Electric scooter maker Gogoro Inc (睿能創意) has all the chips it needs for now, but could face a squeeze by year-end as it pushes big plans to grow in China, India and Southeast Asia, founder and chief executive Horace Luke (陸學森) said yesterday.
While a global shortage of semiconductors has slammed auto makers, Luke said in an interview that Gogoro, which listed in New York this month, uses far fewer chips than electric automakers and still has a relatively small market concentrated in Taiwan.
For the next several months it has a “healthy supply” of chips, he said.
Photo: Annabelle Chih, Reuters
“A combination of we don’t use as many, a combination of being flexible on our design, a combination of having a market that is not yet gigantic at the moment,” Luke said, explaining Gogoro’s chips situation.
Founded in 2011, Gogoro listed on the NASDAQ via a merger with blank-check firm Poema Global Holdings Corp and has a market value of about US$2.4 billion.
The firm has ambitious plans for China, India and Southeast Asia, seeing potential in replacing vast fleets of heavily polluting, gasoline-powered scooters with electric two-wheelers as Asia’s metropolises bid to improve air quality.
“As those cities like Jakarta, or Delhi, or other big markets grow, how fast they grow of course will then put stress on our supply chain management, but those are problems that are coming in the later part of the year, not the immediate future,” Luke said.
As well as making its own vehicles, Gogoro has electric battery and other partnerships with vehicle makers, including India’s Hero MotoCorp Ltd, and China’s Dachangjiang Group Co (大江集團) and Yadea Group Holdings Ltd (雅迪集團控股).
Gogoro, known for its green-hued battery swap distribution network for riders, generates about 90 percent of its revenue from Taiwan.
Electric vehicle makers have been hit by price hikes for raw materials such as nickel, driven by supply chain disruptions from the war in Ukraine, and Luke said some “minor” price rises had been passed onto customers.
Gogoro’s stock has dropped about 19 percent since listing, matching pressure on other tech plays globally.
However, Luke said Gogoro was confident in expansion plans in countries like China, India and Indonesia, which have a high consumer preference for scooters, with millions sold each year.
“That’s what our investors, our team, is focused on, and that’s what our partnerships are focused on, to take our technology which we’ve created and go into those large markets that have high potential to convert to electric,” he said.
The Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show, which is to be held from Wednesday to Saturday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, would showcase the latest in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven robotics and automation technologies, the organizer said yesterday. The event would highlight applications in smart manufacturing, as well as information and communications technology, the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robotics Association said. More than 1,000 companies are to display innovations in semiconductors, electromechanics, industrial automation and intelligent manufacturing, it said in a news release. Visitors can explore automated guided vehicles, 3D machine vision systems and AI-powered applications at the show, along
AI SERVER DEMAND: ‘Overall industry demand continues to outpace supply and we are expanding capacity to meet it,’ the company’s chief executive officer said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported that net profit last quarter rose 27 percent from the same quarter last year on the back of demand for cloud services and high-performance computing products. Net profit surged to NT$44.36 billion (US$1.48 billion) from NT$35.04 billion a year earlier. On a quarterly basis, net profit grew 5 percent from NT$42.1 billion. Earnings per share expanded to NT$3.19 from NT$2.53 a year earlier and NT$3.03 in the first quarter. However, a sharp appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar since early May has weighed on the company’s performance, Hon Hai chief financial officer David Huang (黃德才)
FORECAST: The greater computing power needed for emerging AI applications has driven higher demand for advanced semiconductors worldwide, TSMC said The government-supported Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has raised its forecast for this year’s growth in the output value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry to above 22 percent on strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. In its latest IEK Current Quarterly Model report, the institute said the local semiconductor industry would have output of NT$6.5 trillion (US$216.6 billion) this year, up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, an upward revision from a 19.1 percent increase estimate made in May. The strong showing of the local semiconductor industry largely reflected the stronger-than-expected performance of the integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing segment,
COLLABORATION: Softbank would supply manufacturing gear to the factory, and a joint venture would make AI data center equipment, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) would operate a US factory owned by Softbank Group Corp, setting up what is in the running to be the first manufacturing site in the Japanese company’s US$500 billion Stargate venture with OpenAI and Oracle Corp. Softbank is acquiring Hon Hai’s electric-vehicle plant in Ohio, but the Taiwanese company would continue to run the complex after turning it into an artificial intelligence (AI) server production plant, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) said yesterday. Softbank would supply manufacturing gear to the factory, and a joint venture between the two companies would make AI data