Volkswagen AG (VW) announced a recall yesterday of more than 384,000 vehicles in China to fix gearboxes following a report last week by state TV that criticized the quality of the German automaker’s cars.
Volkswagen said that problems with direct-shift gearboxes might cause a power interruption, but it said drivers could remain in control and maneuver to a stop. The company said it would repair gearboxes and install the latest software upgrades at no cost to owners. Many systems in modern cars are controlled electronically.
The recall applies to vehicles imported or manufactured in China between December 2008 and this month, the government’s product quality agency said in a separate statement. It said that included models such as the Sirocco, Golf Wagon, Jetta, Magotan, Touran and Passat.
A broadcast on Friday by Chinese state television to mark World Consumer Rights Day accused Volkswagen of selling cars with substandard gearbox systems, causing unspecified problems for some drivers.
The recall comes at a time of anxiety in China over product safety following a series of scandals over fake or tainted food, milk powder, medicines and other goods.
China is VW’s biggest market and sales have helped to buoy the company’s finances against weaker performance in other global markets.
Volkswagen sold 2.8 million vehicles in China last year for a 14 percent share of the market, according to LMC Automotive, a research firm.
Foreign firms are often regarded in China as more reliable than domestic brands, but any quality problems are widely publicized.
Separately, VW’s Taiwanese distributor said it has no recall plans.
“We recalled cars with the same gearboxes and upgraded their software last December and are waiting for further instructions to see if Volkswagen has other concerns about the gearboxes,” Beldare Motors (標達國際汽車) public relations manager Nelly Liao (廖英瑛) said by telephone.
Additional reporting by Camaron Kao
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
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
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],”
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