Auto sales in China, the world’s largest car market, rose by 4.57 percent last month from a year earlier, data from an industry group showed yesterday.
A total of 1.27 million vehicles were sold in the country last month, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said in a statement.
That brought total sales in the first two months of the year to 3.16 million units, up 9.71 percent from a year earlier, the association said.
Growth in passenger car sales — which account for most of the country’s auto sales — is expected to slow this year due to measures imposed by some major cities to restrict the number of vehicles on the road, plus the withdrawal of policies that encouraged -automobile purchases.
“We think the growth in both sales and production would not increase as fast as what we saw in the previous two years,” the association said.
ALMOST A MILLION
Passenger vehicle sales increased 2.57 percent year-on-year last month to 967,200 units, it said.
In the January-February period, 2.5 million passenger vehicles were sold in the country, up 10.5 percent from a year earlier, it said.
China overtook the US in 2009 to become the world’s biggest car market.
Auto sales in the country rose more than 32 percent last year to a record 18.06 million units as the economy quickly powered out of the financial crisis to grow by 10.3 percent last year, its fastest pace since 2007.
With economic overheating now a growing concern, the Chinese government has phased out policy incentives such as subsidies for purchases of small-engine cars.
Some cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, have even introduced measures such as annual quotas of new car license-plates to restrict purchases as part of efforts to ease chronic gridlock and control air pollution.
YULON
In related news, the largest Taiwanese automaker Yulon Group (裕隆集團) said on Tuesday that it posted a near-record high total revenue of NT$15 billion (US$500 million) last year and plans to launch four new models and invest NT$13 billion to improve its manufacturing capability this year.
Speaking at a press conference, Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車) president Chen Kuo-rong (陳國榮) said last year’s profits were the highest in five years and the company would recruit an additional 1,200 employees to meet the growth in demand.
Yulon Group sold more than 98,000 cars in 2009, earning a total revenue of NT$6 billion and gaining a market share of 31 percent, Chen said, adding that profits from car sales accounted for more than 40 percent of the group’s income.
This year, the company expects to sell 107,500 cars nationwide, for a 35 percent share of the local market of between 330,000 and 360,000 units.
Yulon Group plans to invest NT$500 million to add 18 more dealerships that will sell cars under its Luxgen brand.
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
‘SACRED MOUNTAIN’: The chipmaker can form joint ventures abroad, except in China, but like other firms, it needs government approval for large investments Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) needs government permission for any overseas joint ventures (JVs), but there are no restrictions on making the most advanced chips overseas other than for China, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. US media have said that TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker and a major supplier to companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp, has been in talks for a stake in Intel Corp. Neither company has confirmed the talks, but US President Donald Trump has accused Taiwan of taking away the US’ semiconductor business and said he wants the industry back
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS