New vehicle sales contracted 4.5 percent annually last year to 429,731 units as the auto market was hit by an extended chip crunch and gloomy consumer sentiment, leading to production disruptions and weak sales, market researcher U-Car.com said yesterday.
For the whole of last year, Hyundai Motor Co outperformed the market, registering annual growth of 14.7 percent by selling 15,394 vehicles, U-Car data showed.
The South Korean firm was the only one of the top 10 automakers that managed to grow vehicle sales during a year of uncertainty, U-Car said.
Photo: Amy Yang, Taipei Times
Last year, Hyundai gained a market share of 3.6 percent. Nan Yang Industries Co (南陽實業) helps distribute Hyundai vehicles in Taiwan.
Hotai Motor Co (和泰汽車), which distributes Lexus and Toyota models in Taiwan, kept its top position, seizing a 33.2 percent share of the nation’s passenger vehicle market, up from 32.6 percent in 2021.
However, Hotai failed to counter the unfavorable macro environment and saw sales slide 2.7 percent year-on-year to 142,761 vehicles last year, as chip shortages cut output.
Toyota’s Corolla Cross was the best-selling vehicle last year for the second year in a row, with 39,585 units sold, Hotai said in a statement.
Hotai reported a setback in the commercial car market with sales of Toyota and Hino brands plunging 18.5 percent to 23,130 units last year from 28,378 units in 2021.
The distributor blamed the COVID-19 pandemic, chip constraints and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for the decline.
In the passenger vehicle market, Tesla Inc sold a total of 11,575 Model 3 and Model Y units last year, making it the first electric vehicle maker to sell more than 10,000 units in Taiwan in a year, U-Car said.
Overall, last year’s new vehicle sales fell short of Hotai’s expectation of 430,000 units, but exceeded the estimate of Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車), which tends to be more pessimistic.
Looking ahead, new vehicle sales this month are expected to dip 6 percent year-on-year to about 38,000 units, due to their being little improvement in chip supply and fewer working days due to the Lunar New Year holiday, Hotai said.
That would represent a monthly reduction of 9.2 percent from 41,854 units sold last month.
New vehicle sales last month expanded 4 percent annually and 5.5 percent from a month earlier, fueled by strong year-end sales promotions, U-Car said.
The arrival of Tesla vehicles also drove growth, it added.
Tesla became the second-largest vehicle brand last month with sales of 4,073 units, surging 703 percent from November, while Mitsubishi Motors Co followed with 2,762 units sold, up 22.5 percent from a month earlier, U-Car data showed.
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