Southeast Motor Co (東南汽車), a car-making venture between China Motor Corp (中華汽車) and the Fujian provincial government, forecasts it will boost sales by as much as 80 percent this year as it introduces new models.
Southeast Motor projects it will sell as many as 150,000 cars this year in China, where total demand is forecast at 5 million units, China Motor said in a statement.
Southeast Motor's sales last year rose to 83,533 units from 47,068 units in 2002. China Motor is Taiwan's biggest vehicle maker.
Southeast Motor plans to introduce Mitsubishi Motor Corp's Savrin and Veryca models this year and projects 2005 sales of 200,000 cars, the statement said.
China is expected to surpass Germany as the world's third largest maker of automobiles this year, with production set to hit 5.15 million units, state press reported yesterday.
"According to the current developmental trend of the domestic auto industry, domestic auto demand will surpass five million vehicles," the Oriental Morning Post quoted State Information Center deputy director Xu Changming as saying.
Xu's forecast for 5.15 million units is in line with Chinese analysts' estimates for production of 5 million to 5.3 million vehicles.
Last year China surpassed France as the world's fourth largest automaker with 4.4 million vehicles rolling off its assembly lines on the back of burgeoning consumer demand.
The country's auto consumption accounted for 4.2 percent of the global total in 2001.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy