European sales of cars powered by alternative energy sources rose 39 percent last year as Toyota Motor Corp pushed hybrid models and Renault SA extended the driving range on the latest version of its all-electric Zoe.
Customers bought 953,355 autos that run on systems including batteries, electric-gasoline or diesel motors, fuel cells or natural gas last year, the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association said yesterday in a statement.
Combined demand for full hybrid cars, which can operate on either conventional fuel or self-charged battery power, and mild hybrids, which use an electric motor to help the combustion engine run more efficiently, surged 52 percent.
Sales of all-electric models jumped 49 percent.
The growth far outpaced the European car market’s 3.3 percent gain last year, suggesting consumers are warming to the models added by Toyota, Renault and competitors.
Still, the alternative systems powered only 6.1 percent of the 15.6 million autos sold across the region last year, an increase from 4.5 percent in 2016.
Battery-powered cars had a 0.9 percent market share last year.
EU regulators are requiring the auto industry to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from vehicle exhausts to limit greenhouse gases. Customers have been reluctant to buy all-electric autos because of concerns about how long battery recharging takes and the short distances the cars can travel compared with gasoline or diesel models.
Renault improved the Zoe’s range on a full charge by 67 percent to 400km.
Toyota has up to now focused on hybrid technology and last month it said that sales of the models jumped 38 percent in Europe last year to account for 41 percent of its deliveries there.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to