Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車) yesterday reported that vehicle sales for last month climbed 25.2 percent year-on-year to a four-year high of 17,193 units, allowing it to retain the top spot in the domestic market with a 35.5 percent share.
The figure included 14,317 Toyota-branded vehicles, up 19.9 percent annually, and 2,876 Lexus cars, a surge of 60.2 percent, Hotai said in a statement.
Robust growth in Lexus sales has made it the nation’s top luxury car brand in seven-and-a-half years, Hotai said, citing data compiled by the Directorate-General of Highways’ (DGH) motor vehicles offices.
Overall sales also got a lift from sales of more than 4,000 revamped Altis sedans as well as record sales of 3,082 RAV-4 sport utility vehicles (SUVs), the highest since 1997.
“We expect Altis and RAV-4 to continue to sell well later this year as promotional activities continue,” the official told the Taipei Times by telephone.
DGH data showed that a total of 48,429 vehicles — including 8,573 high-end models — were sold last month, the highest since 2006, the company said.
China Motor Corp (中華汽車), which distributes Mitsubishi Motors Corp vehicles and CMC-brand commercial vehicles, came in second with sales of 5,394 units and an 11.1 percent share of the market.
Honda Taiwan Co (台灣本田) ranked third with sales of 4,030 vehicles and a market share of 8.3 percent, the data showed.
In the luxury car segment, Lexus topped its peers, driven by rising demand for its SUV models ranging from the NX, UX to RX-series, as well as ES-series sedans, the official said.
Mercedes-Benz Taiwan Ltd (台灣賓士) came in second with sales of 2,464 units last month, followed by Pan German Universal Motors Ltd’s (汎德永業) 1,651 BMWs, DGH data showed.
In the first seven months of the year, total vehicle sales reached 255,351 units, down 3.7 percent from the same period last year, data showed.
Hotai sold 70,142 vehicles in the period, up 7.4 percent year-on-year, with a 27.5 percent market share.
In the first seven months, Lexus sales climbed 18.9 percent to 12,775 units to secure a 25.5 percent share of the high-end market, data showed.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured