While the U.S. auto industry looks increasingly like a freeway pile-up, the world's largest market for car sales during the past three months has been China.
The bad news is that most people don't think the globe can afford another 300 million cars guzzling gas and spewing climate-altering exhaust.
The good news is the Chinese don't think they can afford it, either.
Ken DeWoskin says China is furiously working on an alternative transportation model, for both environmental and economic reasons.
The world's most populous nation is buying vehicles at a pace that belies its economic slowdown: April sales were up 25 percent from a year ago to 1.15 million.
Still, says DeWoskin, director of Deloitte's China Research and Insight Center in Beijing, the Chinese leadership is steering away from the U.S. approach of an all-points freeway network that carries single drivers in and out of cities.
Instead, it envisions a vast fleet of short-range personal electric vehicles that bring people to and from high-speed rail terminals; these trains will carry most people to and from work and between many metro areas, he says.
"They're thinking of it as a system, not a device," he says. "They are interested in how are you going to get from home to the train station."
China, deploying the incentives and imperatives available to a state-directed capitalist system, is pressing hard to leapfrog beyond the conventional gasoline engine. It hopes to move to all-electric or hybrid vehicles before most Chinese are ready to buy their first car.
The key motive: "Above everything else, China wants to control the amount of oil it has to consume" so it doesn't increase its reliance on imports, says DeWoskin, who addressed the Washington State China Relations Council in Seattle on Thursday.
That's one reason that "in the last 18 months — in the marketplace, in the hearts and minds of leaders and businesspeople — clean-tech has transformed from a talking point into a real imperative."
Despite the headlines generated by temporarily surpassing the U.S. in vehicle sales, DeWoskin says, "China is in the early stages of building what we would call personal mobility."
Its blueprint includes 500 miles of new subway for each of three major cities (Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, capital of the Pearl River industrial region) — a plan even DeWoskin, accustomed to the scale of China, calls "just breathtaking."
Meanwhile, sales of conventional cars are robust.
"While automakers around the world are collapsing, China is making new automakers. And some of those automakers used to be watch makers, or battery makers," says DeWoskin. "The surge in sales in China has come from these 100-percent Chinese cars. It's a Chinese product and it's really selling."
But don't look for China's manufacturers to come rushing into the U.S. market, either as sellers of vehicles or as buyers of U.S. companies. For sales, they have plenty of potential right at home — just as American manufacturers did in the '50s and '60s, says DeWoskin. Safety and quality issues remain, too.
For companies, China's recent track record with buying into U.S.manufacturing or financial businesses "does not really encourage more investment;" if there is any appetite for acquisitions, it's likely to be for distribution operations or "newer, cleaner technologies."
The one thing China may want from the U.S. is clean technology — for cars, rail and, just as crucially, for coal. DeWoskin sees opportunities in these areas for American companies, although he notes that China's leadership sees buying foreign technology as "a channel for exporting capital."
REI chief gets White House call
REI Chief Executive Sally Jewell was sailing with her husband, Warren, off Port Townsend last Sunday when their daughter Anne reached her via cellphone with a bit of unexpected news.
"Mom, the White House just called," she begins. "Apparently, the president would like to meet with you on Tuesday. Just thought you should know."
Jewell laughs as she retells the story Tuesday afternoon just before a return flight to Seattle from D.C., where she had spent an hour discussing health-care costs with Obama and a handful of other business leaders.
Speaking to reporters, Obama saluted REI for providing health insurance to part-time as well as full-time employees, saying the Kent-based retailer can afford to do that because of innovative programs meant to make its work force healthier.
Jewell contributed $2,300 to Obama's presidential campaign last summer. But she suspects that her involvement with the Outdoor Industry Association — on whose behalf she made an earlier trip to D.C. — had more to do with her being there than anything else.
Before leaving the White House, Jewell gave Obama two "Passport to Adventure" envelopes, one each for his daughters, Malia and Sasha. Aimed at kids 5 to 12 years old, the packages include an adventure journal, information about local hiking and bike trails, games, outdoor tips and stickers. REI created the Passport program several years ago in hopes of stimulating childhood interest in the outdoors, despite their generation's fascination with such indoor pursuits as computers and video games.
Jewell also gave Obama a copy of the book "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder," a recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal.
"He said, 'I've heard of this book. This is good. Thank you,' " Jewell recalls.
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