New car sales in Taiwan last year fell 4 percent to the third-highest level on record as auto market consumption returned to normal following a sales boom in 2023, online market researcher U-Car.com said in a report yesterday, citing the latest government data.
The number of applications for vehicle license plates, an indicator of new car sales, slowed to 457,830 units last year, from 476,987 units a year earlier, the second-highest level since 2005, when 514,626 units were requested, the data compiled by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications showed.
The full-year results came as new car sales last month fell 4.3 percent year-on-year to 41,302 units. However, the figure rose 5.4 percent month-on-month, boosted by year-end promotion campaigns by automakers and dealers coupled with new arrivals of imported models, the data showed.
Photo: Amy Yang, Taipei Times
Sales of imported cars last year reached 220,503 units, an annual decrease of 1.8 percent, and a market share of 48.2 percent. The number of luxury imported cars increased 2.9 percent to 115,445 units, a market share of 25.2 percent, the data found.
Market leader Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which distributes Toyota and Lexus vehicles in Taiwan, sold 12,637 units last month, bringing the company’s total sales for last year to 153,526 units, down 3.6 percent from the year before.
That still allowed Hotai to remain the No. 1 vendor in Taiwan for 23 consecutive years with a market share of 33.5 percent, the largest in 11 years, the company said.
In contrast, Yulon Nissan Motor Co (裕隆日產), which distributes Nissan and Infiniti vehicles, Honda Taiwan Co (台灣本田) and China Motor Corp (中華汽車), which makes its namesake brand as well as Mitsubishi and MG-branded vehicles, reported annual declines of 16.7 percent, 11.9 percent and 0.2 percent in sales to 19,842, 26,791 and 51,224 units in the year respectively, the data showed.
However, annual sales at Sanyang Industrial Co (三陽工業), which distributes Hyundai vehicles, rose 2.3 percent to 22,691 units, and Mazda Motor Taiwan’s (台灣馬自達) new car sales increased 7.1 percent to 14,776 units last year, the data showed.
Some popular imported brands, including Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Tesla, also fared better than expected with sales last year rising 7.6 percent, 14.7 percent and 16.1 percent year-on-year to 26,296, 20,332 and 15,276 units, respectively. However, Volvo sales declined 2.4 percent to 9,908 units and Audi delivered 3,945 cars, down 20.1 percent, the data showed.
For this month, total vehicle sales in Taiwan are forecast to reach 42,000 units, down 6.3 percent year-on-year due to fewer working days, despite promotions by automakers and dealers ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, Hotai said.
Lunar New Year — the most important traditional holiday in Taiwan and also known as the Spring Festival — falls on Jan. 29 this year.
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
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
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS