FCA started talking about a partnership with Hon Hai way before it decided to merge with PSA and form Stellantis. That also seems to have happened before Foxconn – as Hon Hai is more widely known – decided it could make electric cars. The deal is that both will announce a partnership on May 18. Its main goal would be to put Stellantis back in China.
Both companies announced they would disclose their plans at 11:45 AM CEST in a joint conference call with Carlos Tavares and Young Liu, respectively the Stellantis CEO and Hon Hai’s chairman. Unfortunately, the companies did not disclose anything else about the partnership. One possibility is that they continue from where they stopped.
On January 17, 2020, FCA confirmed it was in talks with Hon Hai “regarding the potential creation of an equal joint venture to develop and manufacture in China new generation battery electric vehicles and engage in the IoV (Internet of Vehicles) business.”
The focus was on the Chinese market, and the companies seemed to have very defined roles: FCA would be in charge of the automotive engineering, and Hon Hai would take care of the Internet of Vehicles part of the deal. But things got a little more complicated.
FCA would probably also use Foxconn’s expertise with batteries to create its electric car. With PSA and its e-CMP platform, it does not need that anymore. Hon Hai also plans to make cars and even presented its own electric vehicle platform, called MIH Open. How could these things fit together?
We’ll only find out about that with the official announcement. However, we can’t help thinking about synergies, as automotive executives like so much to say. Hon Hai wants to make cars, and Stellantis may have some factories with idle manufacturing capacity. Stellantis wants connected cars with cutting-edge technologies, something that Foxconn makes money with for quite some time already.
Most of all, both companies could tackle multiple markets if they joined forces. We’ll check the announcement to tell you which of these possibilities came true.