The steep contraction of Europe’s auto industry — which has trimmed sales, forcing carmakers to absorb punishing losses and slash production — appears to be reaching bottom, a key Ford executive said on Thursday.
Signs indicate the market for new vehicles in the eurozone has stopped shrinking, said Stephen Odell, executive vice president and president of Europe, Middle East and Africa, at a briefing at the automaker’s headquarters,
“It’s beginning to show signs of stability,” Odell said, though he cautioned the turnaround was unlikely to be swift.
“The European market should start growing next year,” but growth will be slow and modest over the next several years, Odell said.
He acknowledged Ford’s outlook is different than the one offered earlier in the week by Nissan/Renault chairman Carlos Ghosn, who said he was not sure the European market had actually bottomed out.
Odell said, while unemployment levels, at 12.2 percent, are “very bad,” even “unprecedented,” nevertheless, “most of the indices are pointing towards recovery.”
Vehicle sales in Europe are running at about 13.5 million units a year, well below the 18 million unit sales rate in 2007.
Ford’s European operations lost US$462 million in the first quarter, which was offset by profits of US$2.4 billion in North America.
“We still expect to be profitable in Europe by the end of 2015,” Odell said.
He declined to offer any guidance on second quarter financial results, but noted the company has now reached agreements with unions on closing two plants in Britain and one in Belgium.
The three plants are expected to shutter next year, he 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
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],”