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.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to