Photo: Megan Jelinger (Getty Images)
Foxconn EV production keeps stalling at its newly-acquired assembly line, bought last year from Lordstown Motors. The Taiwanese manufacturer, which has built myriad devices for Apple, Google, Microsoft and Sony is now learning that cars are much harder to make than smartphones, according to Bloomberg.
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Lordstown hired Foxconn to build its EVs after the manufacturer bought the Lorsdtown, Ohio production plant from the fledging U.S. EV maker in 2022. Their partnership was one of the conditions included in the $230 million sale of the plant, and Foxconn bought a stake in the EV company soon thereafter, effectively putting the tech giant’s vast resources behind Lordstown Motors.
Photo: Megan Jelinger (Getty Images)
Foxconn’s willingness to jump into EV production and hit the ground running with concepts that conveyed its great expectations seemed to bode well for the partnership between the Taiwanese OEM and Lordstown. But Foxconn has so far only been able to make “a handful of prototypes, a few dozen electric buses and about 40 pickups for Lordstown,” as Bloomberg reports.
Production of the Lordstown Endurance EV pickup has been plagued by recalls and other delays revolving around high productions costs, per Bloomberg:
In January, Lordstown asked Foxconn to suspend production because the cost of making the trucks exceeded the targeted sale price of $65,000. A few weeks later it became clear that the Endurance suffered from, well, a lack of endurance. At least one owner reported that the truck had lost power while driving in cold weather, prompting the company in February to issue a recall. Then on March 6, Lordstown said that if it can’t team up with an experienced automaker, it would be forced to discontinue the pickup, its only model.
Notice how Lordstown threw in the emphatic “experienced automaker” in its statement. And among the truck’s build issues and recalls, Foxconn was having problems reigning in the cost to build the EVs at all — therefore unable to meet the target price of the Lordstown Endurance EV at $65,000. Loss leaders are nothing new in the tech industry, but a smartphone or console is a far cry from a 6,500-pound EV. Not even Foxconn can afford to sell the Endurance at a loss.
These issues are calling into question Foxconn’s ability to make EVs en masse, and may forecast a troubled production cycle ahead for many of the EV startups that have partnered with Foxconn. The irony is that these companies turned to Foxconn precisely because of its production expertise and global supply chain savvy. Among these U.S. EV startups are Monarch Tractor, IndiEV, and the high profile Fisker.
Monarch hired Foxconn to make fully-electric autonomous vehicles for farm use, and Foxconn is due to move production of the robotractors to Lordstown by the end of March. Fisker is still negotiating a partnership with Foxconn to build the Fisker Pear, an affordable EV priced under $30,000. But if Foxconn is struggling to make an EV for less than $65,000 — admittedly, in a different segment and price class — then the prospect of a Foxconn/Fisker Pear seems uncertain. And as far as IndiEV, the future seems even more uncertain since the company is reportedly low on funds and risks going out of business soon.
The future of Foxconn’s fully-electric cars is unclear for now. The Taiwanese tech maker had claimed its auto business would generate $33 billion in annual revenue by 2025, just two short years away. We will see, and so will Foxconn. In the end, maybe there’s no such thing as an iPhone on wheels. Not even for the manufacturer that mastered the lucrative production of the iPhone itself.
Photo: Lam Yik Fei (Getty Images)
Keyword: Foxconn Has Only Managed to Make About 40 Lordstown Endurance Pickups So Far