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Taiwan brings excellence to a
new generation of intelligent mobility
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Disclaimer: The Reuters news staff had no role in the production of this content. It was created by Reuters Plus, the brand marketing studio of Reuters. To work with Reuters Plus, contact us here.
As modern vehicles become ever more sophisticated, developers are finding that solutions are generating new challenges. Two of the most immediate are how to process enormous amounts of data rapidly enough to achieve automated driving, and how to find ways to simplify a vehicle’s increasingly complex electronic architecture.
Fewer computers, more capability
A solid tech foundation
Taiwan’s head start is largely a consequence of the combination of semiconductors, with established strengths in ICT and electronics manufacturing. Today, the same industrial ecosystem that previously led the world in computers, smartphones and networking equipment has turned its attention to automotive applications.
The supply base also has a track record of flexibility in meeting customization and complex engineering requirements, demonstrated as far back as 2007 when Tesla’s early supply-chain engineers arrived in Taiwan to source components for the original roadster. They were met by a dense network of manufacturers capable of responding swiftly and accurately to non-standard specifications that resulted in Taiwanese suppliers contributing as much as 40% of the finished vehicle.
From those beginnings, insight and innovation that are the envy of the world have evolved, propelling Taiwanese firms to the forefront of the sector. Initiatives such as the MIH Open EV Alliance seek to connect thousands of companies across the smart-EV value chain. Individual companies combine sensing, computing, displays, connectivity, and power technologies into increasingly sophisticated systems.
CUB Elecparts, for example, is leveraging more than 40 years of automotive aftermarket expertise with universal tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) in the North American and European markets. The company has also expanded into advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) with millimeter-wave radar and EV-related products.
Elsewhere, Whetron Electronics has achieved “sensor fusion” by integrating camera, radar and ultrasonic sensing technologies for ADAS and smart-cabin applications, while Pegatron Corp. engineers are developing AI-powered smart cockpits and in-vehicle controllers that integrate displays, cameras, microphones and voice interaction, with its automotive technologies spanning zonal computing and LiDAR sensing as the company actively advances safe autonomous driving.
A new kind of responsibility
What that shift looks like varies widely across the sector. Some Taiwanese suppliers now design subsystems and negotiate specifications with automakers directly. Others still build precisely to a drawing handed to them. The more useful question is not whether Taiwan has moved up the value chain, but how far it has moved, in which parts of the vehicle, and what had to change to make that possible.
Sensing, power electronics, and cockpit systems present the clearest evidence of rapid progress. Vehicle-level decisions such as when to brake, when to steer, and when to intervene, however, still sit with the automakers and their Tier-1 integrators.
“The biggest change is not simply better manufacturing. It is the ability to take system-level responsibility,” says Stephen Su, senior vice president of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute.
"Traditionally, a supplier receives a drawing or specification from an OEM or Tier 1 supplier and focuses on quality, cost and delivery,” he points out. “But once you move into subsystem design, you need to understand how that subsystem interacts with the entire vehicle.”
“That requires capabilities in system engineering, hardware-software integration, sensing, control, thermal management, verification and validation, as well as safety and reliability.”
It also changes the relationship with the customer, with suppliers now required to engage much earlier and sometimes needing to help define specifications.
Strength in numbers
The density of Taiwan’s industrial ecosystem has proved to be one of Taiwan’s key advantages, not only in terms of geographical proximity but also in terms of engineering relationships and supply-chain collaboration.
Su describes the high degree of industrial clustering, specialization and coordination within the manufacturing ecosystem as an “eco-chain” that provides not only manufacturing depth, but also speed, flexibility and supply-chain resilience.
“That matters because intelligent mobility is increasingly a system problem,” he points out. “A vehicle function may depend simultaneously on sensors, chips, modules, power electronics and control software. When these capabilities exist within the same ecosystem, companies can co-design, prototype, test and modify solutions much faster.”
The transition from manufacturing to system-level roles may not yet be uniform at the SME level, but it is more visible further up the value chain, in areas such as core vehicle operating systems, dynamics control and the definition of key vehicle functions and interfaces.
The sector is aware of the global competition, but Su is confident that Taiwanese firms still hold advantages, based on the combination of semiconductor and electronics capability, rapid engineering and high-quality scalable manufacturing.
“Taiwan is particularly good at taking a new technology from prototype to manufacturable product quickly,” he says. “Its supply chain is also highly responsive and flexible.” And as automotive development becomes faster and increasingly influenced by the consumer-electronics model, these capabilities become more valuable.
The biggest change is not
simply better manufacturing.
It is the ability to
take system-level
responsibility.
Stephen Su
Senior vice president of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute.
“Taiwan has moved from ‘Made in Taiwan’ to ‘Made by Taiwan’ as companies expand manufacturing globally. The next step is ‘Made with Taiwan’ – co-innovating, co-investing and co-managing to work together for the global markets.”
For US automakers and tier-one suppliers, Taiwan has moved beyond being simply a source of semiconductors. Today, its combination of technological depth, proven manufacturing flexibility, and growing systems-integration capabilities have transformed it into a strategic partner armed with the necessary solutions.
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Taiwan’s Delta Electronics has taken the lead in solving those problems through the development of high-performance computing (HPC) systems for ADAS and autonomous driving and zonal controllers for autonomous/intelligent driving vehicles (AIDVs).
And the company says its collaboration with other Taiwanese firms is critical to its success.
“These are two major next-generation systems and Delta is developing and advancing the latest and most promising automotive technology trends,” says Jay Huang, director of the firm’s Advanced Vehicle Architecture department.
Delta’s centralized in-car HPC system consolidates multi-domain workloads, from driver assistance to monitoring occupants and digital cockpits, into a single, high-performance platform. Equally, zonal controllers solve yet more challenges, including wiring harness weight, volume and cost issues as well as scalability challenges across various platforms.
“We believe that partnerships with support teams in Taiwan help to accelerate our development,” says Huang. “In the past decade, this collaboration model in the automotive industry has shifted from traditional Tier 1 suppliers to new Tier 1s from Taiwan’s IT industry, and that learning curve has been beneficial to the development of innovative technologies for next-generation autonomous, software and AI driving applications.”
Delta is just one of a number of Taiwan-based firms that are operating on the leading edge of technology as vehicles become increasingly electrified, connected, autonomous and software-defined - and recognized with Taiwan Excellence Awards for their achievement.
Taiwanese firms’ leadership in these areas can be traced back to the innovations, quality and reliability that have long been a hallmark of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) but have now driven beyond chip manufacturing to forge an ecosystem that brings together IC design, wafer fabrication, testing, memory, connectivity, displays, sensing, power electronics, computing and systems integration.
Brian Lee, executive director of the strategic marketing department of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, says the shift towards the vehicle sector has been a calculated evolution as Taiwan’s strengths increasingly converge with automotive applications.
“As vehicles became more electronic, connected and software-driven, many of the capabilities that Taiwanese firms had developed for computers, telecommunications and consumer electronics became directly relevant to automotive,” he says.
And while collaboration has always been a key part of Taiwan’s manufacturing model that too has evolved, he points out.
“Traditionally, companies worked together through established supplier relationships, with manufacturers specializing in particular components or production processes,” Lee says. “Today, the collaboration is becoming much more cross-disciplinary, with a semiconductor company, a sensor company, an electronics manufacturer and a system integrator all working together around the same automotive application.”
And as vehicles become more complex, these connections permit different technologies to be designed and validated in relation to one another, rather than developed independently.
“This allows companies to develop technologies at different levels of the value chain in relation to one another, respond more quickly to complex customer requirements and increasingly deliver integrated solutions rather than individual components,” Lee says. “For automotive customers, this can shorten development cycles and make it easier to integrate different technologies into a reliable system.”
For Lee, three values set Taiwanese firms apart: “For global automotive customers, the combination of innovation, quality and trust is increasingly important as they look for long-term technology partners.”
Taiwan’s emergence comes as the automotive semiconductor market is expanding rapidly. Automotive electronics generated approximately $87.4 billion in semiconductor revenue in 2024 and that figure is expected to eclipse the $100 billion threshold in 2026.
At the same time, semiconductor content per vehicle is projected to more than double between 2024 and 2034, with electrification, advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), centralized vehicle computing, battery-management systems, inverters, onboard chargers and increasingly sophisticated cockpit systems powering this growth.
The biggest change is not
simply better manufacturing.
It is the ability to
take system-level
responsibility.