The content on this webpage contains paid/affiliate links. When you click on any of our affiliate link, we/I may get a small compensation at no cost to you. See our affiliate disclosure for more info -----------------------
Last updated on August 6th, 2017 at 06:56 am
Super expert global warming researcher Sir Nicholas Stern claims:
“You can’t export an American car to China: it does not satisfy the emissions standards.”
Really? That’ll be news to DaimlerChrysler and Cadillac, both of which maintain outlets in China. This idea that Chinese automotive standards are higher than those in the US turns out to be another leftist item of faith; here’s Seattle’s Joel Connelly:
We can’t sell American cars in China because they don’t meet the Middle Kingdom’s fuel efficiency standards.
And the HuffyPost’s Laurie David:
You can’t even sell many American cars in China because they don’t meet that country’s higher fuel standards. That’s right, China demands better mileage from its cars than we do!
For sure, Laurie and Joel and Sir Nick! When not banning US vehicles entirely, China apparently limits its intake of American road metal to fuel-sipping Caddy econopods:
During a ceremony at Beijing’s Imperial Ancestors’ Temple, a symbol of ancient China, General Motors officially launched Cadillac, its premium luxury brand for modern China.
Three new Cadillac models that will be sold in China – the CTS, SRX and XLR – were unveiled at the ceremony. All three products embody Cadillac’s distinctive bold design, purposeful innovation and balanced performance …
All three models will start as imports from GM’s North American Operations. They will be built at the company’s Grand River manufacturing facility in Lansing, Michigan, and at its facility in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
That report is dated 2004, at which point Cadillac apparently first met China’s rigorous emission and mileage standards. Here’s a report on Ford and GM’s export plans from one year prior:
The top two US automakers announced plans to export thousands of vehicles to China as that country moves to open up its market to foreign competition.
By 2006, that export plan was paying off:
Ford Motor Company took another important step forward today in its commitment to grow in China by pledging to export more vehicles from the United States to China …
In 2005, Chinese customers purchased 2,787 Ford Mavericks, an increase of nearly 50 percent over 2004 and enough to place Maverick among the best-sellers in the Chinese imported SUV segment. And the sales growth continues: Maverick sales in the first quarter of 2006 were up over 30 percent year-over-year. With 423 sales in calendar year 2005, Lincoln Navigator helped define the market for “President Class,” full-size SUVs.
The commitment to continue the export program was marked in a ceremony in Los Angeles attended by a Chinese delegation led by Madam Wu Yi, China’s Vice Premier and Minister of Health, and included a number of senior officials from China’s Ministry of Commerce.
If, according to Stern, Chinese cars are cleaner than US cars, shouldn’t they be easily exported to America? Not so:
Reached by phone in China, an employee of [Chinese carmaker] Brilliance’s export trade department said the automaker wants to export the Zhonghua.
“But right now the emissions criteria doesn’t meet US and European levels,” the worker said. “Getting those certifications is very expensive. Therefore, we don’t have a plan to develop these aspects right now.”
What’s that? Chinese vehicle emissions don’t meet US standards? We’ll need a second opinion:
Chinese carmakers are throttling back plans to export their cars into major overseas markets such as Western Europe and North America, according to research undertaken for a just-auto members’ management briefing.
The study found that Chinese carmakers’ attentions are instead currently focussed on the need to supply a growing domestic market.
Ambitious export plans have been revised in the light of the need to meet relatively stringent crash-testing and emissions regulations in developed markets.
If Stern can be so wrong on elementary matters such as these, how wrong might he be about climate change (which, according to him, will cause gender inequalities and forced marriage)?
(Via Contrail and Dave Surls; earlier post on this here)
- A few years ago I was on a course in Budapest trying to learn Hungarian. One of the other students was a Chinese woman and I had a chat with her about the differences between Beijing and Budapest.
One of the biggest differences, according to her, was that the air in Budapest was so clean in comparison to that in China. Given that, by western European standards, Budapest was quite polluted at that time (thanks to the great socialist Trabant) this came as quite a surprise to me.
When I read anything suggesting that China has higher standards in pollution than the US it activites my BS detector big time…
- #2 Aldamir,
When I read anything suggesting that China has higher standards in pollution than the US it activites my BS detector big time…
Flashing red lights and sirens?
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 03 27 at 11:44 AM • permalink
- Yes, murph, but a knighted lying incompetent.
Or, in his case, is it “benighted and beclowned”?
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 03 27 at 11:47 AM • permalink
- How difficult is it to find out a few facts? How long does it take? I ran a Google search:
Results 1 – 10 of about 110,000 for auto “exports to china”. (0.21 seconds)
Taking a Government report (.pdf file) at random:
China’s automotive imports increased 84% to $US 14.45 billion in 2003. Complete vehicle
imports reached 125,129 units and the value jumped 63% to 5.25 billion US dollars.
