New vehicle sales in Taiwan last month dropped 10.1 percent annually to 39,181 units, as demand cooled and new local content rules weighed on market sentiment, auto market researcher U-car said yesterday.
However, on a monthly basis, sales expanded 17.9 percent from October, data showed.
The local vehicle market turned sluggish this year after a massive order backlog was fulfilled last year as automakers overcame component shortages and stepped up production, U-car said, adding that the decline in sales accelerated in the second half of this year.
Photo courtesy of New Taipei City Economic Development Department
The new local content rules, which took effect in August, upended the auto market, with new MG electric vehicles (EVs) being barred from sales and new model introductions being rescheduled.
MG cars are developed by China’s MG Motor Corp and assembled by China Motor Corp (中華汽車) in Taiwan, with a majority of the auto parts imported from China.
During the first 11 months of this year, new vehicle sales contracted 4 percent annually to 416,528 units, U-car said.
Whether full-year sales would be able to grow for a second straight year remains to be seen, as car distributors usually launch promotions later in the year, it added.
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which dominates the local market with a 36.1 percent share, said it expects new vehicle sales this month to shrink 3 percent year-on-year to 42,000 units, bringing full-year sales to 460,000 units, down 1.3 percent from 466,000 units last year.
Hotai also trimmed its own annual sales by almost 6 percent to 160,000 units from an earlier estimate of 170,000 units, citing insufficient supply from Toyota Motor Corp.
Tesla Inc sold 13,364 units in the first 11 months of this year, maintaining its top position in the electric vehicle market, ahead of Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷汽車), a subsidiary of Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車), with 6,620 cars, data showed.
Separately, Sanyang Industrial Co (三陽工業) yesterday announced that it was withdrawing from the Taiwan Transportation Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association (台灣車輛工會).
The government’s sudden adjustments of local content rules and the association’s failure to inform and help members in time have left many unprepared to cope with the changes, a statement issued by Sanyang chairman Wu Ching-yuan (吳清源) said.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
RSS