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.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS