Energy-saving electric cars with advanced green technology were vying for attention as the Tokyo Motor Show opened yesterday, with robots and computers becoming ever more part of the vehicles on display.
Companies are showcasing concept cars with “transformable” bodies and automotive computers linked to smart phones, while showing off energy-efficient vehicles with electric, fuel cell and hybrid engines.
On display are the compact, fuel-efficient cars with which Japanese automakers hope to shake up moribund domestic sales as the sector tries to pick itself up from March’s quake-tsunami and the ongoing global economic downturn.
Photo: EPA
“The Tokyo Motor Show this year, more than any previous year, demonstrates the resilience and tenacity of Japan and the strength of its people,” Nissan Motors Co chief executive Carlos Ghosn said.
Japan’s second-largest automaker Nissan, which is part-owned by France’s Renault SA, is showing off several electric concept cars, including the Pivo 3, which can be remotely maneuvered with a smartphone.
Nissan has already installed automotive telematics in its Leaf electric car, letting drivers remotely control the air conditioning system and check on the car’s battery using a smartphone or PC.
Rival Honda Motor Co, which has long been one of the main players in motor sports, showed off a sports bike and small concept car called the EV-Ster, both with electric engines.
Honda president Takanobu Ito said the automaker planned to install large solar panels at its factories to make its entire operation free of carbon emissions — from its plants to the products they churn out — as it looked to “a society of the future where no environmental stress is imposed.”
Toyota Motor Corp is also looking to burnish its green credentials when it unveils the Aqua, a compact hybrid car, and several concept vehicles including an advanced fuel cell car.
The Aqua, to be sold under the name Prius C outside Japan, is being touted as the world’s most fuel-efficient car at 35km per liter of gasoline, beating Toyota’s existing Prius model at 32.6km per liter.
The Japanese auto giant plans to launch the five-seater model late this month in Japan, before a gradual global rollout.
This year’s motor show will feature 179 exhibitors from a dozen countries and the venue is almost twice as large as the 2009 edition of the biennial event.
Several major foreign manufacturers who skipped the last show are back, including Germany’s Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche; French carmakers Renault and Peugeot-Citroen and Britain’s Jaguar and Land Rover.
Manufacturers from outside the auto industry are also taking part in the show. Among them is Kowa Tmsuk, a joint venture by electric optical machinery maker Kowa and robot developer Tmsuk, unveiling a concept electric vehicle called Kobot, with a body the company says “transforms” via telematics linked to a smartphone.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts