China trip 8 - Vehicles

No travel blog from me would be complete without some notes on cars:

China is left-hand drive, so the JDM vehicles don’t all make it over here directly.

Taxies are mostly either Hyundai Elantras or Jettas, with the odd Citroen every now and again. Note that the taxis are not exactly what we’d think of when we think of Jetta. They are old Jetta (Mk. 2) body and seats, but the switchgear is more modern VW (including the blue instrument lighting). To make matters even more confusing, they also sell the newer Jettas (Mk. 4) as Bora, and the latest Jetta (Mk. 5) as Sagitar here. Plus the Passat (Mk. 5), plus something called the Santana 2000 (which Wikipedia tells me is the Passat Mk. 2, which was called the Quantum in the US), plus the Polo. Sheesh.

Lots of black Audi A6s with tinted windows, including a lot of A6 L’s, which I assume are long-wheelbase for livery use. They seem to be the “hotel car” of choice here. I knew they made an A8 L, but didn’t realize they also made the A6 that way. I also saw a nice cross-section of Cayennes, including a Turbo, MLs, a 911 Turbo, and lots of Mercedes including several AMGs, and even one Rolls Royce, parked outside of our hotel! Now you know where all of your Wal-Mart money is going I guess…

I also saw a couple of Hummer H2s, which given the traffic and drivers here, is probably a good choice. I don’t know whether fuel economy is a consideration… On the other end of the spectrum I saw a Chevy Uplander minivan badged as a Buick, and did you know that Buick makes a Hybrid here? The LaCrosse (not the one we know, this is a different car unique to China as far as I can tell) comes in a hybrid version with GM’s Belt Alternator Starter system that was seen in the Saturn Vue mild hybrid.

I mentioned the tinted windows – oddly, even the most deep-tinted windows leave an approximately 2 square foot trapezoid of glass un-tinted on the front driver and passenger windows right near the side mirrors. I assume that it is so the driver can see the mirrors better, but the tint didn’t seem so deep that this would make that much of a difference, so perhaps it’s some sort of law, because every car I saw with tinted windows was done this way.

Interestingly, like the US, almost all of the cars are gasoline-powered, very few diesels outside of heavy trucks and busses. There are also some buses here that are combination electric and diesel, but not self-contained. They have a pantograph to pull power from overhead lines like a trolley, but they can drive under conventional diesel power if they have to deviate from the powered route.

The police use all sorts of interesting things, from vans to Hyundais to Jeep Grand Cherokees. They also have a small electric van (about the size of a Mini Cooper), and at least two different models of Honda motorcycle, a CB250 and an ST1100.

There are still plenty of bicycles (and variants) here, most roads have dedicated bike lanes, and the passenger overpasses that allow people to cross the major roads safely and without impacting traffic all have 2 or 3 foot wide bike ramps on either side of the stairs. Motorized bicycles and small scooters appear to be allowed to use the bike lanes and sidewalks, so they’re quite popular. A lot of the motorized devices are actually electric, which is probably good since they aren’t contributing to the pollution problem (at least not directly). The interesting thing is that a lot of local vendors and people who need some cargo capacity have either bikes or trikes with flatbed areas on the back of them. I even saw a full-fledged motorcycle that had been converted to a trike for the express purpose of cargo hauling behind the driver. It seems to be the Chinese equivalent to the compact pickup truck, because I haven’t seen a single real truck except for delivery trucks (and of course SUVs) the entire time. I also saw multiple scooters with these fur-lined vinyl covers over the handlebars. Think of a pair of hand mufflers for when you are riding the scooter. I guess that they’d be more effective than a pair of fabric gloves at blocking the wind, and you wouldn’t necessarily have to wear gloves unless it was really cold. Pretty neat idea.

Most of the road signs are of the European style – no words, just symbols, but there are a couple that I should mention. First, there is one that basically means “No entry for vehicles carrying explosives, inflammables or hazardous chemicals” but looks like this – a car with an explosion on the roof. The other interesting sign that I saw, that I can’t for the life of me find a picture of, including on the official Beijing traffic sign site, is basically a cartoon car with a giraffe sticking out of the sunroof. General idea is low clearance, and some of the references I found to it on the internet said that it sometimes includes the English words “Don't ride your vehicle too high”. I’m really kicking myself for not taking a picture of it, but when you see something like that in traffic while in a taxi, by the time you realize it’s something you should be taking a picture of, it’s too late.

Update - I sent a message out to our attendees list, and two different folks sent me links: This one (thanks to Ted Lemon) and  this one (thanks to Huub Helvoort). Hurray hive mind!

I rode in a good number of taxis while I was here, and there were a wide range of levels of aggressive drivers among the cabbies – some that would have been at home in NYC, others that were pretty polite and conservative in their driving. However, with only one or two exceptions, they were all horrible at driving a manual transmission, especially in traffic, and all of the taxis were manuals. There were some drivers that were really hurting my feelings with how bad they were at it – we’d slow down to 15 KPH for stopped traffic, and once they got around the obstacle, they’d be trying to accelerate in 4^th gear, with the engine bucking and protesting the whole way. I’ve taught 3 or 4 different people to drive manuals, and most of them weren’t that bad on their first day, let alone if it was their job to drive all day every day. Made me want to learn the Chinese phrase for “downshift, moron!”