A Taiwanese company that makes lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries said yesterday that it plans to enter into a joint venture with a bus manufacturer in China to produce batteries for large buses.
Pihsiang Machinery Manufacturing Co (必翔), which is primarily an electric scooter maker, said yesterday that it intends to take a 15 percent stake in the joint venture with Foshan Electrical and Lighting Co (FEL, 佛山電器照明) and to provide the technology and materials needed to manufacture LFP bus batteries.
Under the terms of a letter of intent signed by the two companies, the battery factory will be set up in Foshan, Guangdong Province, Pihsiang deputy spokesman More Huang said.
“We are engaged in negotiations and will try to finalize the investment plan soon,” Huang said.
The preliminary plan is to manufacture 15 million batteries for FEL in the first year of the project, he said.
FEL is primarily a lighting equipment maker, but in the last two years it has acquired three bus manufacturing plants in China.
Huang said FEL plans to expand its annual bus production capacity to 2,000 units by 2015, by which time it will require 100 million LPF batteries per year.
FEL was impressed by Pihsiang’s battery production technology after it tested the batteries in its buses in April, Huang said.
“Pihsiang holds the patents and FEL has the funds. We are going to be a good match,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has announced a list of “2020 core industries” to highlight Taiwan’s evolving industrial infrastructure, Taiwan Institute for Economic Research vice president Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said at the 7th National Industrial Development Conference yesterday.
The 24 industries listed under the “2020 core industries” initiative include new industries such as green energy, traditional industries and service-related industries with potential for development.
Kung, one of the panelists at the conference, said that these industries will follow one of three paths: upgrading, strengthening or internationalization and technological upgrading.
He added that to improve industrial performance, the industries should pay more attention to international issues such as environmental protection and adhere to international best practices.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by