Toyota Motor Corp boosted production of the Prius gasoline-electric car by a third in April, taking advantage of surging oil prices that boosted demand for fuel-efficient vehicles.
Production of the so-called hybrid cars was raised to 10,000 units a month from 7,500 in central Japan's Aichi Prefecture, spokesman Shigeru Hayakawa said in Tokyo.
The US$25,000 price tag on a Prius, more than 10 percent higher than a comparable car running on gasoline, is attracting more consumers after regular-grade gasoline prices rose 39 percent on average this year to US$2.051 a gallon.
The Prius can go as far as 89km on a gallon of gasoline while emitting 90 percent less tailpipe exhaust than the average new car of a same-size engine, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Demand for hybrid-electric cars has risen 41 percent in the US to a record 22,919 units this year through April, led by a 78 percent increase for the Prius and a 10.9 percent gain for Honda's Civic Hybrid and Insight models.
Toyota's Lexus luxury unit will start selling a hybrid version of the RX 330 sport-utility vehicle late this year.
Ford Motor Co plans to produce gasoline-electric version of its Escape sport-utility vehicle next month in the US, while General Motors Corp plans to sell hybrid large pickup trucks later this year. Nissan plans to release a hybrid Altima sedan in the US in 2006.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
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