Kwang Yang Motor Co (光陽工業), the nation’s largest manufacturer of gasoline-powered scooters, yesterday said it plans to make inroads into India’s electric scooter market by teaming up with local partners, in an effort to accelerate its overseas expansion.
India is a “brand new” market for Kwang Yang, said the company, which already covers 108 markets worldwide, where it has sales networks to sell gasoline-powered scooters under the KYMCO brand.
“India is a special market. We have to redesign our products to cater to local consumers,” Kwang Yang chairman Allen Ko (柯勝峰) told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of new electric scooters targeting enterprise customers.
Photo: Lisa Wang, Taipei Times
“India is a market with great growth potential, as its electric scooter market is still in the nascent stage of development,” Ko said.
It is the world’s largest two-wheel vehicle market, with annual sales of 20 million units, Ko said.
The Indian government is offering good incentives to encourage people to switch to electric models and plans to ban the sales and manufacturing of gasoline-powered scooters by 2030, he said.
However, India is also a highly competitive market: Kwang Yang has to compete with five or six established electric-vehicle vendors to vie for a share of that pie, Ko said.
“It is important to leverage local partners’ strength to succeed” in this market, Ko said.
Kwang Yang is to collaborate with local partners to manufacture and sell electric scooters in the world’s second-most populous country, he said.
He declined to disclose details about its Indian partnerships before a media briefing that is to take place in New Delhi next week.
The company’s latest move follows its success in China, where the market for electric scooters is booming.
Kwang Yang late last month forged a partnership with Alibaba Group Holding (阿里巴巴) to provide its food delivery subsidiary with electric scooters.
Since July, Alibaba’s Hema Fresh (盒馬鮮生) has put its food delivery workers on Kwang Yang’s electric two-wheelers on the streets to send all sorts of foods, such as seafood and vegetables, to customers in a quicker and more environmentally friendly way.
Hema purchased 300 electric scooters at one delivery point for trial and is in talks with Kwang Yang to deploy more units at a second delivery point.
Kwang Yang also supplies electric scooters and batteries to a Chinese electric battery supplier and is working with Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces to assist them in solving mass transportation problems, Ko said.
In Taiwan, it is in talks with potential customers, including Pizza Hut and Chunghwa Post Co (中華郵政), to supply them with electric vehicles, the company said.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is