Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車) aims to sell 163,000 vehicles this year, up 8.7 percent from last year, as improving chip supply and recovering consumer sentiment help boost the domestic auto market, the local distributor of Lexus and Toyota vehicles said yesterday.
Last year, Hotai sold 150,000 vehicles under the Toyota, Lexus and Hino brands, down 3.95 percent from a year earlier, as key component shortages and COVID-19 restrictions reduced auto production and supply.
“We expect chip constraints to improve this year, which should help boost vehicle production and supply,” Hotai spokesman Simon Liu (劉松山) told an online investors’ conference. “New vehicle sales expanded 4 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, which showed that market demand remained robust as COVID-19 rules were eased and consumer spending recovered.”
Photo: Amy Yang, Taipei Times
Visitor numbers to its showrooms in Taiwan jumped 20 percent in the first quarter of the year, Liu said.
New vehicle sales in Taiwan this year are forecast to grow 4 percent year-on-year to 450,000 units from 430,000 units last year, he said.
However, as the company has accumulated an order backlog of 15,000 units due to a scarcity of key components, buyers might have to wait for two months for delivery, he said.
The wait for some imported models, such as the Camry and RAV4 series, might be even longer, he added.
“The more electronic components a vehicle is equipped with, the longer the waiting time would be. This also applies to hybrids,” Liu said.
Lead time for locally manufactured vehicles is shorter at two weeks to one month, he said.
Hotai yesterday said that the impact of COVID-19 insurance payout from Hotai Insurance Co (和泰產險) is on the wane as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has relaxed pandemic restrictions and from next month, people with mild symptoms would no longer be required to isolate.
“No large sum of COVID-19 insurance policy claims is expected,” Liu told investors.
Given the sizeable payouts from its insurance unit, Hotai Motor posted a net loss of NT$19.33 billion (US$634.7 million) last year, the first loss in 20 years.
Hotai Insurance reported a net loss of NT$36.91 billion last year, after booking massive one-off reserves for potential insurance claims.
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