General Motors Co on Friday unveiled Brazil's first factory-produced car to run on gasoline, alcohol or natural gas, and a top government official said South America's largest country hopes to export the technology abroad.
Economic Development Minister Luiz Furlan also predicted GM's "multi-fuel" car will be a big hit in Brazil's urban areas, where the three types of fuel are readily available and natural gas is the cheapest option.
Brazilian drivers for years have hired mechanics to install natural gas conversion kits so cars can run on it in addition to either alcohol or gas. But the feature has never before been offered before as a factory-installed option.
GM, Fiat SpA and Volkswagen last year began selling Brazilian "flex-fuel" cars that run on alcohol or gasoline or a combination of the two. GM's new car is the first to come with the natural gas option.
The automaker will offer the multi-fuel package on its compact Astra sedan, expected to appear in showrooms next month. The car was unveiled in the capital of Brasilia in front of Brazil's presidential palace, and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva turned on the engine and switched the fuel from gasoline to natural gas while the car was running.
Furlan said Brazil's Finance Ministry is studying a plan from Brazilian automakers to reduce taxes on cars made with multi-fuel technology.
Automakers sold 150,000 flex-fuel cars in Brazil from January through July, representing 18 percent of total new car sales. Most flex-fuel car buyers are currently filling up with alcohol because it costs about half as much as gas.
Sales of the multi-fuel car could give an additional boost to Brazil's auto industry, which was hit hard last year by the country's worst recession in a decade.
Ray Young, managing director of GM's Brazilian division, said the company made a big investment to develop the car "to provide our Brazilian customers the best choice for affordable fuel prices in the market."
The Brazilian automakers association this week raised its forecast for overall production this year to 2.1 million vehicles after publishing data that showed output and sales rising for the third straight month in July.
The association, Anfavea, said Brazilian output of cars, trucks and buses should increase 15 percent this year from last year's production of 1.83 million vehicles.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to