Honda Taiwan Co (台灣本田) joined the local compact car market yesterday with the launch of its new Honda Fit as consumers increasingly turn to more economic auto models amid high oil prices.
The release of the 1,500cc Honda Fit in Taiwan, touted as a fuel-efficient, performance-based, spacious model, is aimed at attracting drivers from the 1,800cc passenger car segment that includes the Honda Civic, Mitsubishi Lancer and Toyota Corolla Altis.
Honda Taiwan manager Wey Gow-jhy (魏國志) said the domestic auto market had been fast declining since 2005 — when sales of new vehicles hit a high of 514,634 units — to an estimated 230,000 units this year.
PHOTO: KAO CHIA-HO, TAIPEI TIMES
“Despite the slump in the local market, sales of small cars have been steadily rising to account for an estimated 21 percent of the market this year and will likely continue to go up,” Wey said.
With the 30-to-34 age group as its target, the Honda Fit comes in two models — VTi-S and VTi — that are priced at NT$599,000 and NT$579,000 respectively. The company aims to sell 10,000 units of the new model in the first year.
China Motor Corp (中華汽車), a local vehicle manufacturer and distributor of Mitsubishi, said that low-priced, fuel-saving small cars now account for 20 percent to 21 percent of the market, up slightly from 16 percent to 17 percent last year.
“With the global financial crisis casting a shadow on future prospects, I expect small cars to become more popular in the next year or two as people try to live within their means,” Wang Kuo-chi (王國繼), vice president of China Motor, said on Tuesday while introducing the updated Mitsubishi Colt Plus, a supermini first launched in April last year.
Wang said monthly sales of the Colt Plus, the bestseller in the small, 1.6 liter engine market, averaged 500 to 550 units.
The company expects sales of the updated model, priced between NT$509,000 and NT$599,000, to reach 600 units a month.
Wang said he expected new cars sales in Taiwan to remain at last month’s level and continue through the end of the first quarter next year.
The latest government statistics showed that local new car sales plunged 22.6 percent last month from a year earlier to 16,737 units.
Honda Taiwan chairman Yoshiyuki Suzuki said he had expected local auto sales to pick up between the end of this year and the beginning of next year. However, as the US financial crisis continues to spread, he said auto sales could get even worse next year.
Separately, domestic gasoline and diesel prices will drop by NT$1.4 and NT$1.5 per liter respectively today to reflect the decline in international crude oil prices, the state-owned CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), the nation’s only publicly traded oil refiner, announced yesterday.
After the price adjustment, CPC’s price for a liter of 98-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$26, 95-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$24.50, 92-octane unleaded gasoline is NT$23.80 and diesel is NT$20.80.
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