Honda Malaysia leads the way

IT has been a good year for Honda Malaysia as its sales figures from January to November has steadily increased to 69,150 units


This is a 34% increase compared to the brand’s total sales of 51,550 units last year..

In fact, Honda Malaysia claims that it is now the market leader in the non-national passenger car market, taking away the title from UMW Toyota.

According to Akkbar Danial, general manager for Honda Malaysia and also the company’s head of marketing, Honda Malaysia is well on track to hit its 2014 target, which is 76,000 units.

“The tsunami and earthquake in 2011 disrupted our production and parts supply but we restructured our business operation and devised a threeyear plan to achieve a high volume sales in Malaysia,” says Akkbar.

He adds that the main strategy is to offer affordable products that give buyers value for money in order to be competitive in the Malaysian market.

“We achieved this by increasing the localisation of our parts and the result is the current City and Jazz, which both carry competitive prices with added features.”

The other approach was a re-look into its operations and as a result, Honda Malaysia has expanded its production with the new No.2 Line at its Pagoh plant in Malacca.

This has increased its production capacity from 50,000 units to 100,000 units a year.

In the same period, Honda Malaysia also looked into increasing efficiency in its factory and expanded its pre-delivery inspection process and parts warehousing.

“Finally, to accommodate the high volume of sales, we have also expanded our dealer network from 62 dealers in 2012 to 78 dealers this year. This is to ensure that our customers are more satisfied. We plan to have a dealer in all major towns in Malaysia,” explains Akkbar.

Currently, its best selling model is the City, which has sold 32,465 units from January to November this year. Honda has also introduced variants that cater to all budgets.

The Jazz for example, has three variants and prices start at RM72,800 and go up to RM87,800. The City has four variants and its prices start at RM75,800 with the highest variant priced at RM90,800.

Such a wide range of prices offer options to the consumers, which translate to more offerings and higher sales.

Honda Malaysia has 11 models in its list and this includes three hybrid models - the Civic Hybrid (RM185,500), CR-Z (RM183,000) and the Jazz Hybrid (RM89,912). The latter is assembled locally and enjoys the hybrid benefits introduced by the government.

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Equation helps keep Cars Tyres on the road longer

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Jamie Condliffe, contributor

Ever wondered how long it's going to be until you have to change the tyres on your car? Wanted to calculate how far around the world one set of treads could take you? Or even just felt like spending a long weekend doing some complex math?
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The solution could well be here. A team of researchers from the School of Automobile Studies at Tongji University, China, have developed a new equation that predicts the rate at which tyres wear. The results could help save the haulage industry millions of dollars - and they might even ease the strain on your pocket, too.

As you'd expect, their results, published in Journal of Vibration and Control, show that wear is related to the contact area on the road, the physical properties of the rubber, the friction between the road and tyre, any skidding that occurs, and the weight of the vehicle.



More interesting than the equation, though, is the analysis that the team performed to find out which parameters affect tyre wear the most - not least because it might mean you don't need to shell out for new tyres so often.

You won't be surprised to find out that the biggest factors contributing to wear are side slip, speed, and the mass of the car itself. That means that if you want your tread to last longer, you should cut down on the skids and speeding, and kick out any unwanted passengers while you're at it. Other big offenders are low tyre pressures - so keep them pumped up - and ambient temperature.

But maybe the biggest shock is that the car's suspension and the road surface that's driven on make hardly any difference to tyre wear at all. So boy racers whose cars feature suspension lowered so far they have to drive slowly down rough streets to avoid damage have one saving grace - they're caring the planet, four tyres at a time.