Original first release | Jinjiao Finance (ID: F-Jinjiao)
Author | Mengqing
Electric car track welcomes new players, this time the OEM King Foxconn .
Recently, Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai Group released a trailer video of the new model Foxtron Model B, which will be officially announced on October 18th.
and Model B are also released at the same time, and there is also an electric pickup truck called Model V.
Model B, Model V at first glance, I thought it was a new model commissioned by Tesla to Foxconn.
But in fact, these two cars are really made by Foxconn.
In 2020, Foxconn and Yulon Group established a joint venture company, Honghua Advanced, of which Foxconn holds 51% of the shares and enjoys absolute controlling stake. Model B and Model V were launched and built by the company.
, which manufactures Apple phones, wants to build cars, which sounds a bit funny, but Foxconn itself is very serious.
More than a year ago, Foxconn founder and former chairman Terming Gou said at an internal meeting: " Apple car is just four wheels iPhone. Since we can build iPhone, why can't we build electric cars?"
Since acquiring Taiwan's Antai Electric Industry in 2005, Foxconn has been in the automotive field for 17 years. During this period, after three waves of car manufacturing, Foxconn finally built its own car.
In May this year, Foxconn's current chairman Liu Yangwei proposed the goal of Foxconn's electric vehicle 's global market share will reach 5%, the revenue scale of the electric vehicle industry will reach one trillion yuan, and the shipment volume will be 500,000 to 750,000 units per year.
It is not easy to achieve this goal. It is just that in the world where new car-making forces are surging and the competition for electric vehicles is even more cruel, can Foxconn, the OEM King of the electronics industry, really achieve his dream of making a car?
"Crack" Tesla
In the past year, Foxconn has released a total of 5 models:
SUV models for household use Model C, luxury sedan Model E, electric bus Model T, and 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 the train next year. The speed of launching new products such as
is even better than that of new car-making forces. Xiaomi is afraid that it will be ashamed.
Now the Model B released by Foxconn is a pure electric hatchback. The interior and price have not been announced yet, but judging from the configuration that can reach a range of 500 kilometers, the price should be lower than the ModelC with a range of more than 200,000 yuan and a range of more than 700 kilometers.
From the outside, the front face of the Model B adopts the popular through-type design, but the light strips on the front of the car are not fully connected, and are partitioned by a brand LOGO that can be lit up in the center. The rear of the car is also in a through-type style, and its LED taillights can show specific patterns, such as pedestrians passing through the front.
However, from the side, Model B was criticized for being very similar to Volkswagen's ID3, and its name can easily remind people of Tesla. No wonder this car was criticized by netizens as soon as it was released.
However, the series of foxconn models' moves are probably also the "old inheritance" brought by Foxconn teammate Yulon Group.
Most people feel unfamiliar with Yulong Group, but if they mention Nazhijie , they will definitely become familiar - after all, when this car was at its peak, Jay Chou made a statement about it, and even stood on the stage for it at the 2015 Chengdu Auto Show.
Jay Chou endorses Nazijie
Jay Chou's sentence "We don't have to be low-key, Chinese people have the pride of Chinese people. I am Jay Chou, this is Nazijie", which attracted a lot of attention from all over the country. From 2015 to 2017, Nazijie's annual sales were more than 15,000 units.
Nazhijie was very popular, and it was also criticized by netizens. Nazhijie's car logo looks really like the Japanese luxury car Lexus .
At that time, Lexus was regarded as a treasure by the new middle class in China. They almost held it in their hands to give money to Toyota Akio , and they lined up to grab this car.
I don’t know what Tesla feels when it comes to doing it. Some netizens are upset for Tesla. Why didn’t you register all the Model series letter logos at that time?
However, it has not been a day or two for Tesla to be imitated. Previously, Musk had hired Fisk to design Tesla's car, but the solution Fisk came up with was mediocre and bloated, which was surprising.
But not long after it left, it founded Fisk Auto and launched the world's first plug-in electric sports car, Fisker Karma. At this time, Tesla employees realized that Fisk left the best design to themselves.
Musk filed a legal lawsuit against Fisk in 2008, but eventually lost the lawsuit. But not long after, Fisker went bankrupt and sold it to Chinese Wanxiang Group , but Fisker retained the trademark rights.
is a coincidence. Fisker, which came out again with the help of the trademark, later became a customer of Foxconn.
However, Foxconn, which is still in the early stage of car manufacturing, can understand it if you want to use the traffic of popular car companies. You have no brand accumulation in the field of car manufacturing, so you don’t pay attention to it. If you call it Foxconn electric car, it has a popularity, and I’m afraid not many people will buy it. Think about , Dong Mingzhu, Gree mobile phone made by , and it will be awkward.
second BYD ?
Foxconn's cars are launched one after another, and the "rich content" is very high, especially the core components, which are not manufactured by others.
Although the detailed parameters of Model B are unknown, in the first half of this year, Liu Yangwei, chairman of Hon Hai Group, revealed that the battery cell of cooperates with international manufacturers in terms of key modules and components of electric vehicles, but the module is self-made.
Foxconn's layout in the field of power batteries can be traced back more than ten years ago. Taiwan Lithium Science Technology Company, a subsidiary of Hon Hai , has cooperated with Shanghai Electric Group and BAIC Group to jointly develop automotive power lithium batteries.
In June this year, Foxconn's new factory in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, China broke ground to produce battery modules. Liu Yangwei revealed that this is a key project for electric vehicles this year and is expected to be trial production in the first quarter of 2024.
At the same time, Foxconn is also making up for its shortcomings in battery cell research and development and production. In September this year, Foxconn announced a joint venture with Indika Energy on Indonesia , committed to developing vehicle-mounted lithium iron phosphate batteries and producing electric vehicles.
