Kwang Yang Motor Co (光陽工業), the nation’s largest manufacturer of gasoline-powered scooters, plans to defend its market position next year by rolling out 15 new gasoline-powered scooter models that meet the government’s Phase 7 emissions standards.
To cope with stringent emissions requirements, the company yesterday launched two scooters that it says produce 96 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than scooters that meet the Phase 6 emissions standards.
The older-generation scooters would be phased out, the company said.
Photo: CNA
The Kaohsiung-based company said that local scooter makers are gearing up to launch new low-emission models after the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) in October introduced the new scooter emissions law to reduce air pollution, which is to go into effect next year, one year earlier than originally scheduled.
The EPA plans to subsidize purchases of fuel-powered scooters that meet the new emissions standards for two years, beginning next year.
People would receive NT$5,000 each for retiring their heavy scooters, or NT$3,000 for light models.
“We will roll out 15 new models gradually that meet Phase 7 emissions standards next year,” Kwang Yang chief executive officer Ko Chun-ping (柯俊斌) told reporters at a year-end media gathering in Taipei.
Sanyang Motor Co (三陽), the No. 3 scooter maker in Taiwan, also plans to launch seven new scooters that meet the Phase 7 standards.
Three of them are to hit the market next month, the company said in a statement yesterday.
Regarding the outlook for the local scooter market next year, Ko maintained a conservative attitude.
“The scooter market will see a volatile year in 2020, as the government’s policies will greatly affect consumers’ behavior,” he said.
Ko said he expects the nation’s scooter sales to shrink 1.16 percent to 855,000 units next year from an estimate of 865,000 units for this year.
Electric scooters are expected to comprise 13.5 percent of the nation’s overall scooter market next year compared with 17.5 percent this year, as a result of government subsidy cuts, he said.
Since early this year, Ko has been calling on the government to scrap the commodity tax on gasoline-powered scooters so that companies can fairly compete with electric scooter manufacturers, rather than just lowering the tax by NT$4,000 per vehicle to replace an old one.
The government levies a 17 percent commodity tax on the retail price of gasoline-powered scooters, but not on electric scooters.
Kwang Yang plans to launch three or four electric scooters next year, Ko said.
The company operates 550 recharge stations where riders can recharge their electric scooters or swap empty batteries for fully charged ones, he said.
Kwang Yang sold 266,394 own-brand scooters, including 8,506 electric models, in the first 11 months of this year, seizing a 33.5 percent share of the market, Ko said.
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
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
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),
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
RSS