Ford Lio Ho Motor Co (福特六和), a Taiwanese subsidiary of the US-based Ford Motor Co, said yesterday it will roll out its 2 millionth car in the local market next week after 38 years in the country.
Ford Motor Group vice president and president for Asia-Pacific and Africa Joe Hinrichs, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen--shiang (施顏祥) and Industrial Development Bureau Director-General Woody Duh (杜紫軍), will attend the ceremony to unveil the new car.
Ford Lio Ho, a 70 percent-owned subsidiary of the US car maker, is a joint venture with the Lio Ho Group. It was set up in 1972, and has become one of Ford Motor’s important overseas production bases, according to the local company.
The company said this year has special meaning for Ford Motor, as the number of cars it has produced in Taiwan will reach the 2 million mark, symbolizing the strong sales the automaker has generated locally.
In the first 10 months of this year, sales posted by Ford Lio Ho, which owns the Ford and Mazda brands in Taiwan, rose 29 percent from a year earlier, while sales of the Ford brand alone grew 20.1 percent year-on-year.
Last month, Ford Lio Ho accounted for 11 percent of the Taiwanese auto market, compared with 11.1 percent recorded a year earlier.
The Taiwanese unit said its 2 millionth car is a new Mondeo passenger model equipped with Ford Motor’s energy-efficient EcoBoost engine, which is being introduced into the Taiwanese market for the first time.
According to the company, the EcoBoost engine technology, which Ford Motor unveiled at the North American International Auto Show in 2008, delivers up to 20 percent better fuel economy and cuts carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent.
Ford Lio Ho said more than 80 percent of its cars will be equipped with EcoBoost engines by 2013.
Meanwhile, Ford Motor is opening dozens of new dealerships in China as it expands its reach into provincial cities, courting new car buyers.
The automaker yesterday inaugurated 40 new dealerships out of 66 it will open before the end of the year in China. This year it plans to open a total of 100 dealerships there, raising the total number of outlets to 340.
China’s car market is the world’s biggest and sales are growing fastest in provincial cities where millions of new and potential car buyers live.
Ford is forecasting record sales for this year, though it got a later start and has a smaller presence in China than rival General Motors Co.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
RSS