- Interesting that Ford uses the Maverick name, a distinctly US one, for vehicles not marketed in the US. Mr. Maverick made his name and fortune at the end of the ACW by rounding up all the cattle which had been born in Texas during the war when nobody was around to claim them, and putting his brand on them. The car Ford is selling in China is in fact a Nissan manufactured in Russia with a Ford nameplate and engine.
- Hey, don’t forget Shanghai GM – an offering of theirs based on a Buick design is a most ubiquitous feature on Chinese roads.Posted by James Waterton on 2007 03 27 at 12:08 PM • permalink
- Commenter James Fulford in a previous thread:
I’m waiting for a picture of a polar bear eating a plastic turkey.
And I’m waiting for a picture of a polar bear eating a plastic turkey in China sitting in a Cadillac next to a gaunt, pale, hollowed-out David Hicks.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 03 27 at 12:10 PM • permalink
- #11 And I’m waiting for a picture of a polar bear eating a plastic turkey in China sitting in a Cadillac next to a gaunt, pale, hollowed-out David Hicks.
How about we shorten that to a polar bear eating David Hicks? I’m sure his supporters would be happy to know he died trying to save the polar bears.
- And I’m waiting for a picture of a polar bear eating a plastic turkey in China sitting in a Cadillac next to a gaunt, pale, hollowed-out David Hicks.
…with a red cross painted on the Cadi’s roof and thereafter bombed by Jewish fighter-pilots – a tragedy eventually lamented by this woman.
Comments for this post are now closed
Ha. I went over to Laurie David’s little error riddled post and that is what greeted me. Stick fingers in ears, chant LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU…
Posted by Major John on 2007 03 27 at 01:06 PM • permalink
- “We’ll get Dubyato take that picture for you while he’s out ditching his National Guard training and fax it to you from a Kinko’s in Abilene. “
And this is related to Sir Nick, how?
And you have proof of NG ditching, where? Lemme guess! The stuff that Rather was peddling in 2004 was the real deal, right?
If not, go feed the polar bears.
- As much as they don’t fulfill emissions regulations, I think the crash-test deficiencies have doomed Chinese efforts at selling cars even more, at least here in Europe. The few times that Chinese auto makers have submitted their products to standardized tests such as the NCAP, the results have been so uniformly disastrous that they usually don’t even bother with it anymore, as they’re still allowed to sell their cars in most European countries (with customers sensibly staying the hell away from them, though).
- From memory, P.J. O’Rourke in an article called “Bike Rout,” Car & Driver, circa 1983:
New York Mayor Ed Koch—after a visit to China during which he saw thousands of smiling Mao-men pedaling bicycles all over Beijing—returned home to announce the repainting of Manhattan’s streets with bike lanes. It never occurred to Hizzoner that all those Mao-men would have been smiling even bigger had they access to Buicks instead of bicycles. Under Koch, New York would become the new Beijing, transportation-wise.
Posted by Rittenhouse on 2007 03 27 at 02:14 PM • permalink
- “And if there were any justice in the world, being knighted [as Sir Nicholas Stern apparently is – we new worlders aren’t experts on Burkes Peerage] would come with an even greater responsibility…
Actually, us riffraffish commoners in the US are constitutionally inclined to skepticism or active disrespect regarding the pronunciamentos of lordly types with a Sir in their handles. Or toward newspaper columnists in the Seattle P-I, a hysterically biased paper in which Joel Connelly holds forth.
Posted by Insufficiently Sensitively on 2007 03 27 at 02:57 PM • permalink
- #27 Bikers already weave through traffic jams and have the thrill of bugs in your teeth and now you want your own parking, too? What do you want next, 72 virgins after your inevitable fender bender?Posted by dean martin on 2007 03 27 at 03:21 PM • permalink
- This has been a test of the Emergency Trollcast System. This is only a test.
Had this been an actual troll post, the prior post would have been followed by several additional paragraphs of recycled tropes and random insults flung at assorted posters. It would probably also have been followed by Andrea wielding a chainsaw.
This concludes this test of the Emergency Trollcast System. We noe return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress.
- This is my first post but I couldn’t resist as I happen to know something about this. I am able through direct experience to describe the vast gulf between these claims and the reality of automotive manufacturing.
There’s no such thing as an “American car” that gets exported somewhere else. In developing new platforms or models, car manufacturers (or at least the one I regularly work at – named in comments) must develop individual specifications of that platform or model to suit every different market in which the car will be sold. And that means taking into account emmission regulations (current and future), crash performance requirements, hell they even have to adjust compression ratio slightly for cars going to Chile because of all the high altitude driving, and design a special place for religious talismans on the dashboard and a thermos in the centre console for models going to India. Each market receives a car that is necessarily tailored to its requirements. Can you imagine a viable car company spending millions on development, on the assumption that they would recoup part of that investment in particular market, only to find after they’d spent the money that they’d forgotten to design space for a particulate filter and now they couldn’t sell the car? These claims are about as plausible as that noise obtained by going bibilbibililbil with your finger up and down on your lips.Posted by ooh honey honey on 2007 03 27 at 04:49 PM • permalink
- #26, unless I’m mistaken, most or all of the bike lanes in Manhattan were eliminated after years of disuse. I think O’Rourke followed up with that revelation. But I’m too lazy to check.
My point, anyway, was that every time the Chinese regime appears to be more civilized than we, something trips it up. Another example: In the late 1980s China started looking like the “third way” between totalitarianism and liberty, then Tiananmen Square showed its true colors.
If in the ‘70s Koch saw Beijing as some sort of example of how urban life should be lived, he was set right when New Yorkers refused to go along, then further confounded by the Chinese themselves, who in their newfound prosperity began living more and more like Americans.
Bicycles, indeed: They were just waiting for Cadillacs to be affordable.
Posted by Rittenhouse on 2007 03 27 at 05:19 PM • permalink
- We will have a chance to hear the result of more comparos between the gas-guzzling Westerner Station Wagon and the technologically (and idealogically) superior Sino sports coupe today when famed motoring journo Nick Stern appears at the National Press Club of Australia.
- Don’t tell me that going bibilbibililbil with your finger up and down on your lips is no longer a plausible argument. My options have been sadly diminished.Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 27 at 06:27 PM • permalink
- #39:
The guy better watch what he writes. “Thermostatic” may not be the most clever Flannuttery, in light of the repeated foot-stamping by many eco-warriors when they’re being (correctly) called luddites who despise change of any kind.
I also kinda like the “Earth” Commission part…makes it sound like it’s being instituted by some alien race with prior experience in such commissions.
- “There’s no such thing as an “American car” that gets exported somewhere else.”
No kidding? So this shipping service is, what, a CIA facade? The pictures on this page are all photoshopped?
Whichever way you’re wearing your foil hat, I think you need to reverse it.
Posted by Tatterdemalian on 2007 03 27 at 06:41 PM • permalink
- #39: Unless action was taken, Flannery foresaw “the darkest of dark ages”, leading to the establishment of an Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control, he said.
Flummery is actually slavering over the prospect of a New World Socialism with his every statement.
This grandstanding naif seems to be unaware of how very inefficient the UN is in achieving anything useful on the world stage, let allone dictating the world’s temperature.
But it IS governed by a majority of Orwellian leaders with the sort of political control Mugabe and the late Saddam wield…
- #36 and #48
And then of course Australia can exploit the vast mineral wealth of Antarctica and – best of all – the huge reserves of oil! And then we – no, I rule the world! MWAHAHAHAHA
I, for one, would like to welcome myself, Australian overlord!
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 27 at 07:32 PM • permalink
- My understanding that the turmoil started when Frodo couldn’t reach the pedals and the Hobbits filed a complaint demanding that the importation of American/Mexican/Canadian content cars be retrofitted with blocks of wood on the pedals and phone books on the front seats.Posted by Pat Patterson on 2007 03 27 at 08:12 PM • permalink
- We’re being lectured Sternly at the moment- I’d say after his meeting with the PM we’ll start importing some fuel-efficient, low pollutant ATVs from China to replace the legions of Toorak Tractors that are currently heating the Australian atmosphere like mobile blast furnaces.
Slightly O/T, but what would you do to some fuckhead comedian who wrote off your Enzo? Personally I think I’d take it pretty calmly.
- #13- I reckon the polar bear’d come off second best- our Tali-tubby’s reverted to a primal state following his cruel and inhuman incarceration, and would not only eat the bear, he’d probably fuck it and wear it.
- #44, PW: I also kinda like the “Earth” Commission part…makes it sound like it’s being instituted by some alien race with prior experience in such commissions.
And for their motto, they could use “To Serve Man.”
Posted by Bruce Lagasse on 2007 03 27 at 08:50 PM • permalink
- #57 Tali-tubby – I’ll pay thatPosted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 27 at 08:56 PM • permalink
- There seems to some confusion over this, and most of it stems from reports in 2004 that China’s newly promulgated fuel efficiency standards were more strict than the US’s. This was true at the time, but the US released tougher standards last year so the difference is pretty marginal now. There was also quite a lot of talk in 2004-05 about how tighter standards by 2008 in China would affect auto imports (particularly heavier vehicles like SUVs). This ppt has some interesting figures towards the end that show how China’s new standards would affect various imports.
