Thursday, 9. August 2007, 17:59:45
By Lisa Margonelli
Wired
Issue 13.04 - April 2005The People's Republic is on the fast track to become the car capital of the world. And the first alt-fuel superpower.
The Challenge Bibendum is the anti-Nascar, a road rally where dozens of cars, two-wheelers, and buses vroom the straightaways like a pack of DustBusters, cough out water vapor instead of sooty exhaust, and corner at peak speeds of 35 mph. Named for the morbidly obese mascot of Michelin, which sponsors the event, Bibendum is the proving ground for alternative-fuel and low-emissions vehicles.
For the first five years of its existence, the rally was staged in rich cities with bohemian tendencies - San Francisco, Heidelberg, Paris. But last fall Michelin brought the Bibendum to Shanghai. The booming Chinese auto market, which grew by 76 percent in 2003, is an obvious lure. It's a market still under central control - for the moment, anyway - which means that if Beijing wants to go green, it can go in a huge way. And so in Shanghai, Bibendum lost its utopian vibe. The stakes were simply too big: What will 1.3 billion people drive?
The answer, believes professor Huang Miao Hua, is an electric car prototype made by her students at the Wuhan University of Technology. The Aspire (not to be confused with the Ford compact car) is a giddy marriage of tadpole and pickup truck. The $12,000 target price includes a Linux OS, GPS, and an onboard bicycle. A bike? If you get stuck in gridlock, Huang explains, you can park the car and pedal instead. Think of it as a concept car for traffic jams. She pushes up the Aspire's door (it opens vertically, for parking in tight spots) and smiles. "Get in," she says. As it lumbers to a start, engine whining under the strain, my driver shouts, "It's got a few problems, but it feels good, doesn't it?"
In the West, clean cars mostly have been the toys of wealthy worrywarts - too expensive to be economical and too technically challenged to be cool. China's feeling an urgency that slower-growing countries don't face. The demand for oil is skyrocketing, rising even faster than the price. And here's the eye-opening stat: In the absence of new regulations, pollution-related illness will suck up as much as 15 percent of the country's gross domestic product by 2030.
China's central planners are throwing everything at the problems of fuel and pollution - hybrids, electric cars, propane taxis - all while building conventional cars and infrastructure at a furious pace. "There's a controversy about 'Green GDP' and how to grow," says He Dongquan, a transportation expert at the Energy Foundation in Beijing. "China's in a transition where everyone's mind is changing." Amid the hurly-burly, the only thing that's clear is the future, where hydrogen beckons.
China is already taking bold steps toward an alt-fuel future. In late 2003, Beijing mandated some of the world's toughest fuel-efficiency standards. China is even now one of the largest markets for alternative fuel vehicles, with 200,000 in service. In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing officials plan to convert their entire bus fleet of nearly 120,000 vehicles to run on compressed natural gas (CNG).
All this opens up vast opportunities for automakers. The major car manufacturers (with the exception of Honda) have come to Bibendum to show that they're ready to play China's game, whatever it turns out to be. Toyota will begin producing hybrid Priuses in Changchun by the end of the year. GM, which made 15 times more profit per sale in Asia than at home in 2003, will manufacture hybrid buses for Shanghai. "This will be the biggest market in the world by 2010," says Dongfeng Citroen chief Gilles Debonnet, standing beside a CNG car his company designed for Bibendum. "If we don't bring a [low-emissions] solution to the taxi market, then we can't stay."
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