Beijing Adds Another Million Cars This Year

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

Slowdown in Chinese car sales? Unheard of, as far as Beijing is concerned. In the beginning of the year, Beijing had 4m cars. By the end of the year, the Chinese capital is expected to have 5 million cars on the roads. That’s the educated guess of the government, as reported by Gasgoo.

In the first four months of the year, a total of 248,000 cars were registered in Beijing, the Beijing municipal taxation office, collector of auto purchasing taxes, says.

15,500 new cars go on the city’s roads every week. That’s twice the old rate of 1000 cars per day. In 1949, there were about 2,300 cars in Beijing. It took Beijing nearly half a century to reach one-million cars in 1997. The second million was reached in 2003. The third million was registered in 2007. When the fourth million was reached by the beginning of this year, the official estimate was that it would take until 2015 to surpass the 5 million mark. That estimation is out of the window.

When we reported the 4 million cars last October, we mentioned that Beijing has 17m people. That number is also out of the window. The number is now officially “more than 22 million.” Supposedly, the city is constructed for a maximum of 18m.

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Chicago Dude Chicago Dude on May 12, 2010

    Bertel, Is China adding the road capacity for all these new cars? It seems to me that there is no way to add capacity fast enough, especially in a dense, well-established city. Do people buy cars just to own them? I'm not sure Americans quite understand some of the cultural norms in China. I have a lot of Chinese friends that have lived in the US for long periods of time (a couple decades). They go back to visit from time to time and whenever they come back they always talk about how strange China has become to them. Keeping up with the Jones' is taken to the illogical extreme over there. Or at least that is how the Americanized Chinese see it. We've got nothing on their desire to project an image of wealth. Which of course leads me to wonder how many of the cars being sold in China are actually being used on a day to day basis and how many are just sitting around so their owners can brag about owning them.

    • See 4 previous
    • Gimmeamanual Gimmeamanual on May 13, 2010

      I believe the technical term for $700b is "a metric shit-ton." Two new tunnels and three new roads right outside my apartment (and right downtown) where 14 months ago there was basically nothing.

  • .5MT .5MT on May 12, 2010

    Turnpikes and huge numbers of paybooths are needed. 2012 is getting closer.

  • Porschespeed Porschespeed on May 13, 2010

    Enjoy! The meltdown is going to be spectacular.

  • Joeaverage Joeaverage on Jan 05, 2011

    Nah, we Americans ought to be taking notice and preparing ourselves for $8 gasoline. Competition for the world's raw materials 'ya know?

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