The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced the launch of an electric car industry research consortium and projected that the output value of the country’s electric car industry would reach more than NT$300 billion (US$9.19 billion) by 2020.
Wu Ming-ji (吳明機), director-general of the Department of Industrial Technology, said countries around the world have been working to promote the development of electric cars.
The US has plans for 1 million electric cars by 2015, while China also has a plan to test 1,000 electric cars in 10 major cities, Wu said.
“Although Taiwan currently only offers subsidies for electric motorcycles, the government will also establish policies and measures to promote electric cars in the future,” Wu said. “Electric cars are not a dream, but will soon become a reality.”
Wu said if Taiwan’s auto industry could combine with the information technology (IT) and electronics industries, the nation could play an important role in the world’s electric car market.
Taiwan Transportation Vehicle Manufacturers Association chairman Chen Kuo-rong (陳國榮) said that if every electric car were sold at US$30,000, it would translate into an output value of US$2.1 trillion.
“If Taiwan’s IT industry has a global market share of 3 percent, the output value of Taiwan’s electric car industry could reach NT$2 trillion,” he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained