Japan’s domestic sales of new cars, trucks and buses logged their -biggest-ever drop last month, an industry group said on Monday as the March 11 quake and tsunami hit production and supplies to dealers.
The sales came to 108,824 units last month, down 51 percent from a year earlier, the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said. The drop, far steeper than a 37 percent fall in March, was the biggest since the data began being recorded in 1968. The previous record fall was 45.1 percent in May 1974, when Japan was reeling from the oil crisis.
Auto sales plunged last month as automakers were forced to halt factory lines with parts supply disrupted in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and tsunami.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Factories have since resumed production, but the association was cautious about sales from this month onward. Analysts say a parts supply shortage that has strangled production may last for months.
“Factory lines started moving again, but they are not operating fully yet. We are likely to continue feeling the impact [of the -disaster],” a spokesman at the association said.
The official said auto sales were down because the supply of new vehicles had been hit as a result of the March 11 disasters, amid dampened consumer sentiment.
Japan’s biggest recorded quake and the tsunami it unleashed shattered supply chains and crippled electricity-generating facilities, including a nuclear power plant at the center of an ongoing atomic emergency. Many key component manufacturers are based in the worst-hit regions and suffered damage to their facilities from the earthquake or were inundated by the giant wave that followed.
Sales of Toyota Motor vehicles dropped 68.7 percent to 35,557 vehicles last month. Nissan Motor vehicle sales tumbled 37.2 percent to 17,413 in the month, while Honda sales dived 48.5 percent to 18,923.
Last week’s data showed a 15.3 percent dive in Japan’s industrial production in March on-month, the sharpest since records began in 1953, owing mostly to crippled vehicle production.
Consumer sentiment has also plunged. Japanese household spending plunged by 8.5 percent in March from a year earlier in the biggest drop since records began in 1964, separate data showed last week.
Consumers have held off spending on non-essential items.
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
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
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],”