The nation’s new car sales rose 1.1 percent last year from a year earlier, thanks to aggressive promotional campaigns by dealers last month, a report released on Thursday by online market researcher U-Car said.
The government’s tax break program that encourages owners to trade in old vehicles for new ones also helped boost car sales last year, the report said.
Car sales totaled 439,836 units, up from 435,135 in 2018, although sales of imported cars increased by an annual 6.42 percent to 209,949 units, making up 47.7 percent of the total, U-Car said, citing Directorate-General of Highways data.
Last month alone, car sales rose 12.8 percent from a month earlier and 9.4 percent from a year earlier to 45,925 units on the back of strong sales of best-sellers, such as the new Toyota Corolla Altis sedan and new sport utility vehicle models including the Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V and Nissan Kicks, the report showed.
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), the local sales agent for Toyota and Lexus vehicles, remained the top vehicle vendor last year with a 27.2 percent market share, the report said.
Hotai sold 119,597 units, a 25.2 percent increase from 2018.
China Motor Corp (中華汽車), which markets vehicles under the Mitsubishi brand and its own CMC brand, was second, selling 47,853 units, down 5.5 percent annually and accounting for 10.9 percent of total sales in Taiwan.
Third was Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產), which sells vehicles under the Nissan brand. It sold 35,793 cars, up 4.1 percent annually and accounting for 8.1 percent of total sales.
Honda Taiwan Co (台灣本田) was fourth with a 7.5 percent market share and sales of 33,053 units, down 14.9 percent from a year earlier.
Mercedes-Benz Taiwan Ltd (台灣賓士) came fifth, booking a 0.3 percent annual increase in sales to 29,255 units and a 6.7 percent market share.
Throughout last year, competition in the luxury vehicle segment was close, as 22,295 Lexus vehicles and 16,907 BMW vehicles were sold in Taiwan, up 25.2 percent and 3.8 percent respectively from 2018, U-Car said.
Dealers might continue to see strong sales in this final year of the government’s trade-in program, which could stimulate another wave of replacement demand if the government does not extend the program, the report said.
Beginning in January 2016, the government offered NT$50,000 per car to owners who traded in vehicles six years or older for a newer, more efficient model.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
RSS