Could Taiwan sell only Alternative fuel vehicle in 2040?

By Jeff Lee 2022-03-31

Taiwan wish to achieve the goal to have all new passenger cars and scooters available for sale to be powered by electricity or hydrogen in 2040, but there are some bigger issues which government didn’t give answers, such as electricity supply, lack of charging stations, or auto industry transformation. If there is no new strategy, I might say this goal is impossible to achieve. Auto market of Taiwan is too small and lack of resource. When EVs era coming, we need to seize the opportunity to overtake the global industry trend, or will be eliminated. And obviously, EV sales goal in 2040 cannot be achieved by only the announcement of National Development Council (NDC).

One month ago The National Development Council (NDC) presented a road map for Taiwan to achieve net-zero emissions in 2050. One of the goals is all new passenger cars and scooters for sale in 2040 will be powered by electricity or hydrogen. The government will not ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles but will instead roll out subsidy program for the purchase of electric vehicles.

I read between the line from the announcement,

  1. EVs subsidy program will continue and not only be limited to the current ones until 2040s. (except uncontrollable factors like government transfer)
  2. Wish to pursue carbon neutrality, but wouldn’t prohibit selling gas-powered vehicles. In this case, this goal is supposed to be an “expectation”, instead of a “goal” which must be achieved. Some concerns will be pointed out later.
  3. When timeline is just an “expectation”, I would not expect too much about government’s strategy and action plan to be implemented in the future.

When BEV era coming more closely, there are several things impactful to Taiwan, such as environment protection, changing of car driving behavior, and customers choices. As what I see, those crisis ( or opportunities?) behind are what companies and government need to focus on.

As traditional automakers, EV development is totally a brand new project… From chip sourcing, raw materials (lithium.cobalt.nickel) control, battery types choice and production capacity assurance, BEV platform R&D, lots of software development manpower needed for functions renewal thru OTA and so on, all of these need huge amount of money to support.

In order to transfer to EV production, traditional automakers need at least 10 to 15 years to balance their investment. In another words, I think these companies may not have little chance to authorize local assembly plants to build their EVs before 2035, instead they will import new cars to Taiwan directly.

When EV era is coming, ICE cars demand will fall down sharply after 2030. For local traditional assembly plants, it would be then hard to maintain their minimum production level to survive.

I am not an alarmist, but all automakers and related industry need to face the problems. It will be a survival challenge for them!

As Hon Hai willing to integrate up and downstream supply chain of whole EV industry, I think this is a critical moment to think about building up a national team altogether with government, auto industry, ITRI/ ARTC. Don’t waste the chance once in a blue moon. We should fight together to reach EV goals in 2030s.

The top priority thing to do is developing battery and making the production capacity in control. The ideal battery with high capacity, high CP value, and long-lasting life, will be the ultimate goal. Besides, Taiwanese IT companies are also good at developing software and hardware for smart cockpit to fit new EV cars.

Taiwanese auto industry has this only chance to reborn, after key items made up, and they could use Hon Hai MIH’s platform to sell to world markets, customers like us then could really enjoy the cars made in Taiwan. (Domestically made cars today are only OEM in Taiwan.)

The biggest challenge to popularize EVs in Taiwan is lack of charging stations, not the cars themselves ( car sales companies will push the sales ). It hard to install Low Power EV Charging stations in old building, so public charging stations will be the key point.

EVs need 15 times longer than gas-powered cars to recharge to 80% capacity, so it means charging stations’ demand is much higher than fuel filler. If chargers are not enough, you will see lots of EVs waiting in long lines everywhere.

Every fast-charging station needs huge electric power supply. All of them use special cables to connect network and therefore government’s and Taipower’s total solution is a “must”. . When hundreds of thousands new EVs are on road from 2040 year over year, do Taipower and government have any long-term plan to solve high power consumption problem?