{"id":161282,"date":"2021-03-16T16:05:29","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T20:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=161282"},"modified":"2021-03-16T19:26:12","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T23:26:12","slug":"chinas-foxconn-mulls-making-evs-in-wisconsin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2021\/03\/chinas-foxconn-mulls-making-evs-in-wisconsin\/","title":{"rendered":"China’s Foxconn Mulls Making EVs in Wisconsin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Foxconn is ready to start partnering with fledgling EV companies using its MIH platform. It’s possible those vehicles could be built in the U.S.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Could Wisconsin be home to the next electric vehicle production facility? China\u2019s Foxconn thinks so.<\/p>\n

Foxconn Chairman Liu Young-way told reporters Tuesday at an event in Taipei, Taiwan, the company was considering building an EV in the Badger state. It already invested $10 billion into the site that was supposed to build televisions in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin in 2017. It sits largely idle now. However, he also noted that Mexico remains a possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of work depends on electronics and software for the EVs. We thought maybe it\u2019s a good place to make EVs,\u201d Liu said, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n

First customer lined up?<\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Fisker founder Henrik Fisker offered up a vague rendering of the BEV the company plans to produce with Foxconn.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The company, which is best known for assembly of Apple\u2019s iPhone, formalized an agreement less than a month ago to build a vehicle for nascent EV company Fisker Inc.<\/a><\/u><\/strong> That followed the Chinese company\u2019s reveal of its own battery-electric skateboard.<\/p>\n

Plans for the vehicle, codenamed Project PEAR, see Fisker and Foxconn launching production late in 2023. They are targeting production of \u201cmore than 250,000\u201d vehicles annually for sales around the world.<\/p>\n

However, since it already enjoys a profitable relationship with Apple and the tech giant is reportedly looking to build an electric vehicle, could \u201cProject Titan\u201d share the same facility as a \u201cProject Pear?\u201d According to multiple reports, Apple was in talks with Hyundai in January to build the vehicle. The talks ultimately got shelved for a variety of reasons, potentially one of them centering on where to build the vehicle.<\/p>\n

Late last year, Foxconn scored a deal to build vehicles with Fiat Chrysler, now Stellantis, in China. It\u2019s also agreed to deals with Geely, Byton and Faraday Future, which is part of the deal with Geely.<\/p>\n

Other suitors for Project Titan<\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Foxconn already builds phones for Apple. Could it build the long-rumored iCar, like the rendering above, at a now idle factory in Wisconsin?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the time, South Korean media, citing industry analysts and unnamed company officials, were\u00a0reporting that Apple would invest 4 trillion won, or about $3.6 billon, in Kia<\/a><\/u><\/strong>, the smaller of the brands making up the Hyundai Motor Group, or HMG. The plan, according to those reports, would be to produce about 100,000 autonomous, all-electric vehicles at the Kia assembly plant in West Point, Georgia, with longer-term goals of boosting that to as many as 400,000 vehicles annually.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Hyundai officials revealed in a South Korean regulatory filing that the company was \u201cnot in talks with Apple on autonomous vehicle development,\u201d adding \u201cHyundai Motor is getting requests from multiple companies for cooperation in joint development of autonomous, electric vehicles but nothing has been decided since it\u2019s in early stage.\u201d As is customary, Apple officials were mum.<\/p>\n

Canadian mega-supplier Magna International already serves as a contract manufacturer to a wide array of automakers using a flexible assembly plant in Graz, Austria. If anything, Magna has signaled interest in expanding its operations, announcing late last year a deal with EV automaker Fisker. That startup will use a platform developed by Magna as the underpinnings of the Fisker Ocean SUV set to go into production in 2022.<\/p>\n

Magna has indicated it would like to set up similar arrangements with other nascent EV makers, the supplier also confirming it would be willing to\u00a0build a second contract assembly plant in the U.S.<\/a><\/u><\/strong>\u00a0if there was a viable economic plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Could Wisconsin be home to the next EV production facility in the U.S.? China\u2019s Foxconn thinks so. Foxconn Chairman Liu Young-way said it was a possibility, although Mexico is in the mix too. Foxconn is slated to build Fisker Inc.’s second vehicle, currently dubbed Project Pear. However, could Project Titan come too? TheDetroitBureau.com has details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4389,"featured_media":154317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,5,12,9],"tags":[],"make":[55,64],"post-state":[],"category_old":[118,140,150,151,123,287,131,319,155,299,250,236,132,284,125,139,148,128,291,278,288],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161282"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161282"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=161282"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=161282"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=161282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}