Luxury-brand auto sales appear to be holding strong despite the overall economic slowdown, industry veterans said.
"You may see flat sales in both sedans and coupes when economy goes down, but not SUVs," said Chen Shuen-der (陳順德), president of Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), the sales agent for Toyota Motor Co.
"We have seen growing sales momentum in sport-utility vehicles here," Chen said.
Hotai introduced the new Lexus RX330 sport-utility vehicles to the local market yesterday.
The company hopes the new model will lure customers keen on buying luxury European models, said Steve Chen (陳誠文), Hotai's general manager for Lexus-brand vehicles.
Chen estimates that annual sales will hit 1,500 units this year.
Toyota first introduced the RX330 to North America in 1998. To date, more than 390,000 units of RX330 have been sold to 41 countries.
The new 3.3-liter RX330 is expected to go on sale later this month, retailing for NT$2.08 million, Chen said.
"With the new vehicle, we want to increase our share of the luxury SUV market in Taiwan from 38 percent last year to 43.2 percent this year," he said.
Taiwan is the No. 4 market for Lexus worldwide, after the US, Canada and the UK, according to Hideaki Matsuki, vice president of Toyota Motor Asia Pacific Pte Ltd.
Matsuki, also in attendance at yesterday's event, said that Toyota sold 4,584 Lexus vehicles last year, accounting for nearly 20 percent of domestic luxury car market.
"The market potential for luxury cars is still big in Taiwan," Matsuki said. "Lexus is now the NO. 3 brand in Taiwan's luxury car market and we aim to achieve the No. 2 position in the near future."
The new RX330 will compete with other luxury models including BMW's X5 and Mercedes-Benz's M-Class.
DaimlerChrysler, which distributes Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, Smart and Jeep brands domestically, sold nearly 5,000 Mercedes-Benz vehicles last year, including 150 M-Class SUVs.
The company hopes to double its M-Class sales this year to 300 vehicles as the market for luxury sport-utility vehicle continues to grow, said Mike Jao (饒竹君), a public relations executive at DaimlerChrysler Taiwan.
"This year, even though the economy is still not looking up, we are as confident in the Taiwnese market as ever," said Volker Harms, president and chief executive officer of DaimlerChrysler Taiwan Ltd.
The company predicts it will surpass last year sales to put 5,500 Mercedes-Benz vehicles and another 750 Chrysler cars on the road this year, Harms said last week.
Mazda Taiwan president Hu Kai-chang also predicted recently that sales would surge 81 percent this year from a year earlier on continued strong consumer demand for its Tribute sport-utility vehicles, its luxury M6 sedan and MPV(multi-purpose vehicle) vans.
Last year Mazda sold 5,080 units of the NT$1 million, 3.0-liter Tribute MPV, accounting for 21 percent of the local SUV market.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last