Yulon to Export More Locally-assembled “tobe“-branded Cars to Vietnam

The Yulon Group, the largest automobile manufacturing conglomerate in Taiwan, recently announced that the first batch of 20 locally assembled tobe M`car mine cars exported to Vietnam in December 2009 were sold out immediately and the Vietnamese importer urgently placed orders for additional 120 units.

Yulon also plans to tap into the Philippines market with the locally assembled tobe M`cars in 2010. The tobe M`car mini-car model was developed by Yulon`s Chinese partner Geely Automobile.

In a bid to explore the under-NT$400,000 (US$12,307 at US$1: NT$32.5) mini-car segment in Taiwan, Yulon tied up with Geely and launched the first product model, tobe M`car (Geely Panda) assembled in Taiwan. Yulon also expects to become the export base of Geely car models in the future.

In addition to the 1,300cc M`car, Yulon also plans to debut a 1,500cc crossover model (a car chassis with SUV height) in mid-2010 as another probe into local mini-car market.

Hsu Kuo-hsing, president of Yulon tobe Motor Co., pointed out that his company would compress the price of tobe M`car within NT$360,000 to NT$370,000 (US$11,076 to US$11,385) for the manual-shift model and under-NT$400,000 (US$12,307) for automatic model.

According to Hsu, Kylin, the Vietnamese importer of tobe car models, sold the tobe M`cars at multi-brand car sales points in major cities of Vietnam and all the first 20 units were immediately ordered.

The president pointed out that currently Yulon owns a majority stake in Nissan Motor Philippines Inc. (NMPI), so the group is more familiar with the Pilipino market, where currently about 800,000 to 100,000 new cars are sold every year.

Yulon is expected to complete evaluation of the target market in early 2010 and begin exporting tobe car models in the middle of the year to the Philippines.