Taiwan's electric dreams?

The latest official forecasts for Taiwan predict that the country’s electric vehicle market will begin to grow quickly in five to six years. This will come as a result of improvements in technology, increased manufacturing and government action.

The Taiwanese EV industry is moving from simply parts manufacturing to marketing the country’s own vehicle brands. The Taiwan Government has launched a three-year project, including charging infrastructure, which has government funding of US$72 million. Taiwan’s Economics Minister Shih Yen-shiang said, “There will be a boom in the popularity of electric vehicles in Taiwan in five or six years.”
The Smart Electric Car Pilot Project, initiated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs on 15th November, is aimed at encouraging people to buy or lease EVs. Meanwhile Taiwan also benefits from a solid base in information and communication technology (ICT), which helps the EV industry to move from parts manufacturing to market Taiwan’s own brands.

“ICT products from Taiwan are very competitive in the world,” said Denise Hung, a specialist from Taiwan's Automotive Research and Testing Centre (ARTC). "We use this advantage to integrate them with the auto industry in order to create our own innovative technology for electric vehicles. This advantage allows Taiwan to join the global electric vehicle market and also take Taiwan's auto industry to a new generation."

To improve the air quality in urban areas and also seek the business opportunity from the new EV industry, the Taiwanese government started regulating sales of petrol motorcycles in 2009 to replace the less competitive 50cc engine motorcycles by e-Scooter of the light electric vehicles (LEV). As part of this effort, the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) formulated standards for e-Scooter’s performance and safety to bring up 8,000 of the 2W e-Scooters in 2009, and to 100,000 by the end of 2012. Universal Well Industry makes LEVs under its own Uray brand. The company recently introduced the Pioneer 1.5, an electric motorcycle that has 45km/h maximum speed.