Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Co (FETC, 遠通電收), which provides electronic toll payment services on the nation’s freeways, yesterday said it would provide new electronic toll stickers to users for free, replacing current on-board units (OBU), to boost usage.
FETC is facing pressure to increase the usage of its toll system to the required 65 percent by the end of June next year based on the contract the company has with with the National Freeway Bureau. Currently, only 45 percent of the nation’s car drivers are using the company’s toll payment system.
Despite the FETC operating in the red, “we are positively responding to the call of the government and users for a free device,” said Douglas Hsu (徐旭東), chairman of local conglomerate Far Eastern Group (遠東集團), which owns FETC.
Photo: CNA
The electronic toll payment service provider has lost NT$3.3 billion (US$114.9 million), Hsu said. FETC has accumulated 1.3 million users since its inception in 2006, he said.
FETC aimed to complete the update of the electronic toll device, called “eTag” stickers, by February next year, which will require motorists to store at least NT$500 in prepaid accounts before they can use the device.
The tag, which is 2.5cm wide and 6.7cm in length, makes use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology.
The current ETC system uses infrared technology on an OBU, which includes an ETC card and a card holder, and costs NT$1,199 each.
With the new electronic toll stickers, FETC hopes to boost usage of its payment system to more than 90 percent, the company said.
FETC spokesperson Lang Ya-ling (郎亞玲) said motorists can continue using their OBUs until the nation starts charging motorists according to the distance traveled on freeways, adding that each motor vehicle will get one free eTag as well as a free replacement if it is proven that the tag has not been damaged by human error.
The current infrared technology will still be available for use alongside the RFID technology before the end of next year, she said.
Bureau deputy chief engineer Wu Mu-fu (吳木富) said the eTags can help FETC meet the requirements of the OBU usage rate stated in the contract.
“The plan [proposed by FETC] is estimated to be able to quickly raise the installation and usage rates of OBUs,” Wu said. “When that happens, Taiwan will become the only country in the world in which all freeway users are charged by the number of kilometers traveled using the ETC system.”
FETC had violated the terms of the build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract last year by failing to reach the OBU usage rate of 45 percent. The bureau then decided to give the contractor a year to raise the usage rate to 60 percent by yesterday. However, the contractor again missed the mark by having only a usage rate of 45 percent as of Wednesday.
Based on the contract, the contractor would have faced a daily penalty of NT$500,000 if it failed to propose plans to raise the usage rate before the one-year grace period expired yesterday.
“The company must complete the installation of infrastructure needed for the eTag system by the end of this year, which we will list as an important point to check,” Wu said. “Aside from having eTags available in February next year, the OBU usage rate must also reach a usage rate of 65 percent by June next year.”
FETC will be fined if it fails to meet any of these requirements, Wu said, adding that the bureau will calculate the fines accumulated since April 15 this year.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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