Shares of the nation’s biggest automaker, Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車), rallied nearly 7-percent — the daily limit — yesterday after the company received the go-ahead to make its Luxgen brand cars in China.
Shares of Yulon closed up 6.92 percent to NT$39.4 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Dongfeng Yulon (東風裕隆), a joint venture between Yulon and China’s No. 4 automaker Dongfeng Automobile Co (東風汽車), has received official approval from the Chinese authority to manufacture cars in the world’s biggest automotive market, the company said in a statement yesterday.
Yulon, which holds 50 percent of Dongfeng Yulon, planned to invest 755 million yuan (US$111.5 million) in the venture, which will have 1.55 billion yuan in initial capital.
This marks Yulon’s second car making venture in China.
Dongfeng Yulon will be located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, the statement said.
Yulon’s shares have risen 4.5 percent since early this year and have jumped 20 percent in the past 12 months, outpacing other auto shares on the TAIEX, which are up 12 percent in the past year.
“This project will enhance the research and development capability of Taiwan’s auto industry and help push exports of Taiwan’s auto component makers,” the statement said.
The venture is set to produce 120,000 vehicles per year in the initial stage, with models ranging from sports utility vehicles, multi-purpose vehicles and sedans, the statement said, adding total investment would eventually hit 3.4 billion yuan.
Taiwan’s auto production currently stands at 280,000 units a year.
Dongfeng Yulon’s first-phase production facilities are expected to be ready by the end of next year, with both parties to jointly handle recruitment, equipment purchase, safety recognition and the sales network.
Yulon, which mainly produces cars for Nissan in Taiwan through a licensing agreement with its Japanese partner, has a previous joint venture in China called South East Motor (Fujian) (東南汽車).
While the statement did not specify the models to be produced by Dongfeng Yulon, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News said the venture would mainly manufacture Luxgen vehicles — Yulon’s first attempt at building its own brand.
The first Luxgen, a 2.2-liter minivan for family use, was unveiled in Taiwan in September last year. Since then Yulon has received orders from more than 10,000 local motorists, Luxgen said.
The Luxgen project has cost Yulon about NT$15 billion (US$472 million) since it started four years ago.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS