Hotai Motor Co Ltd (和泰汽車), which distributes Toyota and Lexus vehicles in Taiwan, yesterday forecast that sales would this year increase about 9 percent annually to 131,000 vehicles, thanks to launches of new vehicles, including hybrid models and sports cars.
Hotai said that sales of Toyota models are to reach 110,000 units, while upscale Lexus sales would rise to 21,000 units this year.
“The release of [Toyota’s] Altis [sedan] and RAV4 [sport utility vehicle] in March is expected to boost our annual sales and profit,” Hotai Motor spokesman Liu Sung-shan (劉松山) told an investors’ meeting in Taipei.
Sales of gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles — including some Altis and RAV4 models — are expected to surge 260 percent year-on-year due to a lower base of comparison and a promotion that extends the battery warranty to eight years, he said.
The firm’s confidence about sales growth is built on strong interest from local consumers, who bought up older versions of the Altis and RAV4 before the Lunar New Year holiday and the launch of the newer models, he added.
In the second half of this year, Hotai said that it expects to launch more vehicles, with the Toyota Hilux pickup and the Toyota GR Supra sports car in the pipeline, in addition to the Lexus RC F sports car, which is entering the market this month.
Supported by new car sales, the firm said that it aims to expand its market share to 30.8 percent this year, compared with last year’s 28 percent.
Hotai’s first-quarter net income fell 7.63 percent year-on-year to NT$2.5 billion (US$79.3 million), from NT$2.71 billion in the same period last year, while earnings per share dropped from NT$4.96 to NT$4.58.
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