Hyundai Motor Group is to invest S$400 million (US$294 million) in a new innovation center in Singapore that Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) said might produce up to 30,000 vehicles a year by 2025.
“Automotive activities are becoming viable in Singapore once again,” Lee said in a speech yesterday to mark the virtual groundbreaking ceremony for the center in the city-state’s west.
Electric vehicles (EVs) “have a different supply chain, fewer mechanical parts and more electronics, which plays to Singapore’s strengths,” he said.
Photo: Reuters
The seven-story building, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2022, is where Hyundai would work on developing artificial intelligence (AI), big data and other technologies to enhance its manufacturing processes, fine-tuning the “brains” behind the smarter and more environmentally friendly vehicles of tomorrow.
The center would also have a 620m driving track near its roof so that customers can test drive vehicles.
Hyundai would “instill human-centered values” in all stages of a vehicle’s life, from ordering and production to the test drive and service, Hyundai Motor executive vice chairman Euisun Chung said at the event.
The company is separately developing flying cars, planning a full lineup of aerial vehicles that it envisages zigzagging city skies within a decade.
The innovation center would also house a small-scale electric-vehicle production facility to test processes using AI and autonomous driving.
One of the company’s EVs, the Kona, has been recalled in South Korea following multiple reports of battery fires.
“We hope this will open up new growth areas for our economy, and create exciting jobs for Singaporeans, for example industrial Internet of Things engineers, data scientists, cobot technicians and digital supply chain strategists,” Lee said.
Lee also said the center marked “an important milestone in the economic relationship between Singapore and South Korea,” paving the way for more South Korean firms to invest in the city-state and partner with local suppliers.
Singapore has not had an auto manufacturing plant since Ford Motor Co closed its factory several decades ago, effectively ending automobile production on the island.
In October last year, vacuum cleaner maker Dyson Ltd abandoned a US$2.5 billion plan to build electric vehicles in the city-state because it could not find a way of making the project commercially viable.
Tesla Inc, the world’s biggest maker of EVs, has plans to export China-built Model 3 cars to Singapore, and other places in Asia and Europe from its factory in Shanghai, people familiar with the matter said last month.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
Germany is to establish its first-ever national pavilion at Semicon Taiwan, which starts tomorrow in Taipei, as the country looks to raise its profile and deepen semiconductor ties with Taiwan as global chip demand accelerates. Martin Mayer, a semiconductor investment expert at Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), Germany’s international economic promotion agency, said before leaving for Taiwan that the nation is a crucial partner in developing Germany’s semiconductor ecosystem. Germany’s debut at the international semiconductor exhibition in Taipei aims to “show presence” and signal its commitment to semiconductors, while building trust with Taiwanese companies, government and industry associations, he said. “The best outcome
RSS