Asians woo Tesla, Taiwan’s Kinsus mulls Malaysia substrate play

Hello everyone, this is Akito in Singapore with this week’s #techAsia.

The year 2024 has gotten off to a very worrying start for those with family and friends in Japan. I returned to Singapore on January 1 from Tokyo, where I spent my vacation. Right after I landed at Changi Airport, I saw the news about the massive earthquake that struck the Noto Peninsula. And just as people were still absorbing the scenes of that disaster came shocking images on television of two aircraft on fire after a collision at Haneda Airport, where my family and I had taken off on a Japan Airlines flight the day before.

In the business world, Japan’s manufacturing industry has been roiled by distressing news since around the end of 2023. An independent panel revealed that Daihatsu Motor, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor, had been cheating on safety and quality tests for over 30 years, delivering a blow to the auto group’s reputation — the most vital selling point of which is quality. The scandal “has shaken the foundations of the certification system and concerns trust in Japan’s manufacturing sector,” said Transport Minister Tetsuo Saito.

At the same time, the Japanese auto industry is being challenged by other Asian nations. China is set to become the world’s top automobile exporter annually for the first time in 2023, surpassing Japan. In the same year, new car sales in India beat Japan for the second consecutive year and maintained the world’s third-largest automobile market after China and the US.

Under such circumstances, governments in India and south-east Asia, where Japanese cars have historically had a significant presence in both production and sales, are moving to find their next partners.

Calling Tesla

Indian and south-east Asian leaders are appealing to Tesla CEO Elon Musk to invest in their countries, write Nikkei staff writers.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Musk in New York last June and commerce minister Piyush Goyal visited a Tesla plant in California this past November, as Modi’s government is working to bolster manufacturing through the Make in India campaign. At the June meeting, Modi invited Musk to “explore opportunities in India for investments in electric mobility”, according to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.

The leaders of Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand have all called on Musk to invest in their countries. Indonesian President Joko Widodo also visited Vietnam recently and toured Vietnamese EV maker VinFast’s factory with the company’s CEO, Pham Nhat Vuong, who is pushing into Indonesia — South-east Asia’s most populous country and biggest economy — with manufacturing, ride-hailing and taxis.

As interest in decarbonisation spreads from markets like the US, Europe and China to India and south-east Asia, governments in the region are focusing on attracting EV manufacturers such as Tesla. And Tesla is looking to make inroads into India and south-east Asia as the US works to decouple EV supply chains from China.

“In India and south-east Asia, EVs are a critical issue that could affect national strategy,” said one expert in the article. “It’s hard to say which country is at an advantage based on the maturity of their markets and industrial bases alone.”

Son’s mansion loan

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has used a Silicon Valley mansion that he bought for a record sum as security for a multimillion-dollar loan.

The Japanese billionaire technology entrepreneur tapped his nine-acre California estate for cash in December 2019, when his company’s fortunes were cracking under the weight of a failed WeWork IPO and Son was struggling to raise billions for a second Vision Fund, writes the Financial Times’ Ryan McMorrow.

SV Projects, the US-registered entity that Son used to buy the property, mortgaged the house to secure a 10bn yen loan — worth $92mn at the time — from Japanese bank Mizuho to SV America, another Delaware entity, public records show.

Details of the loan have not previously been reported.

Son 11 years ago paid a record $117.5mn for the Woodside estate to buy the residence from Tully Friedman, co-founder of private equity group Hellman & Friedman.

The new owner’s identity was initially cloaked by his limited liability company. The Los Angeles Times revealed a few months after the purchase that Son was the buyer.

Panasonic clings to No. 4 ranking

Japanese electronic conglomerate Panasonic Holdings, once the world’s largest producer of electrified vehicle batteries, plans to invest around $4bn in a new plant in the US to rejuvenate and recover its former prestige, writes Nikkei Asia’s Ryohtaroh Satoh.

As late as 2016, Panasonic, Tesla’s battery supplier, was still the leading producer of batteries for EVs, hybrids, and other electrified vehicles. But it has failed to keep pace, partly due to intense competition from China as well as EV scepticism from Japanese automakers, such as Toyota. Panasonic is struggling to hang on to fourth place in electrified vehicle battery shipments today, behind China’s CATL and BYD and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution.

In a departure from its previously cautious EV battery investment strategy, Panasonic is now vowing to use the new factory in the state of Kansas as a staging ground to mount a comeback. Ultimately, the company is planning to quadruple its EV battery capacity annually by 2031, mainly in North America.

Newcomer in Malaysia

Nvidia and AMD supplier Kinsus Interconnect Technology, based in Taiwan, is considering building a substrate manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, potentially joining a string of companies moving into the country’s resurgent chip supply chain, writes Nikkei Asia’s Lauly Li.

Substrates are the material that chips are built on, and Kinsus is a subsidiary of key iPhone assembler Pegatron. Kinsus has rented a plant in Penang where it will begin a trial run of the final step in substrate production as early as the second quarter of this year, part of an effort to diversify its production outside China.

Substrate and printed circuit board suppliers — the capacity of which is centred largely in Taiwan and China — are shifting production amid the ongoing Beijing-Washington tech war. Chipmakers like Intel, Infineon and ASE Technology Holding are increasing their manufacturing capacity in Malaysia. Their moves could also have a magnetic effect on substrate and production equipment makers in south-east Asia.

Suggested reads

1. Samsung unveils AI-powered Galaxy S24, starting new era in smartphone race (Nikkei Asia)

2. US companies and Chinese experts engaged in secret diplomacy on AI safety (FT)

3. Apple tops Samsung as world’s largest smartphone maker by volume (FT)

4. Singapore and Thailand keep bitcoin ETFs at arm’s length (Nikkei Asia)

5. Australian EV sales accelerate as nation plays catch-up on adoption (Nikkei Asia)

6. Ola Electric heads for two-wheeler IPO in India’s first EV listing (FT)

7. Chinese chipmakers boost networking with Japanese companies to navigate export controls (FT)

8. Pakistan faces hurdles on path to India-style tech take-off (Nikkei Asia)

9. US House China panel calls Intel, Nvidia and Micron heads to testify (FT)

10. Ex-Google researchers raise $30mn to develop AI in Japan (Nikkei Asia)

#techAsia is co-ordinated by Nikkei Asia’s Katherine Creel in Tokyo, with assistance from the FT tech desk in London.

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