The fact is that if it was up to US auto makers, there would be no US auto imports into China: all autos would be made in China (for both the domestic market and the US). The only thing stopping this is US laws that protect local jobs.
- Most vehicles now are manufactured for specific markets, and few if any are wholly produced in one plant/country (Australian manufacturers often have 30% or less local content). US brands have been built under licence in china since 1984, when AMC built a plant to produce a horrible diesel mutant of the already awful Jeep Cherokee (China’s full of the shitboxes). Other manufacturers have done likewise- Cadillacs would be built for the Chinese market and shipped whole from the US, as the demand wouldn’t warrant a local factory but would cover retooling costs in Detroit.
China (and Russia) is now a huge market for used vehicles from Japan and Western Europe, many of which have been twocked. And getting approval to import a specific model would be a rigorous exercise in palm greasing, rigid emission controls not withstanding.
Some of the local product is definately appealing though- who wouldn’t want to drive a Fuqi Wefine*?
I think the main reason Chinese vehicles don’t meet western emission standards is the common factor to most manufacture in controlled economies- management spots a market, rushes to fill it, tools up, builds the things then thinks about compliance issues; China is still in the trall of party apparatchiks who couldn’t organise a public dissident massacre (well maybe that, but bugger-all else).
*Looks like a Prado knock-off, and probably comes with a modified single cylinder trawler diesel with a redline of 200rpm.
- #5 – “Yes, murph, but a knighted lying incompetent.”
He might be a baronet but somehow I doubt it.
Posted by walterplinge on 2007 03 27 at 09:44 PM • permalink
You can’t even sell many American cars in China because they don’t meet that country’s higher fuel standards. That’s right, China demands better mileage from its cars than we do!
Laurie DavidWhen it comes to fuel standards, Chinese fuel is so poor it cannot be used in a lot of modern European and US cars. Chinese fuel is high in sulphur and will clog the injectors of a high-performance engine. For this reason Chinese VWs use older technology engines from models long superceded in the West.
Australia is about the last first world country to use these high-sulphur fuels – which is why owners of even the most pedestrian European cars should use premium. We finally go first-world fuel in 2009. China is expected to follow one day.
http://www.pmc.gov.au/publications/energy_future/chapter4/7_standards.htm
- #55 – Habib
Footage of said shredder fodder.
Comedian? Word is used pretty blody loosely
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 03 28 at 01:22 AM • permalink
- Hold on, you guys.
There is only one thing you need to know about any debate currently in the public domain:
America = bad
Anything else = goodPlease stay within the guidelines.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 03 28 at 01:26 AM • permalink
- #46 Like those guys would stay in bike lanes. There are no traffic laws in NYC, only suggestions.Posted by dean martin on 2007 03 28 at 02:47 AM • permalink
- Terry McCran in the Herald-Sun today:
…So what discount rate did the Stern report use? Just 2%. And in 700-pages it couldn’t find the space to actual disclose that—so much for analytical rigour…
In the Stern context it has the effect of dramatically overstating the relative value of those future benefits. Use a more realistic 6%, and today’s costs of attacking climate change will be greater than tomorrow’s benefits.
Why did Stern the supposed economist use 2%? On the basis that catastrophic climate change was so bad, when it happened in, say 2050, it was almost as bad as happening right now.
That is Stern not an economist but a fully fledged member of The Church. Not analysing the costs and benefits of climate change but factoring the negatives as timeless absolutes. The Stern Review is not an economic analysis of climate change, but just another climate change (hot) gospel.
And Rudd wants to sign Australia up. At least on paper. Presumably it will come with the 21st century version of a confessional.
All of this utter lunacy was captured with exquisite perfection by Sir Nicholas’s closing words on the telecast of his address to the National Press Club yesterday…
Priceless. You could not make this stuff-up if you tried.
Posted by walterplinge on 2007 03 28 at 07:30 PM • permalink
- Actually, I’ve heard his implied discount rate is more like 1.5%. Which is absurd. Anything less than the expected global GDP rate (real 2006 5.1%) is flat out absurd. [GDP is the return on the aggregate of investment. All the crazy negative returns and positives together. I believe it should be the absolute minimum someone would expect for a return on capital.]
Page 1 of 1 pages
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
In any event, I question the timing.
And the debate is closed
(Did I miss any current lefty ways to end a conversation?)