Ford Motor Co, the US’ second-largest automaker, is showcasing a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that uses solar panels in the roof to recharge.
The C-Max Solar Energi will be on display at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that begins on Tuesday next week, the company said yesterday in a statement.
The vehicle can travel about 34km using only electric power and has a total range of about 998km.
It has between 300 and 350 watts of SunPower Corp solar cells in the roof and may portend a future of mass-produced rechargeable cars that do not need to be plugged in, said Mike Tinskey, director of vehicle electrification and infrastructure.
“We are starting to see a convergence that can make these things possible,” Tinskey said.
The concept includes a canopy-like parking structure that uses Fresnel lenses to focus sunlight on the car and boost efficiency of the solar cells.
It was developed with the Georgia Institute of Technology and shifts the car’s position throughout the day as the sun moves across the sky.
“It’s a tracking concentrator without the costs of one,” Tinskey said.
The car also has a standard port to connect to a charging station.
Ford estimates it sold more than 85,000 hybrids and electric vehicles last year.
Toyota Motor Corp’s Prius hybrid electric car has an optional solar panel that powers a fan to circulate air within the vehicle when it is parked in direct sunlight.
Nissan Motor Co offers a Leaf electric vehicle that uses a solar panel that helps keep the car’s battery charged.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS