Citing lackluster economies both at home and abroad, local carmakers project that Taiwan's new car sales growth will be less than 1 percent next year, after experiencing a vigorous 17 percent growth this year.
Huang Wen-cheng (
PHOTO: KAO CHIA-HO, TAIPEI TIMES
But that effort could be offset by a slowdown in the economy, dragged down by rising crude oil prices, the US' dwindling economic growth and China's cooling-off measures, Huang said.
China Motors, the nation's second largest automaker, assembles cars for Japan's Mitsubishi Motors Corp. The company expects new vehicle sales to reach 485,000 vehicles next year, from about 482,000 units this year, Huang said.
Huang made the projection yesterday at a press conference to unveil a new passenger model, the Mitsubishi Grunder. The new 2.4-liter model is aimed at the nation's medium-sized, upscale sedan market.
In a bid to lure consumers, the model boasts NT$2 billion-worth of research and development, as well as an exclusive design by Mercedes-Benz's former chief designer, Oliver Boulay, and former president of Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design of North America, Gerhard Steinle, according to China Motors.
"We hope to sell 20,000 units a year, or around a 25 percent market share of the nation's 2.0-liter-to-3.0-liter market, which sees aggregate [sales] of between 55,000 units and 60,000 units annually," Huang said.
The carmaker, which makes vehicles in China with Mitsubishi Motors, is trying to expand its reach to markets beyond Taiwan. Sales of 1.6-liter Mitsubishi Lancer models in China, which China Motors started making there early last year at Southeast Motor Co (東南汽車), have helped the company increase profits, and the automaker says it wants to repeat these gains in other markets.
Therefore, Huang said the company is considering exporting the Grunder model, which has been rolled out and assembled exclusively in Taiwan, to left-drive countries in Southeast Asia sometime next year, with an estimated volume of 10,000 units each year, he said.
The new model is China Motors' first product to be equipped with an engine bigger than 2.0 liters, indicating the company's effort to reposition itself to make inroads into the high-end car market.
With a price tag of between NT$789,000 and NT$949,000, the Mitsubishi Grunder will compete head-on with Yulon Nissan Co's (
Kenneth Yan (
Teana has registered sales of around 1,400 units per month so far since its launch, according to figures by China Motors.
Toyota Camry leads the market with monthly sales of around 2,000 units, the company said.
The nation's new car registrations jumped by 17.1 percent year-on-year to 446,525 units in the first 11 months this year, according to figures compiled by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
Kuozui Motors Ltd (
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts