Foxconn wants to do for electric vehicles what it has done with the iPhone, but first, it needs to find the next Apple — and fast.
The Taiwanese contract manufacturer faces competition in the market for creating white-label EVs that can be tailor-made for clients, whether that is a major car maker or a delivery provider or any other company.
And while the electronics company brings established strengths to the mostly loss-making EV industry, Foxconn needs to win a big contract to prove it can ride the wave of disruption, analysts say.
Foxconn, formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, will provide an update on its EV manufacturing business when it reports results on March 15.
“The results of many of our collaborations will be realised one after the other in 2023,” the company said in a statement to Reuters.
“The demand for EVs is driving industry disruption where prominent traditional auto makers have and are pivoting to finding solutions for mobility that are cleaner and smarter.”
The company's proposition is simple: Let us build your next EV. It is developing a specialised supply chain, including chips and batteries, and has acquired the former General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio. It has also hired a former Nissan executive, Jun Seki, to lead its efforts.
For now, by building in Ohio, Foxconn can offer customers access to US federal incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act, Daiwa Capital Markets analyst Kylie Huang said. That is a selling point as traditional car makers juggle building petrol-powered vehicles with plans to build their own EV capacity.
“If they don't get one this year, next year will be more difficult,” Ms Huang said of Foxconn's search for an EV contract with a traditional car maker.
Failure to “catch this wave” could force Foxconn to vie with lower-tier Chinese car makers that might switch to EV contract manufacturing and compete on cost, Ms Huang said.
Canada's Magna International, a top car supplier, already builds vehicles for others, and China's Geely has expressed interest. China's Guangxi Automobile Group has started to make EVs on contract for Japanese delivery company Sagawa Express Co.
Foxconn is counting on its Mobility in Harmony EV platform, or MIH, to win customers. It calls MIH “the Android system” for EVs and is soliciting partners in an effort to standardise technologies so model variants can be developed quickly and cheaply.
“We want to create that kind of ecosystem so anyone — for example, like United Airlines — can say, 'I want to make a car,'” Foxconn chief product officer Jerry Hsiao told Reuters during a tour of the company's sprawling Ohio plant.
“Sooner or later, maybe the top, traditional [car makers] say, 'Hey, I want to become a product marketing company. Why do I need to carry so many employees?'” he said.
Mr Hsiao also worked on the first Android phone for Google and now sees EVs at a similar commercial inflection point.
Foxconn's ambitions are aggressive. Initially aiming for 5 per cent of the global EV market and the equivalent of $33 billion in revenue from manufacturing EVs and components by 2025, Foxconn's longer-term goal is to make nearly half the world's EVs.
EV sales have been rising, led by China. Five per cent of the market, assuming an EV adoption rate of about 20 per cent by 2025, would be about 900,000 vehicles, roughly what market-leader Tesla sold in 2021.
“In the EV market, everyone's eyes are bigger than their stomach,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president at AutoForecast Solutions.
His firm estimates Foxconn hitting about 65,000 vehicles in 2025 and 157,000 in 2026.
“They're not making iPhones, here,” he said.
EV outsourcing will reach $36 billion in 2025 and $144 billion in 2030, with 800,000 and 3.2 million EVs, respectively, Goldman Sachs estimates.
Key for Foxconn will be scoring the first big customer to anchor its Ohio plant, which currently builds a small number of electric Endurance pickup trucks for Lordstown Motors, in which it owns a stake. It has announced plans to build a vehicle for EV start-up Fisker.
Foxconn Chairman Liu Young-way told reporters last month he plans to visit US customers, Foxconn's Ohio plant and Mexico, where Foxconn has made significant investments in car parts, in March or April.
“There should be some related signing activities,” Mr Liu said.
Foxconn already supplies parts to Tesla and makes camera modules for car makers and suppliers.
“They can probably buy things cheaper than anyone on earth,” Raymond Tsang, a partner at consultancy Bain & Company, said of Foxconn.
The race for volume in an industry in which Tesla and other EV makers are cutting prices raises the stakes.
The former GM plant in Ohio that Foxconn purchased from Lordstown Motors is one of the highest volume single-line vehicle assembly plants in the world. It could build about 320,000 vehicles a year, excluding overtime.
Foxconn wants to build about 300,000 EVs at the plant, Ian Upton, director of production control at Foxconn Ohio, told Reuters.
“We would love to find a customer that's in the 250,000-or-so range and then we can fill up some of the other stuff with niche type things,” he said.
Spider-Man%202
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TWISTERS
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Starring: Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos
Rating: 2.5/5
Bawaal%20
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TECH%20SPECS%3A%20APPLE%20WATCH%20SERIES%209
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EMIRATES'S%20REVISED%20A350%20DEPLOYMENT%20SCHEDULE
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Another way to earn air miles
In addition to the Emirates and Etihad programmes, there is the Air Miles Middle East card, which offers members the ability to choose any airline, has no black-out dates and no restrictions on seat availability. Air Miles is linked up to HSBC credit cards and can also be earned through retail partners such as Spinneys, Sharaf DG and The Toy Store.
