Taiwan’s electric vehicle (EV) industry has “three years left” to build its own brand, Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) chairman James Huang (黃志芳) said at a news conference in Taipei yesterday, announcing that the council is to hold an electro-mobility trade show in October.
Although Taiwanese components make up about 75 percent of Tesla Inc’s vehicles, according to the Chinese-language Commonwealth Magazine, there are no Taiwanese EV brands on the market.
“We are looking ahead to 2035 because that is when many countries will be phasing out fossil fuel vehicles,” Huang said. “We all know that Taiwan is strong in EV hardware components, but until we have our own brand, we do not have a voice in the international market.”
Photo: Lin Jing-hua, Taipei Times
The council’s goal is to encourage local firms to build a “connected ecosystem centered on EV and autonomous-driving technology,” Huang said.
The first edition of the 2035 E-Mobility Taiwan Show would help to spark that development and feature local manufacturers and “international investors from Wall Street and Silicon Valley,” he said.
“Taiwan has the hardware supply chain and the software capability... The time has come to combine the two,” Huang said, adding that the nation has three years to “seize the opportunity.”
EVs have in the past few months been a hot topic in Taiwan, with Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) in October last year announcing the launch of an open platform for EV development.
Hon Hai at the time said that it aims to secure 10 percent of the world’s EV market by 2025.
Hon Hai’s platform is “the Android of EVs,” Huang said, adding that the firm has been positive about participating in the e-mobility show.
In June, TAITRA would hold an “e-mobility demonstration day,” where start-ups and university research groups can demonstrate their projects, and compete for a chance to be included in the e-mobility show.
Huang said that the idea to host an e-mobility show came from Lin Shu-hong (林書鴻), chairman of Chang Chun Group (長春集團), a petrochemical conglomerate that produces copper foils, a vital component in EV batteries.
“Lin told me that the demand for copper foil is through the roof, thanks to demand from EV makers, and that we should build a ‘battery national team,’” Huang said. “Lin also predicts that the demand for lithium-ion batteries will be 28 times what it is today in 2030.”
“The nature of mobility is changing, and Taiwan must not miss this opportunity. The government must support the EV industry in the same way it supported the semiconductor industry in the past,” he said.
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and the University of Tokyo (UTokyo) yesterday announced the launch of the TSMC-UTokyo Lab to promote advanced semiconductor research, education and talent development. The lab is TSMC’s first laboratory collaboration with a university outside Taiwan, the company said in a statement. The lab would leverage “the extensive knowledge, experience, and creativity” of both institutions, the company said. It is located in the Asano Section of UTokyo’s Hongo, Tokyo, campus and would be managed by UTokyo faculty, guided by directors from UTokyo and TSMC, the company said. TSMC began working with UTokyo in 2019, resulting in 21 research projects,
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
Ashton Hall’s morning routine involves dunking his head in iced Saratoga Spring Water. For the company that sells the bottled water — Hall’s brand of choice for drinking, brushing his teeth and submerging himself — that is fantastic news. “We’re so thankful to this incredible fitness influencer called Ashton Hall,” Saratoga owner Primo Brands Corp’s CEO Robbert Rietbroek said on an earnings call after Hall’s morning routine video went viral. “He really helped put our brand on the map.” Primo Brands, which was not affiliated with Hall when he made his video, is among the increasing number of companies benefiting from influencer
RSS