Auto parts maker Mobiletron Electronics Co (車王電子) and its subsidiary RAC Electric Vehicles Inc (華德動能) on Saturday held a beam-raising ceremony at their new manufacturing plant in the Port of Taichung Export Processing Zone (中港加工區).
With a NT$2.5 billion (US$84.43 million) investment, the new plant is to be a smart manufacturing base for electric vehicles, the Export Processing Zone Administration (EPZA) said in a statement on the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Web site.
The plant, which occupies 2.07 hectares, is expected to install manufacturing equipment for a trial production to start in the first half of next year, the administration said.
The plant is estimated to provide 800 job opportunities after it starts mass production in the second half of next year, and is expected to boost domestic development of electric buses and energy storage systems, it said.
Mobiletron, headquartered in Taichung’s Daya District (大雅), early last year announced the investment plan, and the ministry in March last year approved it to join a three-year investment program, under which the government provides returning firms with assistance on taxation, financing, land, utilities and labor.
The company, which manufactures battery management systems for vehicles, has in the past few years focused on developing driver assistance systems, energy storage systems and electric buses.
Although it has production facilities in Taiwan and China, as well as sales offices in the US and Europe, it has gradually relocated some high-margin production lines to Taiwan, to increase manufacturing capacity and diversify risk amid a US-China trade dispute.
Mobiletron reported cumulative revenue of NT$895.49 million for the first five months of the year, down 20.75 percent from a year earlier. Net profit for the first quarter was NT$10.44 million, down from NT$40.51 million a year earlier. Earnings per share declined from NT$0.41 to NT$0.11.
Mobiletron chairman Kim Tsai (蔡裕慶), EPZA director-general Huang Wen-guu (黃文谷) and EPZA Port of Taichung branch director Liang You-wen (梁又文) attended the ceremony, the ministry said.
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
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.
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
RSS