An Emirates Dubai-London round-trip ticket costs 180,000 miles on the Air Miles website. But customers earn these ‘miles’ at a much faster rate than airline miles. Adidas offers two air miles per Dh1 spent. Air Miles has partnerships with websites as well, so booking.com and agoda.com offer three miles per Dh1 spent.
“If you use your HSBC credit card when shopping at our partners, you are able to earn Air Miles twice which will mean you can get that flight reward faster and for less spend,” says Paul Lacey, the managing director for Europe, Middle East and India for Aimia, which owns and operates Air Miles Middle East.
Young women have more “financial grit”, but fall behind on investing
In an October survey of young adults aged 16 to 25, Charles Schwab found young women are more driven to reach financial independence than young men (67 per cent versus. 58 per cent). They are more likely to take on extra work to make ends meet and see more value than men in creating a plan to achieve their financial goals. Yet, despite all these good ‘first’ measures, they are investing and saving less than young men – falling early into the financial gender gap.
While the women surveyed report spending 36 per cent less than men, they have far less savings than men ($1,267 versus $2,000) – a nearly 60 per cent difference.
In addition, twice as many young men as women say they would invest spare cash, and almost twice as many young men as women report having investment accounts (though most young adults do not invest at all).
“Despite their good intentions, young women start to fall behind their male counterparts in savings and investing early on in life,” said Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, senior vice president, Charles Schwab. “They start off showing a strong financial planning mindset, but there is still room for further education when it comes to managing their day-to-day finances.”
Ms Schwab-Pomerantz says parents should be conveying the same messages to boys and girls about money, but should tailor those conversations based on the individual and gender.
"Our study shows that while boys are spending more than girls, they also are saving more. Have open and honest conversations with your daughters about the wage and savings gap," she said. "Teach kids about the importance of investing – especially girls, who as we see in this study, aren’t investing as much. Part of being financially prepared is learning to make the most of your money, and that means investing early and consistently."
The%20Little%20Mermaid%20
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Groom and Two Brides
Director: Elie Semaan
Starring: Abdullah Boushehri, Laila Abdallah, Lulwa Almulla
Rating: 3/5
GAC GS8 Specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo
Power: 248hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 400Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 9.1L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh149,900
Profile
Company: Justmop.com
Date started: December 2015
Founders: Kerem Kuyucu and Cagatay Ozcan
Sector: Technology and home services
Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai
Size: 55 employees and 100,000 cleaning requests a month
Funding: The company’s investors include Collective Spark, Faith Capital Holding, Oak Capital, VentureFriends, and 500 Startups.
CREW
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ERajesh%20A%20Krishnan%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ETabu%2C%20Kareena%20Kapoor%20Khan%2C%20Kriti%20Sanon%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203.5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Monster
Directed by: Anthony Mandler
Starring: Kelvin Harrison Jr., John David Washington
3/5
Company%20profile
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Coming soon
Torno Subito by Massimo Bottura
When the W Dubai – The Palm hotel opens at the end of this year, one of the highlights will be Massimo Bottura’s new restaurant, Torno Subito, which promises “to take guests on a journey back to 1960s Italy”. It is the three Michelinstarred chef’s first venture in Dubai and should be every bit as ambitious as you would expect from the man whose restaurant in Italy, Osteria Francescana, was crowned number one in this year’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Akira Back Dubai
Another exciting opening at the W Dubai – The Palm hotel is South Korean chef Akira Back’s new restaurant, which will continue to showcase some of the finest Asian food in the world. Back, whose Seoul restaurant, Dosa, won a Michelin star last year, describes his menu as, “an innovative Japanese cuisine prepared with a Korean accent”.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
The highly experimental chef, whose dishes are as much about spectacle as taste, opens his first restaurant in Dubai next year. Housed at The Royal Atlantis Resort & Residences, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal will feature contemporary twists on recipes that date back to the 1300s, including goats’ milk cheesecake. Always remember with a Blumenthal dish: nothing is quite as it seems.
Glossary of a stock market revolution
Reddit
A discussion website
Redditor
The users of Reddit
Robinhood
A smartphone app for buying and selling shares
Short seller
Selling a stock today in the belief its price will fall in the future
Short squeeze
Traders forced to buy a stock they are shorting
Naked short
An illegal practice
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
SPECS
%3Cp%3EEngine%3A%20Supercharged%203.5-litre%20V6%0D%3Cbr%3EPower%3A%20400hp%0D%3Cbr%3ETorque%3A%20430Nm%0D%3Cbr%3EOn%20sale%3A%20Now%0D%3Cbr%3EPrice%3A%20From%20Dh450%2C000%0D%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
