Dozens of irate Tesla car owners on Sunday gathered at the company’s flagship store and service center in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) to protest the US company’s massive price cuts, saying that they had been duped.
Coinciding with the launch of the firm’s lower-cost US$35,000 Model 3, Tesla Inc chief executive Elon Musk on Friday last week announced steep cuts to the prices of its revised range of vehicles, which saw prices drop by between NT$658,900 and NT$3.07 million (US21,371 and US$99,578) in Taiwan.
Although Tesla offers a program to buy back vehicles after three years at 51 percent of the purchase price, only those who use the company’s financing plans are eligible.
Those who are not eligible for the buyback program are facing a significant blow to the resale value of their vehicle following the price cuts, Tesla vehicle owners were quoted as saying in a report by Chinese-language technology Web site Applemond (蘋果仁) on Sunday, adding that a number of them had paid cash for their cars.
The cuts brought the prices down to NT$3.49 million for the Model S Standard Range and to NT$6.67 million for the premium Model X Ludicrous Mode.
Vehicle owners also said that national regulations have made it impossible for them to take advantage of Musk’s promise to provide a 50 percent discount on software upgrades to enable autonomous driving and other functions, as they are outlawed in Taiwan.
They want Tesla to provide compensation based on the price reductions, they said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last