Ailing carmaker Opel is considering launching an electric car for inner-city use to tap what it sees as a high-potential market, the firm’s boss said in an interview on Sunday.
“We are thinking about a small electric vehicle,” Nick Reilly, chief of the General Motors unit, told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaperaper.
“There is strong potential for growth in cities across the world,” he said, adding that “various governments are going to provide fiscal support for this kind of vehicle.”
An Opel spokesman said the new model was expected to be launched in three years, in both electric and conventional fuel versions.
Hit by falling sales, Opel last month unveiled a sweeping restructuring plan along with an appeal for countries that host Opel and its British sister brand Vauxhall to stump up 2.7 billion euros (US$3.68 billion) in state aid.
By 2014 Opel has said it would invest 11 billion euros in new models and environmentally friendly technology such as electric power trains.
Its first electric-only car, the Ampera, is scheduled for delivery next year. Its wheels are powered exclusively by an electric engine, with a small fuel engine integrated to recharge its batteries.
EU industry ministers pressed the European Commission last month to devise a common strategy to develop electric cars, seen as both an environmental necessity and an opportunity for growth.
Current EU president Spain wants the electric car to feature in the EU’s 2020 strategy, an economic reform project aimed at ensuring prosperity and sustainable growth for Europe.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)