Luxgen Motor Co Ltd (納智捷) yesterday launched its first subcompact crossover SUV model.
Luxgen — a Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) brand — said that new model U5 is equipped with augmented-reality (AR) technology and has six camera lenses to help eliminate blind spots.
“The U5’s safety equipment is very diversified,” Luxgen president Tsay Wen-rong (蔡文榮) said at a launch event for the model, citing systems of electronic stability control and traction control.
The model has passed the frontal and side collision test based on Taiwan’s vehicle safety regulation in Spain, despite that Luxgen does not sell U5 cars in Europe, a company official said by telephone, adding that the performance was much better than expected.
The test was conducted by IDIADA, a vehicle crash test lab authorized by Taiwan’s Vehicle Safety Certification Center (VSCC), Luxgen said.
IDIADA is also one of the seven official test house of Euro NCAP, a European car safety performance assessment programme that rates cars sold in the EU market through a series of vehicle tests.
With the U5 priced between NT$659,000 and NT$789,000 (US$21,870.44 and US$26184.8), lower than its rivals, Luxgen has received more than 1,500 preorders since last month, Tsay said.
The better-than-expected demand could help the company reach its sales target of 18,000 cars in Taiwan and China this year, Luxgen said.
Over the first eight months of this year, Luxgen sold 8,800 cars in Taiwan.
It declined to give a number for its sales in China, but said it would introduce the U5 to China next month.
The U5 launch is part of the company’s mid-term plan to introduce 10 new models over the coming five years, Luxgen said.
Yulon’s board in June approved a plan to set up a sales firm in China for 600 million yuan (US$91.11 million) to take full control of Luxgen’s marketing business in that nation, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange at the time.
Dongfeng Yulon Motor Co (東風裕隆), Yulon’s joint venture with China’s Dongfeng Automobile Co (東風汽車), has been responsible for selling and manufacturing Luxgen cars in China, but it will focus solely on manufacturing in the future, Yulon said.
Luxgen introduced an upgraded version of U6 compact crossover in the first half of this year, and Yulon hopes the launches of the two new Luxgen models will boost its sales and earnings.
From January through last month, Yulon reported that cumulative revenue declined 15.54 percent from a year ago to NT$63.25 billion, mainly due to fierce competition in the Chinese market.
This story has been updated since it was first published.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
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
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit