Passenger vehicle sales surged 29 percent in China last month, led by small carmakers Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd (吉利汽車) and Mazda Motor Corp, as consumers seeking to beat an expiring tax cut helped clear inventory on dealer lots.
Deliveries of sedans, minivans, sport utility and multipurpose vehicles to dealerships rose to 2.27 million units last month, the state-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said yesterday.
The government has so far stayed silent on whether it would extend a tax cut on purchases of vehicles with smaller engines beyond Dec. 31.
Sales could plunge next year if levies are allowed to double to 10 percent, China Passenger Car Association secretary-general Cui Dongshu (崔東樹) said.
A slump in demand would worsen a capacity glut and dent profit margins, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Steve Man said.
“The expiration of the current purchase tax cut is encouraging consumers to catch the last bus and bring forward their car purchases,” said Huang Xiaowei, an analyst with Shenzhen-based WAYS Consulting Co (威爾森諮詢). “Dealers are preparing stocks for the surging demand at the year-end.”
A gauge of vehicle inventory last month fell for a third straight month to the lowest level in two years, the China Automobile Dealer Association said.
Dealers of Japanese brands saw profits increase by 27 percent in August from a month earlier to 1,851 yuan (US$275.65) per vehicle after scaling back discounts due to strong demand, WAYS Consulting said.
Mazda said its sales in China last month jumped 49 percent from a year earlier, led by models including the Axela compact, which qualifies for the tax cut.
Geely raised its full-year sales target after deliveries last month surged 82 percent from a year earlier.
General Motors Co’s sales gained 16 percent to 343,773 units, with deliveries of Cadillac sedans increasing 63 percent.
Great Wall Motor Co’s (長城汽車) sales rose 49 percent to 97,685 units, with sport utility vehicle deliveries reaching 87,627 units.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts