The global automotive industry is on the cusp of a new era of competition that is expected to force established manufacturers and new players within the industry to fundamentally rethink their business models. Success or failure is likely to be determined by two key technologies: energy source and artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

First, energy. Whether looked at from the perspective of environmental factors, green energy or efficiency, electric vehicles are to become mainstream during the 21st century. Whether they are to be built around hydrogen fuel cells or use rechargeable or swappable battery cells as their primary source of propulsion is impossible to say for certain, although history tells us that the most advanced technology might not be the one that enters common use.

Participants hold a banner and signs at a march in Taipei yesterday to commemorate the 228 Incident.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times

More than 200 people yesterday marched in Taipei ahead of the 74th anniversary of the 228 Incident.

As a nation that touts democracy as one of its chief values, the US has always suffered from a slow learning curve on nationalistic self-determination and democratic development in Asia, particularly in Taiwan. As T.S. Eliot said in his poem The Hollow Men: “Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.”

Why? The quick and obvious excuse is that the US began as eurocentric. In its early, formative history, all settlements and subsequent colonies were on its east coast, and settlers and later immigrants came primarily from European nations, eg. England, France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands.