AUTOMOBILES
BYD cars to debut in Q1
Electric cars developed by China-based BYD Co (比亞迪) will make their debut in Taiwan early next year, the vehicle’s local distributor announced yesterday. BYD Taiwan, a joint venture of BYD Hong Kong and Taiwan Solar Energy Co (元晶太陽能), said it had received orders from a local taxi association for more than 1,500 BYD e6 cars, with delivery scheduled to begin in the first quarter of next year. The company said it has commissioned a local automaker to assemble the first BYD e6 vehicles to be sold in the nation to speed up regulatory inspections and approvals. The BYD e6 is an all-electric crossover car that the carmaker says has a nominal range of 300km on a single charge (in an eTaxi duty-cycle), though the range may fall short of that under actual driving conditions.
AVIATION
AIDC, GE extend contract
Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (AIDC, 漢翔航空), the nation’s biggest aircraft maker, yesterday said it recently signed a contract with General Electric Co (GE), including orders worth up to NT$9.5 billion (US$323.18 million) for aircraft engine parts. The contract, valid from 2015 through 2018, extends AIDC and GE’s long-term cooperation that began in 1997 and will also help bring in business opportunities for local electronics supply chains, the corporation said in a statement posted on its Web site.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
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