easily Meets China's Fuel Efficiency Standards, Has Record Sales There

July 4th, 2010 by Susan Kraemer

In yet another example of how easily US automakers are able to meet much more stringent emissions standards in other countries, General Motors and its joint ventures in China set new sales records in China for the first half of 2010 with a 49% increase for the same period last year, selling 1,209,138 units, according to a recent GM Press release.

GM sold more cars in China than it did in America in the first half of this year. In itself, that is not surprising, considering that there are easily three times as many consumers in China. In addition, those Chinese consumers were largely shielded from the Big Recession because China’s government quickly implemented a green-economy stimulus by investing $9 billion a month in building a new clean energy infrastructure.

[social_buttons]

GM’s Opel was up 143% from June 2009. The Chevrolet division’s sales, including the joint venture New Sail line, with the lowest emissions in its class, jumped 43.3 percent to 38,304 units, mostly due to the strong demand for the Cruze lower-medium sedan and record monthly demand for the New Sail small car of more than 9,000 units.

While the Cadillac SRX luxury utility vehicle also sold nearly twice as many, it was only 1,100 units. China’s strict fuel economy regulations in 2008 were for 43 mpg for lighter cars and 21 mpg for heavier ones and applied not to fleet averages, but to each vehicle. Their requirement goes to a new average of both of 42 mpg by 2016.

Although China has had requirements that have exceeded ours in the past, the Obama administration has bypassed our stalemated Senate to decree an increase to average 35.5 mpg by 2016, a bigger percentage jump than we have ever seen, as this graph from Edmunds shows.

The fact that GM was able to break its own previous Chinese records do show that the American automaker is able to compete in a market where fuel efficiency and climate-friendliness standards are at European levels; greatly exceeding the lenient standards that US automakers battled to keep in this country.

It is sad that the US auto industry, by refusing to adapt to fuel efficiency and by resisting climate legislation in this country, ran an entire US city into the ground. Detroit is turning to back to pasture.

Yet, in nations with tougher rules, GM is already able to meet high fuel efficiency standards and thrive and Ford already does produce high mileage cars in Europe, like the 56 mpg Ka.

Image: Enjoy Traveling

Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.

Tags: China, detroit, fuel efficiency standards, GM, record sales

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

http://www.xinxin.com XinXin

If those Republicans come at me with the same fear-mongering and swift-boating that they usually do, then I will take them head on. Because I believe the American people are tired of fear and tired of distractions and tired of diversions. We can make this election not about fear, but about the future. And that won’t just be a Democratic victory; that will be an American victory.
Jeff

This just goes on to prove that we are engaged in corporate welfare in this country.
http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer

@DanDetroit, it doesn’t matter what consumers ‘want’. If left to consumers, we would still have inefficient fridges gobbling up twice the kilowatt-hours . Fridges don’t, because manufacturers had to ‘meet more stringent standards’.

Same issue with oil consumption.
DAN9876

The real problem is, the people in the US think only foreign cars are good and that GM, Ford and Chrysler can not build good cars. Consumer Reports is constantly hammering the American companies and exaggerate at how great the Japanese cars are, and we are too stupid to see the are bias, so what do we do? We buy Japanese cars. I think it’s time that we wake-up.
DanDetroit

This author is misleading or at least naive in stating that fleet fuel efficiency equates to “meeting stringent emissions requirements”.

Fuel efficiency is a result of customer vehicle purchase choices. She appears unaware of the reality that Americans really don’t care much about fuel efficiency. Oh, they say they do, but only after they get the capability, performance, and style they want. This is proven by the nearly 50% of the U.S. market captured by vehicles classified as trucks. In addition, these larger vehicles offer many times the unit profit of small cars. The U.S. makers are merely interested in regulations that allow them to satisfy their customers and to achieve the goal of any business, to make some money. The Chinese, being very much less affluent than Americans, do choose fuel efficient, small to tiny cars. This sort of ignorance perpetuates the myth that the U.S. makers are inferior in capability to foreign makes. The simple fact is that Americans like large vehicles and will continue to buy them until fuel prices climb much higher than they are today.
Howard Eldhus

Quote: “It is sad that the US auto industry…ran an entire US city into the ground. Detroit is turning to back to pasture.”

Ah, what dramatic hyperbole, Susan. It would be even better if it were true. It must be wonderful from your comfortable perch in northern California to be so intimately knowledgable of what going on in Detroit, 2,200 miles away. Have you ever been to Detroit, or have you gotten all of your information about it by listening to late-night comedians? Yes, Detroit is experimenting with some urban garden and farming. Yes, Detroit is in a deep recession. To use such a simplistic statement that “Detroit is turning back to pasture”, however, only illustrates your lack of in-depth knowledge and two-dimensional thinking. Have you taken the time to learn about the things that actually are going on there? Of course not – getting accurate information might ruin your pre-determined story line.

In the final analysis, Susan, I suppose you can’t help yourself. Northern California, after all, is nothing more than a collection of aging hippies and New Agers smoking dope, worshipping the moon, and shuffling around glassy-eyed pursuing hopeless daydreams, right?
- http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer
  
  Touche, Howard.
  
  I am actually thrilled by the movement towards re-creating Detroit as an urban gardening post-oil-age pioneer, and shouldn’t have let a succinct story line be the enemy of accurate depiction.
  
  Now, back to “shuffling around glassy-eyed in pursuit of my hopeless dreams”
lynx

but why would they pay to modernize their factories here and produce competitive cars when it’s so much easier to bribe politicians and take taxpayer bailouts?