Oh, goody: Gas guzzlers a hit in China, where car sales are booming

[Tab]

Just what we need, another huge population getting into the act...

BEIJING - High, wide and fuel-hungry, the gleaming black Cadillac Escalade on display at the Beijing auto show is an unlikely car for an era of record oil prices.

But while sport utility vehicle sales in the U.S. are tumbling, automakers are finding that for China's newly prosperous car buyers, bigger is still better.

So General Motors Corp. has made the Escalade a star of its auto-show display and is eager to get it on the market here.
...
Auto sales in China are booming, with analysts and automakers forecasting growth at 15-20 percent this year. But demand for the biggest vehicles is even stronger, with sales of luxury cars and SUVs expected to surge by 40-45 percent.

The phenomenon is welcome news for automakers seeing little or no growth in the United States, Europe and Japan. They also make fatter profits from sales of high-end vehicles than from economy models.

Sales have been boosted by economic growth that has topped 10 percent for five straight years and a surge in real estate and stock prices that created a new crop of Chinese billionaires.
...
For SUV sales, "the volume is low but the growth rate is high, and we're all trying to get into this segment," said Robert Socia, executive vice president of Shanghai General Motors, a GM joint venture with a Chinese partner.

http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/554/gas-guzzlers-a-hit-in-china-where-car-sales-are-booming/;

Ethics, anyone?

This is like the tobacco industry, when it went overseas, except that instead of just harming the smokers and their associates, this can make the fight against global warming nearly impossible. I don't know the current numbers, but I think China has nearly 4 times our population. Even if just 15% bought these, it would match our contribution to turning up our global thermostat.

[Warpy]

1. The problem is that new money always wants to show it off

as ostentatiously and as wastefully as they can.

You're right, though, the car industry should concentrate on gold plated doorknobs and electronic doodads to provide the maximum comfort on those kid leather seats.

There's a way to do obscene luxury and still have it get 35+ MPG.

[orangerevolution]

2. If it is true that corporations pass their tax burden

to us, the consumer, in the price that they charge for their product, what is going to happen to gas prices in the summer of 2009 when we get a President Obama or a President Clinton, working with the Democratic controlled House and Senate, to roll back the billions of dollars in taxpayer (you and I) subsidies?