At the same time, Foxconn is committed to developing solid-state battery , and announced that it will be commercially available in 2024. Solid-state batteries are regarded by the industry as the next generation of batteries after lithium batteries. Foxconn's advanced layout in the field of power batteries seems to want to get a big spoon.
At the same time, Foxconn is also showing its strength in the field of autonomous driving.
After all, the current autonomous driving technology has almost become the standard configuration for electric vehicles. Now even the Wuling , which makes low-priced magic cars, is also cooperating with DJI to develop autonomous driving technology. In the first quarter of 2022, the penetration rate of of domestic L2 autonomous driving in the field of new energy vehicles exceeded 30%.
According to Foxconn's Technology Day last year, Foxconn's models will also be equipped with the autonomous driving function equipped by the partner Mobile Drive.
Mobile Drive is Foxconn's in-depth cooperation in the field of autonomous driving. In May last year, Foxconn and car company Stellantis decided to jointly inject capital into Mobile Drive, with a proportion of 50%. Foxconn's wholly-owned intelligent driving technology company Fuzhijie, which is a subsidiary of Foxconn, has gradually integrated into Microsoft Drive.
In addition, Foxconn is also involved in the automotive chip field. In June last year, Foxconn acquired a stake in Malaysian technology company DNeX, indirectly owning an 8-inch chip factory; in August of the same year, Foxconn acquired Hongwang Electronics' 6-inch wafer factory. In May this year, Foxconn was once again making a chip layout, and it will jointly build and operate a 12-inch chip factory in Malaysia with DNeX.
At present, Foxconn's layout in the automotive field covers multiple fields such as power batteries, motors, chips, Internet of vehicles, radar , etc., and is involved in many countries around the world and has almost all the things needed to build cars.
Foxconn's development in the electric vehicle field is moving towards BYD, not only to build cars, but also to penetrate into the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
Who is Foxconn building a car for?
Although Foxconn has worked hard to build cars, the actual situation is quite embarrassing.
On the one hand, Foxconn strives to build cars not to sell cars, but to seek OEM.
For example, signed a cooperation agreement with American startup Fisker. The two will cooperate to create electric vehicle PEAR, which is expected to be mass-produced by 2024 with an annual production capacity of 250,000 vehicles; recently, Foxconn signed an agreement with American electric vehicle startup INDIEV to create prototypes for its first mass-produced car.
and even Foxconn has helped California Monarch Tractor to manufacture electric tractors with autonomous driving functions, and is expected to be fully put into production in the first quarter of 2023.
But Foxconn does not want to only play the role of OEM in the electric vehicle field, it wants to become an Android system in the electric vehicle field.
Therefore, Foxconn launched the modular pure electric platform MIH alliance. Based on this platform, the OEM can independently choose chassis designs such as SUVs and sedans, and choose customized solutions such as wheel distance, battery size, and autonomous driving based on the OEM's wishes. Some of the components can be OTA in the future.
This is similar to the Android system of a mobile phone. After the Android system provides an underlying architecture, other manufacturers develop personalized functions based on this architecture. With the help of Foxconn's MIH platform, as long as car companies develop brands, designs, etc., Foxconn can do everything else.
Therefore, although Foxconn has launched 5 models in succession, it has not announced that it will enter the C-end market so far. When the three models were released at one go on last year's Technology Day, Foxconn said that these are reference prototype cars, which means they are only provided to brand customers as manufacturing references, and can be customized or changed based on the prototype cars provided by Foxconn.
However, there are more than 2,000 partners of the MIH Alliance, but there are only a few car companies using the alliance platform. At present, only Foxtron brand Model series models launched by itself use the MIH platform, and Fisker, which is still in the early stage mentioned above, may use the platform. This situation occurs in
, because Foxconn's idea of MIH alliance is not easy to realize. On the one hand, the electric vehicle industry has developed to this stage, and electric vehicle companies that survive in the market have certain strength. They are more willing to study the platform architecture of the car model themselves rather than pretending to use the core lifeline to others.
and supporting weak car companies is unpredictable.Previously, Foxconn had a blood transfusion for Byton Auto in China, hoping to open up the Chinese market. Unfortunately, Byton Auto failed. The company spent more than 8 billion yuan to build a car. It can be said that Foxconn expanded its automobile customers in China, and it is difficult to make a move.
Moreover, domestic traditional car companies Geely and BYD also want to be Android in the automotive industry.
Geely and BYD have spent huge amounts of money to launch SEA Haohan platform and e3.0 platform respectively, which are already considered to be the top level in the industry. Both of them also claim to be open to the public and are stronger opponents than Foxconn.
But this may also be an important reason why Foxconn has successively launched Model E and Model V this year - providing more diverse options and covering more potential customers.
Perhaps Foxconn is also considering taking a try, participating in the market for C-end users, and becoming a rival to many new energy vehicle companies.
But this is undoubtedly a more difficult path, because the competition in the C-end electric vehicle market is too fierce now, especially in the context of BYD's full rise and Tesla's expectation of price cuts, new car-making forces are struggling.
Looking back, the market competition of electric vehicles has extended from products to all-round competition in the supply chain. How to find its positioning in Foxconn car manufacturing still needs market and time inspection.
Reference article:
1. Future Auto Daily "Foxconn makes cars, can't tear off the "OEM" tag"
2. Electric Planet "38 pictures to analyze 3 electric cars of Foxconn, Model C/E/T "paying tribute" to Tesla, and self-developed intelligent driving
3. New Entropy "Behind Foxconn's car manufacturing, the "land encirclement movement" of electric vehicles has begun"
4. "Iron Man of Silicon Valley: Elon Musk's Adventure Life"
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