Toyota Motor Corp yesterday said that it expects annual sales of its newly released fourth generation Prius hybrid to reach as many as 350,000 vehicles, despite a big drop in oil prices making traditional gasoline cars cheap to run.
The automaker is promising mileage of 40.8km per liter in Japan for its latest version of the gasoline-electric car, better than the 40kpm initially projected.
Mileage tests and driving conditions differ by nation. Toyota has promised about 22km per liter in the US.
Photo: AP
Executive vice president Mitsuhisa Kato told reporters at a Tokyo showroom that the latest Prius made fewer driving experience compromises to achieve better mileage.
“There is nothing you feel you are suffering through to get that mileage,” he said.
Improvements in the battery, engine, wind resistance and weight are contributing to the improved performance, according to Toyota. The new Prius also got a design makeover, although reaction has been divided.
Toyota has sold about 4 million Prius vehicles globally, making it the world’s top-selling hybrid, but its popularity is mostly limited to the US and Japan.
Toyota faced skepticism when it first introduced Prius in 1997.
Japanese sales started yesterday, and are set for next month in North America and February in Europe.
Toyota says it is expecting to sell 12,000 Prius cars a month in Japan, with projected annual global sales at 300,000 to 350,000 vehicles.
Kato brushed off questions about how the recent drop in oil prices may negatively affect sales. Energy and ecological worries are here to stay, he said.
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
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained