Self-driving vehicle service provider 7Starlake Co Ltd (喜門史塔雷克) yesterday said it plans to form a joint venture with French-based EasyMile SAS by the end of this year to produce autonomous cars in Taiwan.
EasyMile is a start-up that specializes in autonomous vehicle software and “smart” mobility solutions. The company has commercial projects in Switzerland, Australia and Singapore.
The two firms have been working together to promote electromobility projects since 2015, 7Starlake said.
“We hope to manufacture autonomous cars with more than 50 percent local content over the coming years,” 7Starlake general manager Martin Ting (丁彥允) said at a media gathering in Taipei.
Taking advantage of the nation’s existing supply chains in the car industry, the two companies aim to reduce tariffs and transportation costs, with a goal to build prototypes next year and begin mass production of Taiwan-made autonomous cars in 2019, 7Starlake said.
Ting said 7Starlake is seeking potential business partners that make batteries, automotive components or motors in Taichung and Changhua, which are Taiwan’s key production hub for global automakers.
In the mid-term, the company plans to deploy driverless shuttles in Taiwan, achieving autonomous public transportation through collaboration with local governments, such as Changhua County.
This year, 7Starlake has conducted trial runs of its driverless car service in Kaohsiung and Taipei.
The Changhua County Government said it would introduce EZ-10 vehicles, which are capable of transporting up to 12 people and have a maximum speed of 40km per hour.
The county plans to launch its autonomous shuttle project in two phases.
The first phase would provide shuttle service between Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp’s (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) Changhua Station and Hsinchu Park, while the second phase would connect the Changhua Station and Taiwan Railway Administration’s Tianjhong Station, Changhua County Commissioner Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷) said.
The whole project is scheduled to be completed in 2020 at a cost of nearly NT$1.83 billion (US$60.54 million), Wei said.
Changhwa County plans to lay down exclusive lanes for self-driving vehicles, he said, adding that the county also plans to develop a vehicle-to-grid system that can turn electric vehicles into energy storage equipment to help buffer the fluctuating electricity in power networks.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, on Monday issued a statement about the balanced life environment it provides its employees, in response to a Fortune article at the weekend in which several former and current employees in the US were quoted complaining about the company’s “brutal” corporate culture. In the statement, TSMC said average work hours at the company have not exceeded 50 hours a week over the past two years with only a few exceptions, such as when the company introduces a new technology process or speeds up building a new plant. In such situations,
At a red-brick factory in the German port city of Hamburg, cocoa bean shells go in one end and out the other comes an amazing black powder with the potential to counter climate change. The substance, dubbed biochar, is produced by heating the cocoa husks in an oxygen-free room to 600°C. The process locks in greenhouse gases and the final product can be used as a fertilizer, or as an ingredient in the production of “green” concrete. While the biochar industry is still in its infancy, the technology offers a novel way to remove carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere, experts have said. Biochar could
WEAK PROSPECTS: The contract electronics manufacturer expects revenue to drop this quarter due to product transitions and a high comparison base a year earlier Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler, yesterday posted a second straight monthly growth in revenue to NT$45.07 billion (US$1.47 billion) last month, thanks to a pickup in smartphone demand. Last month’s revenue marked its best performance since January. On an annual basis, sales dipped 9.45 percent, the smallest annual decline since February, compared with NT$49.78 billion in May last year. Revenue from smart consumer electronics products, primarily iPhones and smartphones for other brands, delivered a “strong” double-digit, month-on-month growth in May because of customers’ pull-in, Hon Hai said in a company statement. That was the only business category
FALLING CHIP DEMAND: Moody’s Investors Service expects revenue at the contract chipmaker to fall by about 1 percent, adding that the firm’s earnings could also retreat Slower global economic growth and US export restrictions would dent revenue at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) over the next 12 to 18 months, Moody’s Investors Service said in its latest report. “We expect revenue at TSMC to fall by 1 percent after its robust growth of around 40 percent in 2022,” it said, adding that earnings would also slip from a high comparison base. Nevertheless, strong net cash positions and good access to funding would enable the company to weather the short-term challenges, Moody’s said. Slowing global growth, coupled with high interest rates and inflation, is reducing chip demand, especially for
RSS