The introduction of the new Honda Civic sedan is expected to boost Honda Taiwan Co's local production output to near capacity level this year, company executives said yesterday.
"As we expect to produce 10,000 Civic sedans this year, this will boost our production output in Taiwan to nearly 30,000 units," company spokesman Chen Chun-liang (陳俊亮) told reporters on the sidelines of the launch.
The company's production plant in Pingtung City has a maximum annual output of 35,000 vehicles, he said.
But the site only churned out a total of 23,000 units of its CR-V minivans and Accord sedans last year, up from 15,000 units a year earlier, according to Wey Gow-jhy (魏國志), division manager of the sales and marketing division at Honda Taiwan.
But with the assembly of a third model -- the Civic, the plant is set to be fully utilized, Wey said.
The company yesterday introduced its eighth generation Civic to Taiwan. Targeted at buyers in their 20s and 30s, these mid-sized sedans come with 1.8 liter and 2 liter engines, with prices ranging from NT$649,000 (US$20,075) to NT$799,000.
Honda Taiwan, wholly owned by Japan's Honda Motor Co, set up a 19,700-ping (65,010m2) manufacturing facility in Pingtung City in late 2002, with capital investment of NT$3.4 billion (US$105 million). It currently has around 950 employees.
To welcome the new Civic member to the production family, Honda Taiwan began to renew equipment and take on staff at the Pingtung site late last year, he added.
To beef up sales, the company said it hoped to open up another 10 distribution outlets by the end of the year, boosting its total number of dealerships to 55.
However, this does not guarantee a rosy year for Honda Taiwan in the local market.
The company recently revised its forecast for total national auto sales downward to 450,000 units from an earlier projection of 480,000 units, according to Wey.
"Tightening bank credit policies resulting from the bad consumer debt problem have dragged down spending and impacted on auto sales," he said.
Statistics compiled by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications showed that sales of new cars dropped by nearly 25 percent during the first quarter.
The dip is partly a result of auto vendors aggressively promoting and discounting models last year in a bid to lure consumers, prompting them to make their purchases earlier, he said.
Honda Taiwan would stick to its usual tactic and not launch aggressive promotional activities this year, but follow in the footsteps of others to properly manage capacity and prevent excess inventory, Wey said.
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
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
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the