Taiwanese lithium battery maker Amita Technologies Inc (有量科技) and its US counterpart Gold Peak Industries North America are planning to set up a joint venture in San Diego, California, to manufacture cells for electric car use, a government representative in Los Angeles said on Wednesday.
The two companies will sign a letter of intent on the deal, which will target the North American electric car market, said James Wu (吳新華), head of the commercial division of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles.
Wu said the joint venture would assemble lithium electrodes made by Amita and other components to make lithium batteries for customers in North America.
Wu, who is leading a Taiwan delegation including Amita to visit US car companies in Los Angeles and Detroit, said Taiwan has built up a comprehensive car component production network and boasts cutting-edge technology in electric car manufacturing.
In April, the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced a development project to build 10 electric car production parks by the end of 2013.
Taiwan also plans to replace cars assigned to ranking government officials with electric cars within three years.
Meanwhile, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said yesterday that innovation and quality have made Taiwan’s solar products world famous.
“We might not beat China on pricing, but we definitely exceed other Asian countries in innovation and quality,” TAITRA project manager Terry Shao said.
This year, TAITRA led 23 Taiwanese companies that participated in Intersolar Europe, the world’s largest exhibition for the solar industry, which took place at the New Munich Trade Fair Center in Germany from June 9 to last Friday.
Shao said local companies took advantage of the show to showcase their latest solar products to the world. BIG SUN Energy Technology Inc (太陽光電), for example, unveiled a solar cell with an equivalent conversion efficiency rate of as much as 18.4 percent, which, the company says, is the most efficient on the market.
Shao said the Taiwan Pavilion at the fair attracted 1,769 visitors and yielded on-site business of US$237 million, up from last year’s US$135 million, and the companies expect this year’s show to generate almost US$1.1 billion within a year.
He added that market demand is not dropping, even though the German government is likely to cut its solar subsidies next month.
The three-day expo attracted a record-high 72,000 visitors from about 150 countries.
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