Foxconn aims to capture 10% of the global electric vehicle market by 2025-2027. Although Apple has previously approached a number of automakers, the latest news shows that Apple’s orders in the automotive field may be entrusted to the long-term iPhone assembly partner Hon Hai Group, the parent company of “Foxconn”.
The revelations from LeaksApplePro show that the development of the Apple car is underway, and the official release will still be at the end of 2025 or 2024.
Regarding this news, on May 4, Foxconn told the first financial reporter that it would not comment on market rumors. However, judging from previous actions, Foxconn is continuously increasing its investment in the field of auto foundry to attract Apple’s attention.
At the Hon Hai 2021 fourth quarter investment legal person briefing held in March this year, Hon Hai Chairman Liu Yangwei said that as one of the main axes of development of electric vehicles, Hon Hai will continue to expand its customer base, seek existing car manufacturers and new Joined the car factory and assisted customers in mass production and expansion.
“Hon Hai’s EV (electric vehicle) cooperation has always been in progress according to schedule. Accelerating commercial transfer and mass production, and developing higher-value components and software are the focus of Hon Hai’s EV development in 2022.” Liu Yangwei said, By 2025, Hon Hai aims to have a 5% market share. The vehicle production target will be 500,000 to 750,000 units, of which the revenue contribution of the vehicle foundry is expected to exceed half.
Before that, Liu Yangwei had set a “goal that must be achieved” for Foxconn, and the revenue of electric vehicle-related business will reach 35 billion US dollars (about 223 billion yuan) by 2026.
Essence International Securities once pointed out in a research report that the global electric vehicle market will reach an annual scale of 36 million from 2025 to 2030, and Foxconn aims to take a 10% share from 2025 to 2027.
As Apple’s largest OEM, Foxconn has accelerated its layout of the automotive business in recent years. The main logic is to undertake new business drivers after the mobile phone business has entered the stage of stock competition, and to accumulate OEM capabilities in new energy vehicles, thereby providing more third parties. Enterprise OEM.
Combing through Foxconn’s investment in the automotive field, we can see that since 2015, Foxconn has frequently contacted car manufacturers, successively invested in Byton, joined hands with Fisker, and established a joint venture with Stellantis.
In January last year, Foxconn established a joint venture with Geely Holdings, covering OEM production and customized consulting services for car companies, including but not limited to complete vehicles, parts, intelligent control systems, automotive ecosystems and the entire electric vehicle industry. chain process, etc. According to the agreement, both parties will hold 50% of the shares of the joint venture. In October of the same year, Terry Gou, the long-retired founder of Foxconn, also launched the Model E platform for Foxconn’s electric vehicle products, and released two products, the Model T electric bus and the Model C SUV.
But for Foxconn now, the challenges in the field of automotive foundry are not small. An urgent problem is that the boost of capital makes it more and more difficult to get admission tickets to the new energy vehicle track, and the OEM business behind it is obviously more difficult to obtain.
The reason is that the biggest purpose of technology companies is to allow more cars to install their own car operating systems, and their own hardware equipment to become the industry standard, and there are only two ways to achieve this: build their own cars or cooperate with car manufacturers. But for Foxconn, the competitors on this runway are not only the old rival BYD, but also neighbor Huawei who claims to “do not build cars, but build good cars for car companies”. Who to form an alliance with and how to build an ecological A topic that cannot be avoided.
In addition, even if it entered the automotive field through investment or cooperative development in the early days, according to market feedback in recent years, Foxconn has not achieved a “first-mover advantage” in this field.
The news of the Apple car project has been passed on for “eight years”, and the “scandal” objects of the negotiation include six automakers including BMW, Daimler, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Hyundai. From the perspective of the industry, Apple has always hoped to replicate its R&D and production model in the field of mobile phones to automobiles. There is more news that the Apple car team has been disbanded.
In 2021, the departure of five executives of the “Titan Team” shows that Apple’s car building is not smooth. “Project Titan” was the internal code name for Apple’s car-building program in 2014, led by Steve Zadesky, the leader of the original iPod team.
Tianfeng International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo previously tweeted that the Apple car project team had been disbanded for some time. “If we want to mass-produce the Apple Car in 2025, we need to restructure the team within three to six months.”