"Office King" The car made by Foxconn is finally about to debut!
Recently, Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai Group released a trailer video of its brand new model - Model B, which will be officially announced on October 18th. It will also be released at the same time as Model B.
At first glance, Model B and Model V seem to be the new models commissioned by Tesla to Foxconn, but in fact it is not. These two cars are really made by Foxconn. In response, some netizens bluntly said that "this name is too outrageous", and some netizens even found that Model B looks like the Volkswagen iD series in terms of appearance.
Some netizens joked: "Foxconn, what kind of car does it build?"
17 years ago "going into business" to build cars
In fact, Foxconn had already left the car manufacturing industry 17 years ago.
As early as 2005, Foxconn acquired 100% of the equity of Taiwan's Antai Electric Industry for 370 million yuan. Antai Electric Industry is one of Taiwan's four major automotive wiring harness factories, mainly producing automotive electronic products such as battery lines, audio and video transmission wiring harnesses, reversing radars and smart devices. Ford, Volkswagen, Nissan and other automobile companies are its customers.
Foxconn officially entered the automotive components industry. Since then, Foxconn has gradually extended its tentacles to other parts fields such as central control and instrument panels. In 2010, Foxconn successively won OEM orders, including Tesla, BMW , Mercedes-Benz and other mainstream car companies. Later, some Model S interior panels were provided by Foxconn.
In 2014, Foxconn reached a cooperation in developing power batteries and systems with Beijing Benz . In the same year, Taiwan Lithium Technology, a subsidiary of Foxconn, officially established a lithium battery production base in Anhui. The above is the first stage of Foxconn's relationship with electric vehicles, and its business gradually deepened from electronic component OEM to power battery cooperation.
It can be seen that at that time, Foxconn was still an old business in OEM parts, but it was no longer limited to fuel vehicles and began to enter the field of new energy vehicles.
Time has come to 2015 when new car-making forces are flocking. Under the leadership of Tencent , Foxconn and Harmony Auto jointly invested 1 billion yuan to create the Internet car brand "Harmony Futeng". This cooperation has truly fired the "first shot" of Foxconn's car manufacturing. Tencent is mainly responsible for providing the Internet of Vehicles system and technology platform, Harmony Auto is responsible for building marketing and service networks, and Foxconn is responsible for production and manufacturing.
But it was only one year since its establishment. Some media reported that senior shareholders had serious differences in their development direction, or because of this, after the establishment of Harmony Futeng, both Foxconn and Tencent both withdrew their investment.
Although the initial experience of car manufacturing failed, Foxconn's exploration in the field of electric car has never stopped. For example, it invested in CATL in 2017, and invested in Xiaopeng Motors B round financing in 2018.
has been stumbling for more than 10 years. Finally, in 2020, Foxconn welcomed two important partners - Fiat Chrysler (FCA) and Yulong Automobile . Foxconn established joint ventures with FCA and Yulong respectively to design and manufacture new energy vehicle. Among them, a joint venture with Yulong is called "Honghua Advanced". Foxconn's parent company invested 7.944 billion yuan in cash, accounting for 51% of the shares, and Yulong invested 7.632 billion yuan in open platform assets, accounting for 49%.
After Honghua Advanced was established, it first released the MIH modular electric vehicle platform with an open platform architecture, and then released three electric prototypes independently developed by Taiwan last year. So far, Foxconn has ushered in a phased success - three new cars.
5 models have been released so far
From the annual technology day on October 18 last year, Foxconn has released a total of 5 models: family SUV models Model C, luxury sedan Model E, electric bus Model T, and the Model B and Model V that have been announced.
Among them, Model T has been delivered to Kaohsiung passenger transport in March this year and put into operation. Model C is expected to start booking in October and deliver cars next year. This speed of new launch is even better than that of new forces in car manufacturing.
Nowadays, the Model B released by Foxconn preview is a hatchback that is positioned as a pure electric hatchback. The interior and price have not been announced yet. From the outside, the front face of the Model B adopts the popular through-type design, but the light bars at the front of the car are not fully connected. They are partitioned by a brand LOGO that can be lit in the center. The rear of the car is also in a through-type style. Its LED taillights can display specific patterns, such as pedestrians passing through the front.
However, from the side, Model B was criticized for being very similar to Volkswagen ID3, and its name is easily reminiscent of Tesla. This car was criticized by netizens as soon as it was released. Some netizens bluntly said, "Isn't this pure and messy?", and some netizens said, "This is really a messy hype"...
However, it is worth mentioning that the series of "bumping" moves of Foxconn models have not been recognized by the public. In other words, there seems to be no new car-making forces regard Foxconn as an opponent. This is particularly obvious in public opinion. In this era when the CEO of the car acts as a spokesperson and walks to the front of the stage, you can see Wei Xiaoli's executives shouting to each other, and you can also see Musk publicly commenting on major car-making companies, but Foxconn rarely appears in the mouths of peers.
