Ford Lio Ho Motor Co (福特六和), Taiwan’s No.4 automaker, offers sharp fuel discount to its new-car owners in cooperation with state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中油) in a move to boost sales in the conventionally slow season, a company official said yesterday.
The move came as the global oil prices surged to about 21 year high to around US$42 a barrel and CPC is mulling to jack up local gasoline prices by about 4.5 percent.
"We hope to the promotion will bring us a 20 percent increase in car sales this month," said Wesley Liu (
Ford Lio Ho, a local affiliate of Ford Motor Co of the US, said consumers, who buy vehicles in June, will enjoy 40-percent off gasoline prices at CPC’s some 1,700 gas stations around the nation during the six-month period to the year-end.
State-run Chinese Petroleum is set to raise gasoline prices as early as tomorrow in reaction to a spike in global oil prices, after OPEC met yesterday to discuss raising output, a company executive said yesterday at the same event.
"We will raise fuel prices no matter what OPEC concludes during the meeting in Beirut," said Chiang Chung-chen (
Ford Lio Ho sold 3,922 vehicles last month, about 11 percent of the 35,000 cars sold in Taiwan.
The promotion will cost the company between NT$100 million and NT$150 million, Liu estimated.
The offer will cover total spending on gasoline of up to NT$5,000 a month per driver. The carmaker said the average driver spends NT$4,000 a month on fuel.
Smaller rival Formosa Automobile Corp (
Last year, Formosa, a unit of Formosa Plastics Group (
Formosa Petrochemical is also a member of the Formosa Plastics Group.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
RSS