Sales of fully electric vehicles (EVs) in Taiwan are to experience rapid growth over the next three years, expecting to account for about 30 percent of new vehicle sales as early as next year, jumping from 15.2 percent last year, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工業技術研究院) said yesterday.
Sales of new EVs in Taiwan this year are to surge 31 percent year-on-year to 89,000 units, comprising about 20.3 percent of total sales of 438,000 new vehicles, the ITRI said.
However, that would be a 2.67 percent reduction in Taiwan’s vehicle market from an aggregate of 450,000 units last year, it said.
Photo: I-Hwa Cheng, Bloomberg
With a new model from Luxgen Motor Co (納智捷汽車) to be introduced next year, the ITRA said it expects new EV sales to rise 24.7 percent annually to 111,000 units next year.
Luxgen, Yulon Motor Co’s (裕隆汽車) own-brand car vendor, plans to launch its first all-electric sports utility vehicle, the Luxgen n7, next year.
The company has received more than 25,000 pre-orders for the vehicle, which is to be built using Foxtron Vehicle Technologies Co’s (鴻華先進) model C prototype.
New EV sales are to comprise 24 percent of total new vehicle sales next year and reach about 29.6 percent in 2024 after seeing a 22.52 percent year-on-year growth to 136,000 units, the ITRI said.
Overall new vehicle sales are to grow 2 percent to 458,000 units in 2024, it added.
With EV sales growing rapidly, Taiwan should build a resilient power grid given that the vehicles are likely to create a massive demand for electricity, ITRI president Edwin Liu (劉文雄) said.
There are expected to be 519,000 EVs on the road in 2030, consuming about 1.2 billion kilowatt hours each year, he said at a seminar in Taipei yesterday, citing Ministry of Transportation and Communications data.
Liu proposed adopting vehicle-grid integration technology to achieve Taiwan’s decarbonization and EV adoption goals and power requirements by 2050, after California launched a similar project.
The technology stabilizes a grid’s power supply through bidirectional charging, he said.
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
Nintendo Co hopes to match the runaway success of the Switch when its leveled-up new console hits shelves on Thursday, with strong early sales expected despite the gadget’s high price. Featuring a bigger screen and more processing power, the Switch 2 is an upgrade to its predecessor, which has sold 152 million units since launching in 2017 — making it the third-best-selling video game console of all time. However, despite buzz among fans and robust demand for pre-orders, headwinds for Nintendo include uncertainty over US trade tariffs and whether enough people are willing to shell out. The Switch 2 “is priced relatively high”
RSS