Leading Chinese EV industry players BYD, CATL and Horizon Robotics participated in the IAA Mobility 2023 in Germany last week. Robin Zeng, CATL's founder and chairman, mentioned the sustainability of batteries and said the company already operates four zero-carbon battery plants. His remarks were viewed as a response to the European Union's new Batteries Regulation.

India announced a relaxation of rules for the low-emission automobile and its components incentive scheme, which is expected to provide some relief for the applicants to make EVs or fuel cell EVs.

China-based EV company Xpeng announced that it will acquire the smart EV project of Didi Global, a local ride-hailing leader. Xpeng also said it aims to launch a new vehicle model priced around CNY150,000 (US$20,582) in 2024 under a strategic partnership with Didi.

To expand the market for electric two-wheelers abroad, Taiwanese motorcycle brand Kymco and Kymco Capital have partnered with Arun Plus, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Thailand's state-owned petrol company, PTT, to establish a new joint venture. This new entity, with a capital of THB600 million (about US$17.05 million), will be responsible for building the two-wheel EV industry and supply chain in Thailand.

Applications such as electric vehicles and energy storage have gradually seen material demands. However, whether the two applications can be operated safely and effectively depends on the battery. Many industry leaders in Taiwan have been investing in those fields or cross-domain developments for many years. Among them, Taiwan startup XING Mobility has not only written a new chapter for battery cooling technology but also successfully found a new breakthrough for Taiwan manufacturers in the international market competition.

Swiggy, an India-based online food delivery platform, revealed a collaboration with Taiwan-based Gogoro, with the latter providing its battery-swapping technology for last-mile deliveries.

Taiwan has the highest density of motorcycles in Asia. With the public, industry, and government prioritizing the safety of road users more, motorcycle IoT has become a unique topic in Taiwan's smart transportation development. Tien-Pen Hsu, executive director of the Taiwan Telematics Industry Association (TTIA) and lead researcher for the "Motorcycle IoT Collaborative Safety and Service Diffusion Experiment Research Project," stated that in terms of Taiwan's traffic environment, motorcycles have more urgency for IoT connectivity than cars.

After surveying and analyzing the showcases at Taipei AMPA & Autotronics Taipei 2023 and E-Mobility Taiwan 2023 held in mid-April, DIGITIMES Research found that this year's event featured a growing number of high-voltage silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductor applications that significantly boost electrical vehicle (EV) efficiency, while the development of automotive electronics including mmWave radars, head-up displays (HUDs) and rear seat entertainment (RSE) systems are targeting mainly high-end applications, according to DIGITIMES Research's latest report covering the show.

Hyundai Motor took another step forward to transform its vehicles. The automaker injected KRW346.2 billion (US$265.1 million) into the majority-owned self-driving startup, 42dot, last week to set up a global software center for software-defined vehicles (SDV).

Vietnamese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer VinFast announced that it will be providing EVs and electric motorbikes to Be Group, making Be the first to deploy EVs in Vietnam's ride-hailing sector.

Infineon Technologies and Delta Electronics are expanding their long-term cooperation from industrial to automotive applications. On March 21, both companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that will deepen their joint innovation activities to provide more efficient and higher-density solutions for the fast-growing market of electric vehicles (EV). The agreement covers a wide range of components such as high-voltage and low-voltage discretes and modules as well as microcontrollers to be used in EV drivetrain applications such as traction inverters, DC-DC converters, and on-board chargers.

Chinese carmaker BYD has reportedly registered a new trademark, "Yun-nian" (cars adorned with cloud patterns), according to several Chinese media outlets. Sources were cited as saying that Yun-nian is a whole new in-house technology for intelligent mobility.

Delta Electronics will see faster growth and better profitability from businesses related to electric vehicles (EV) in 2023, according to company chairman Yancey Hai.

The state government of Telangana, India announced on Monday that it would set up the Telangana Mobility Valley around Hyderabad, the state's capital city, to promote R&D and manufacturing of electric vehicles (EV) that include electric two-wheelers and electric three-wheelers.

The growing penetration of electric vehicles (EV) has boosted demand for charging infrastructure, with China, the US, the EU, Japan, Korea, India and other countries making efforts installing charging piles and stations.

Sonatus, a California-based software startup, is bringing its networking expertise to carmakers and helping them build software-defined vehicles (SDV) faster. The company has secured US$110 million in total funding since established in 2018.

Cars require more microcontrollers (MCUs) and microprocessors (MPUs) as they become smarter and more connected, according to Avnet Taiwan, adding that the trend will continue driving MPUs' growth in the coming years with the market expected to reach US$8 billion in 2025.

Cars are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks as they become intelligent and connected. The threats have gone beyond vehicles to mobility applications and EV charging infrastructure. Experts said it is critical to have cybersecurity solutions supporting the entire security lifecycle and establish real-time collaboration among vehicle, IT and enterprise security operation center (SOC) cybersecurity perspectives.

China-based EV maker XPeng signed a strategic agreement with local mobility companies Xiaolinggou Travel Technology and China Auto Rental on January 9. The trio has brought XPeng's P7 model to car rental markets in five major cities in China.

Two major automotive Tier-1s last week revealed their latest moves to advance assisted and autonomous driving. Continental has partnered with Ambarella to offer energy-efficient solutions for EVs. Magna and LG will collaborate on developing autonomous driving-infotainment technology.

MIH, an EV consortium initiated by Foxconn, is poised to realize its ambition in the US. It announced on January 6 that it will set up an innovation hub in Ohio, offering automotive suppliers opportunities to work closely with OEMs based in North America.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be implemented in many fields and in the future, robots will be able to do a lot of things for humans. Dr. Hwang Jenq-neng, professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) and director of the Information Processing Lab (IPL) at the University of Washington (UW, USA), Seattle, has partaken in many AI projects from electronic monitoring of fisheries (NOAA, USA), autonomous driving (Cisco, USA), smart transportation and smart city (ETRI, Korea), automated golf swing analysis (Sportsbox AI, USA), multi-camera multi-person tracking for long-care center surveillance (Quanta Computer, Taiwan), to wafer defect classification (Vanguard International Semiconductor, Taiwan), etc.

Electric motorcycle manufacturer ECGO EVmoto introduced its lineup of e-motorcycles of three different sizes for bikers in Indonesia. Sales kicked off in February 2022, targeting ride-sharing contract bikers in need of large seats, long driving range, and high speed.

Chinese tech company Baidu announced on Dec 30 that it has received the license to test autonomous vehicles with no driver or safety operator onboard in Beijing – the first in the capital city of China.

Southeast Asia has been the emerging market that EV makers target, but some enablers are required for a takeoff. Pras Ganesh, executive vice president in charge of business transformation of Toyota Daihatsu Engineering & Manufacturing (TDEM), said greater collaboration across countries, regulators and industry stakeholders is critical to scale up EV markets in the region.