Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), the leading car distributor in Taiwan, yesterday said it aims to sell 12,000 cars this month, supported by sales of its newly launched Vios subcompact car.
Eli Huang (黃明顯), director and chief officer of Toyota and Hino operations at Hotai, said it forecast sales of 1,400 new Vioses and 4,000 units of its flagship Altis sedan, as well as other Toyota and Lexus models, at a launch yesterday in Greater Kaohsiung.
Targeting first-time buyers, Hotai has set prices for the new Vios between NT$519,000 and NT$569,000 (US$17,075 and US$18,700), lower than rival models, such as Yulon Nissan Motor Co’s (裕隆日產) Livina subcompact and Big TIIDA family car, Huang said.
Photo: Yang Ya-min, Taipei Times
“We believe cars of this range should be affordable,” he said.
Huang said demand for 1.5-liter engine cars and 1.6-liter models is about 30,000 to 40,000 units a year.
The company plans to sell 6,000 new Vioses from this month through June, and 16,000 units overall this year, he added.
In the overall market, Hotai expects car sales this month to grow 18 percent to 34,000 units from 28,844 units a year ago, supported by new car launches including the new Vios and Livina, but stay comparative to the 34,307 units sold last month, according to industrial data.
Last quarter, total car sales reached 99,404 units, up 10.1 percent from a year ago, according to Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) data.
Hotai continued to lead the market by selling 30,341 cars last quarter, accounting for 30.5 percent of the market.
Company president Justin Su (蘇純興) said the company’s market share last quarter was below the 34 percent target it set for this year because of US and Japanese production constraints for the new Altis and RAV-4 SUV.
“Because of severe weather conditions in North America, Toyota Motor Corp’s factories in the region were shut down, and its factories in Japan had to ship more RAV-4 parts to the US, reducing the number shipped to Taiwan,” Su said.
Su said the company plans to raise its market share above 34 percent this quarter and increase revenue by 10 percent from last quarter’s NT$11.07 billion.
The company maintained its forecasts that total car sales would reach 390,000 units this year, with Hotai taking 34 percent of the market, Su said.
This story has been updated since it was first published.
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