Beginning this year, the government plans to help businesses obtain privileged loans from banks to remove 80,000 aging diesel trucks from roads and to gradually replace 10,000 fossil-fuel-powered buses with electric ones, in an attempt to improve air quality in the nation’s central and southern regions, Premier William Lai (賴清德) told the Legislative Yuan earlier this month.
At the same time, a Cabinet proposal to amend the Air Pollution Act (空氣汙染防制法) is a priority bill awaiting legislative review during the current session.
The Executive Yuan in December last year announced plans to replace government vehicles and buses with electric versions by 2030, and ban the sale of motorcycles and cars with fossil-fuel-powered engines in 2035 and 2040 respectively, in a bid to reduce the number of air quality “red alert” days by half.
The government’s policy initiative is headed in the right direction, because a major source of air pollution in Taiwan is motor vehicles. With so many cars, buses, scooters and trucks on the roads every day, motor vehicles contribute about one-third of the nation’s air pollution, compared with another one-third generated by domestic industries.
Moreover, promoting electric cars and scooters is a global trend, as Norway plans to stop selling fossil-fuel-powered vehicles by 2025, and Germany, India, Finland and the Netherlands intend to do so by 2030, with the UK, France and the US to follow suit by 2040. China is also gearing up to promote electric cars to tackle one of the world’s worst air pollution problems, with more than 100 Chinese cities to have their gasoline-powered scooters replaced with electric ones by 2030.
A number of local companies already manufacture electric car batteries, motors, control systems and car components, as Taiwan has the world’s leading technology supply chain and companies are known for their flexibility in devising effective solutions.
However, government support is crucial to boosting electric vehicle use in the nation. Now that a reasonable timeline has been set for switching to electric vehicles, consumers and businesses would like the government to expand on related policies, provide detailed measures and improve incentives that could work together to help popularize “green” vehicles over the next two decades.
Critics are alarmed by a lack of demand for these vehicles, despite increasing concern over how vehicle emissions contribute to air pollution.
Last year, 831 new electric cars and 44,100 new electric scooters were registered in Taiwan, representing just 0.19 percent of the 444,624 cars and 4.41 percent of the 999,654 scooters sold in the nation, according to statistics compiled by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
High prices have frustrated sales of electric vehicles in Taiwan, while battery capacity, charging times and the availability of charging points or battery exchange stations continue to be barriers.
There are many hurdles to be overcome and the initial stage of any new initiative is typically the most difficult, but the government has a critical role to play.
The public sector must lead the way in phasing out gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles. Only then will the government be able to leverage the strength of local industry partners to make electric cars affordable to a mass market and hopefully bring Taiwan-made vehicles and battery-charging solutions to the world.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS