Beijing Pressures Automakers To Improve Fuel Efficiency - NYT

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The Chinese government is putting pressure on automakers to improve energy efficiency, but consumers are increasingly interested in large sport utility vehicles and full-size luxury cars, auto executives said on Sunday at the opening of the Beijing auto show.

The shift of the Chinese market toward larger vehicles will probably push up the country’s already voracious demand for imported oil and make China an even bigger emitter of global warming gases. The trend toward big vehicles is being driven by rising incomes for China’s elite as well as government price controls on gasoline and diesel fuel that are keeping fuel prices below world levels as a way to limit broader inflation in the economy.

The chairman of Daimler, Dieter Zetsche, announced on Sunday that his company’s Mercedes-Benz division would begin shipping GLK midsize luxury S.U.V.’s soon to China, and said that sales of Mercedes S.U.V.’s in China had doubled in the last year. For the first two months of 2008, sales of sport utility vehicles in China were up 38 percent and sales of luxury cars climbed 30 percent compared with the corresponding period a year ago. By contrast, overall sales of cars, S.U.V.’s and minivans rose 16 percent.

The Chinese government has been demanding that automakers produce electric cars and gasoline-electric hybrid cars, and the manufacturers are complying. Automakers like BYD of China, Daimler of Germany and General Motors unveiled prototypes of electric cars and hybrids at the auto show, and promised limited production of some hybrids, like the Buick LaCrosse, by the end of the year.

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