Yulon Nissan Co (裕隆日產), the third-largest car distributor in Taiwan last year, yesterday said it aims to sell 1,500 units of its new Super Sentra passenger car a month over the next three months on prices lower than those offered by its main rival.
The sales target in the first three months is higher than the 1,000 units the company set previously, as the firm is confident that its price cuts of between NT$20,000 and NT$44,000 for each vehicle off their preorder prices will help it compete head-to-head with Toyota’s new Altis model.
Yulon Nissan prices its 1.8-liter Super Sentra at between NT$645,000 and NT$765,000, which is NT$1,000 lower than the NT$646,000 for the entry-level model of Toyota Altis.
Photo: Yang Ya-min, Taipei Times
“We think customers will no longer hesitate to buy our cars with the new prices,” Yulon Nissan president Tsay Wen-rong (蔡文榮) said at a launch ceremony for the new Sentra.
Sales of Nissan’s Sentra model account for about 25 percent of Yulon Nissan’s total car sales, according to the company.
Tsay said the company’s car sales could exceed its target of 43,800 cars after the latest price cut.
The price cut will not have a significant impact on the company’s profit if it can distribute more cars and reach economies of scale, Tsay said.
Total car sales by all automakers this year are expected to reach 370,000 units, slightly higher than last year’s 365,871 units, aided by the new car launches, Tsay said.
From Jan. 1 through Oct. 20, total car sales in Taiwan were 284,706 units, down 1 percent from a year ago, the latest industry figures showed.
The company said it expects operating profit in the second half of the year to be higher than the NT$732.89 million it made in the first half, thanks to higher car sales and a stable exchange rate between the New Taiwan dollar and Japanese yen.
The company said that sales of its subsidiary, Dong-Feng Nissan Ltd (東風日產), which distributes Nissan cars in China, should increase to 100,000 a month in the final quarter, pushing the total car sales of the Chinese subsidiary to between 900,000 units and 930,000 units.
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day