Uber Taiwan yesterday urged the government to consider its proposal instead of implementing heavy-handed measures aimed at protecting the taxi industry that it said would stifle innovation.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications last month proposed changes to regulations covering the rental car industry — including prohibiting trips of less than one hour and providing any form of discounts or promotional deals to customers, as well as requiring rental vehicles to “return to the garage” between trips — that could spell doom for Uber’s ride-hailing business model, the company said.
The proposed changes are anti-competitive and would damage the livelihoods of 10,000 Uber drivers and their families, as well as restrict choice for 3 million regular Uber users in Taiwan, it said.
The proposed changes are currently in a 60-day consultation period.
To find a solution for all stakeholders, Uber proposed an “e-hail multipurpose vehicle plan” that would allow customers to book a taxi or rental car through an app, a practice that it said has become increasingly popular with millions of people worldwide.
This would provide a “win-win” situation for taxis and rental car operators and drivers, while also giving passengers choice, the company said.
“While we understand the government’s efforts to protect the taxi industry, it should not be at the expense of the many thousands of drivers and operators who run fully legal businesses under the current rental car laws,” Uber Taiwan general manager Willy Wu (吳罡) said in a statement.
Uber said that it has since 2017 partnered with rental car and taxi companies and has adapted its business model to ensure that it is fully compliant with the ministry’s guidelines, adding that it has improved the businesses of other taxi fleets through partnerships.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
RSS