Kazutoshi Mizuno, former chief design engineer for the Nissan GT-R sports car, has parted ways with Yulon Motor, five years after he was brought into the company by then-Yulon Group chairman Kenneth Yen (嚴凱泰).
Mizuno could never get the company’s flagship Luxgen line to hit its sales targets and the line has now sputtered to a disappointing standstill.
After this failure, many models being manufactured for the Chinese market were cut, and the group moved its operations to Miaoli County’s Sanyi Township (三義), in addition to initiating personnel cutbacks.
Yulon is Taiwan’s sole major vehicle brand, with a history stretching back even farther than Japan’s Honda Motor.
Compared with Honda, which long ago ventured into the international market, Yulon could never secure a firm foothold in the automobile manufacturing sector.
When the Luxgen line was launched in 2008, support for locally made products helped it steadily gain in market share.
To differentiate the brand in a competitive market, Yulon changed direction after Mizuno was brought on board, focusing on improving its horsepower and maneuverability to attract more buyers.
Unfortunately, it overlooked several aspects that many vehicle owners emphasize, such as taxes, availability, logistics and maintenance, and resale value.
With a poor economy and high gas prices, most consumers are more concerned with their pocketbooks.
This is why Japanese models, with their older designs, lower horsepower and suspect safety issues have continued to fare well, as they achieve greater fuel efficiency, rarely break down, and aftermarket parts and components are readily available.
Luxgen’s functions, maneuverability and extra horsepower were nice, but — in addition to the high price tag — many consumers thought these were more than what was needed.
Of course, luxury imported models have all of these, too, but they also have the cachet of an established name.
For Luxgen, which was relatively new and still demonstrated a few teething problems, it was too far of a stretch.
If the nation wants to have its own domestic vehicle brand, it needs to have a sizeable market to achieve economies of scale and lower production costs.
Australia has a larger population than Taiwan and, therefore, a higher number of vehicle owners. To encourage its auto manufacturing sector, the Australian government initially gave subsidies to Holden, which for many years operated by selling rebadged models from foreign manufacturers.
However, because of insufficient domestic demand and the failure to sell more than the cars marketed for the original manufacturer, Holden closed its last Australian factory in 2017.
If Luxgen wants to avoid a fate similar to Holden’s, it would not only need to tweak its manufacturing strategy, but also carefully consider in which international markets to offer its vehicles.
In the past, the company focused on the Chinese market, which had the advantage of proximity and a shared language.
However, Luxgen also encountered impediments, such as the Chinese government’s strict regulations on overseas investment, as well as price competition.
By comparison, Southeast Asia, with its fast economic growth and degree of trust in goods manufactured in Taiwan, should be considered a potential market.
Yang Chung-hsin is a researcher of China affairs.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Wherever one looks, the United States is ceding ground to China. From foreign aid to foreign trade, and from reorganizations to organizational guidance, the Trump administration has embarked on a stunning effort to hobble itself in grappling with what his own secretary of state calls “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” The problems start at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power” and that the world has returned to multipolarity, with “multi-great powers in different parts of the
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS