The car industry - driving the Chinese economy

When the 9th Five-Year-Plan (2001-2005) was drawn up, China expected to produce more than one million vehicles per year. In the middle of the 9th Five-Year-Plan period, in the first quarter of the year 2003, the number of cars produced within three months reached already 400,000 cars, so the target of the plan will surely be met and probably overfullfilled. If all vehicles are included, the one-million-mark was overstepped within the first quarter of 2003 alone! Chinese scientists predict that from 3 millions cars in 1999 in China the number will go up to more than 40 millions cars by the end of our decade, i.e. 2010. 30 millions of these cars will be used in urban areas.

The majority of these vehicles are produced in China, many in internationally-owned factories like the PSA Peugeot-Citroen factories in Xiangfan and Wuhan in Hubei province. The automobile industry is giving jobs and profits to a very large number of people and companies. At the same time in fast-growing China the car producers have to come up with new solutions if China wants to avoid the unsastainable levels of fuel-, space- and time-consumption connected to the transportation system of the 20th century.

Intelligent mobility systems save time and resources

In the European Union the number of cars is almost half the number of inhabitants. In France the number is 526 cars per 1,000 french inhabitants. In other words, every single man, woman and child in France could sit in a car at the same time and still there would be enough room for some friends from other countries, pet dogs and cats, lots of luggage and many Baguette-breadsticks. In the USA the ratio is even higher with three cars available for each four citizens.

So private road transportation is obviously a very important fact for the mobility of the societies. But it is also one of the main factors for the economies of all industrialized countries. Estimations show that one out of six persons working in industrialized countries has a job connected to cars and trucks: building, repairing, driving professionally, insuring, licensing, testing, building and maintaining highways etc.

To achieve a sustainable development in transportation the mobility of people and goods will have to be developed towards a system which gives the same benefits to the economy that private cars can provide but without the costs for the economy connected to todays transportation especially in urban areas: billions of hours of time lost in traffic jams and search-driving for a parking lot, costs for medical services for victims of traffic accidents, wasted investments of the society into the education and training of fatalities of such accidents. Todays big car making companies are in the forefront of the search for safer, more intelligent and therefore also more economically benifical automobiles.