"Weekly car news " is a recap of some of the major stories in Taiwan car market last week.

Market Overview: The total number of new vehicle registrations in December reached 47,303 units, representing a 29.7% increase compared with November and a 14.5% increase compared with December last year. As the final month of 2025, all brands actively focused on selling existing model-year vehicles to accelerate inventory clearance, while also aggressively collecting orders for new model-year vehicles. Combined with the effectiveness of the excise tax rebate policy for vehicles under 2,000cc, all major brands except Lexus recorded growth compared with November, with Tesla posting the largest increase at 942.7%. Among the major brands, CMC recorded the smallest increase at 2.2%, while Lexus was the only brand to post a decline, falling by 29.1%, mainly due to reduced deliveries of its key models including the NX, RX, UX, and LBX compared with November. For the full year of 2025, total market registrations amounted to 414,436 units, a 9.5% decline compared with last year. This outcome aligns with our forecasts over the past several months and successfully keeps the annual decline within 10%. Throughout 2025, the automotive market faced significant challenges due to tariff-related issues associated with U.S. President Donald Trump. Although the domestic economy has remained generally stable, the outlook for the market next year cannot be viewed with excessive optimism.

"Weekly car news " is a recap of some of the major stories in Taiwan car market last week.

In an era when autonomous driving is highly dependent on digital and electrical infrastructure, Waymo’s recent experience during a large-scale power outage in San Francisco unexpectedly became a real-world test of how driverless systems respond to extreme scenarios. The outage, triggered by a fire at a power substation, disrupted the daily lives of up to 130,000 customers and directly impacted Waymo’s autonomous ride-hailing service. Multiple vehicles came to a halt mid-journey at intersections or in the middle of roadways, causing tangible disruptions to urban traffic and the passenger experience.

"Weekly car news " is a recap of some of the major stories in Taiwan car market last week.

The European Commission has recently put forward a proposal to adjust its automotive decarbonization policy, seeking to relax the rule that would have fully banned the sale of new combustion-engine vehicles from 2035 and replace it with more flexible emissions targets. This move can be seen as the EU’s most significant retreat from its green transition policies over the past five years. Shaped under sustained pressure from Germany, Italy, and Europe’s automotive industry, the proposal reflects the practical challenges and structural pressures European carmakers face in the global electrification race.

"Weekly car news " is a recap of some of the major stories in Taiwan car market last week.

A recent report from Nikkei states that Toyota plans to extend the average sales cycle of its flagship and mainstream models from the current seven years to nine years. This move indicates that one of the world’s largest automakers is recalibrating its product lifecycle strategy and shifting its focus toward electrification and software-defined vehicles. In the past, Toyota typically introduced a full model change roughly every five years. As hardware technology matured in the 2000s, this interval expanded to seven years, and now further to nine. This shift suggests that vehicle value is transitioning from hardware-based upgrades to improvements maintained and enhanced through software updates.

Valeo, one of the world’s leading automotive component suppliers, recently unveiled the latest innovations from its three core business divisions—Power, Light, and Brain. Among its many advancements, five key technologies stood out, spanning cooling systems, vehicle software, sensing, and communication architectures. Together, they illustrate the automotive industry’s transition toward deeper integration between hardware and software.

The Netherlands-based semiconductor manufacturer Nexperia has recently become entangled in multiple political and regulatory crises. Its parent company, Wingtech Technology, was placed on the U.S. Department of Commerce Entity List at the end of 2024. Subsequently, in September 2025, the U.S. expanded its export control measures, restricting subsidiaries that are more than 50% owned by listed entities from accessing U.S. technologies. Although Nexperia was not directly named, it has nonetheless been affected — with the repercussions rippling across the automotive supply chain.

In an era when autonomous driving is highly dependent on digital and electrical infrastructure, Waymo’s recent experience during a large-scale power outage in San Francisco unexpectedly became a real-world test of how driverless systems respond to extreme scenarios. The outage, triggered by a fire at a power substation, disrupted the daily lives of up to 130,000 customers and directly impacted Waymo’s autonomous ride-hailing service. Multiple vehicles came to a halt mid-journey at intersections or in the middle of roadways, causing tangible disruptions to urban traffic and the passenger experience.

The European Commission has recently put forward a proposal to adjust its automotive decarbonization policy, seeking to relax the rule that would have fully banned the sale of new combustion-engine vehicles from 2035 and replace it with more flexible emissions targets. This move can be seen as the EU’s most significant retreat from its green transition policies over the past five years. Shaped under sustained pressure from Germany, Italy, and Europe’s automotive industry, the proposal reflects the practical challenges and structural pressures European carmakers face in the global electrification race.

The European Union’s plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035 is showing signs of major change. According to a report from The Sunday Times, several senior figures within Europe’s automotive industry have privately confirmed that the EU is considering postponing the ban to 2040. Although the information has yet to receive formal confirmation from the EU, it has already triggered significant shockwaves across European politics and the automotive sector, becoming one of the most closely watched issues in European transport and industrial policy.

Level 4 autonomous driving has already been achieved by some automakers and activated on specific routes, but mass-market personal adoption is still some distance away. Tensor’s Robocar, promoted as the world’s first personally owned Level 4 autonomous vehicle, raises the question of whether it can redefine the future of the automotive industry in terms of technology, business models, and market positioning.