Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which distributes Toyota and Lexus vehicles in Taiwan, yesterday announced plans to hike prices across product lines by an average of 2 percent to reflect rising costs in raw materials, components and personnel.
The Taipei-based company said the price adjustments would start next month, after the Japanese vehicle brands indicated they could no longer absorb drastic manufacturing cost hikes.
Raw materials used in making vehicles such as steel, chips and batteries picked up significantly this year, it said, adding that the spikes in personnel, as well as transportation and logistics costs, contributed to inflationary pressure.
Photo: Bloomberg
The company raised prices for Toyota Corolla Altis models by 1.7 percent to 2.1 percent to NT$730,000 (US$23,852) to NT$945,000, the nation’s largest vehicle distributor said in a statement.
People considering buying Corolla Altis Hybrid models would have to pay 1.7 percent to 1.9 percent more, or NT$865,000 to NT$945,000 per car, it said.
Selling prices for Toyota Corolla Cross models would grow to NT$850,000 to NT$920,000, up 1.7 percent to 1.8 percent from current prices, it said.
Corolla Cross Hybrid models would cost 1.5 percent to 1.8 percent more, or NT$895,000 to NT$1.01 million, it said.
Hotai said it sought to minimize adjustments in light of an ongoing economic slowdown. The hikes appear steeper for imported vehicles.
Selling prices for popular imported models such as the Toyota RAV4 would increase in price by 3.1 percent to 3.4 percent to NT$1.01 million to NT$1.25 million, it said.
Toyota GR Supra vehicles would cost an additional 4 percent, or NT$2.69 million, it said.
This time was supposed to be different. The memorychip sector, famous for its boom-and-bust cycles, had changed its ways. A combination of more disciplined management and new markets for its products — including 5G technology and cloud services — would ensure that companies delivered more predictable earnings. Yet, less than a year after memory companies made such pronouncements, the US$160 billion industry is suffering one of its worst routs ever. There is a glut of the chips sitting in warehouses, customers are cutting orders and product prices have plunged. “The chip industry thought that suppliers were going to have better control,” said
Enimmune Corp (安特羅生技) has obtained marketing approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its EnVAX-A71 vaccine for enterovirus 71 (EV-71), becoming the nation’s first enterovirus vaccine completely made in Taiwan, it said yesterday. After spending 13 years and NT$1.5 billion (US$49.77 million) on the research and development of the vaccine, Enimmune plans to start manufacturing and marketing it by the end of March, the company said in a statement, without disclosing customer order figures. “It is possible that the vaccine would not be included in a national vaccination program initially, and consumers would need to pay for it themselves,” parent
Vaccine skeptics blocking transfusions for life-saving surgeries, Facebook groups inciting violence against doctors and a global search for unvaccinated donors — COVID-19 misinformation has bred a so-called “pure blood” movement. The movement spins anti-vaccine narratives focused on unfounded claims that receiving blood from people inoculated against COVID-19 “contaminates” the body. Some have advocated for blood banks that draw from “pure” unvaccinated people, while medics in North America say they have fielded requests from people demanding transfusions from donors who have not received a vaccine. In closed social media groups, vaccine skeptics — who brand themselves as “pure bloods” — promote violence against doctors
Asteroid mining start-up AstroForge Inc is planning to launch its first two missions to space this year as it seeks to extract and refine metals from deep space. The first launch, scheduled for April, is to test AstroForge’s technique for refining platinum from a sample of asteroid-like material. The second, planned for October, would scout for an asteroid near Earth to mine. The missions are part of AstroForge’s goal of refining platinum-group metals from asteroids, with the aim of bringing down the cost of mining these metals. It also hopes to reduce the massive amount of carbon emissions that stem from mining
RSS