- Foxconn will soon launch a U.S.-spec version of its Model C.
- The vehicle won’t be Foxconn-branded, but instead sold under another brand thanks to contract manufacturing.
- Production is expected to take place at the former Lordstown Motors factory in Ohio.
Foxconn—yes, the same company that builds the iPhone you might be reading this on—is gearing up to become a real player in the American EV market. And just like its gig with Apple, the company plans to build the product while letting someone else market and sell it.
The Taiwanese tech giant recently announced that it’s prepping its first U.S.-market EV for sale, the Foxtron Model C. But don’t get it twisted, because you’re not going to see a “Model C” on dealer lots. Instead, it’ll take advantage of a long-standing auto industry workaround, contract manufacturing, to put the Model C up for sale under some yet-to-be-named mystery brand. Think Fisker Ocean–produced by Magna—but hopefully a lot better.
News of the Model C launching stateside under another automaker comes from Jun Seki, the former Nissan exec that now steers Foxconn’s EV unit. According to a report from Automotive News, Seki confirmed that the brand’s intentions during a sideline conversation at the Taipei Mobility Mega Show.
Here’s the scoop from Automotive News:
The company has a U.S. client, and the customer will start selling the Model C this year, he said.
Seki declined to name the customer, keeping with Foxconn’s canon of confidentiality as a contract manufacturer. But the U.S.-spec crossover grabbing eyeballs at this month’s Taiwan 360° Mobility Mega Show foreshadows what’s in store. It has a wavy side crease, funky hood air vent, wraparound headlamps, panoramic sunroof and huge vertical infotainment screen.
Indeed, Foxconn is jumping into the international auto industry amid swirling speculation it will get a big lift by partnering with Nissan Motor Co., Honda Motor Co., Mitsubishi Motors Corp., or even a combination of all three, to work on next-generation software-defined EVs.
Here’s the kicked: The Model C is already on sale elsewhere in the world thanks to the magic of badge engineering. In Foxconn’s home market of Taiwan, it’s sold as the Luxgen n7. But in a world where geopolitical tensions and tariffs are causing waves of news every single day, it’s unlikely that Foxconn would just import the Taiwanese-built Model C into the U.S., right?
Right. That’s why it’s setting up shop at an old manufacturing plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Yep, that’s the exact same plant where General Motors used to build the Chevy Cavalier, Cobalt and a myriad of other GM models stemming way back to the late 1960s (like the Chevy Bel Air, Impala and others). GM sold the plant to the now-defunct Lordstown Motors, who sold the plant to manufacturing partner Foxconn in 2022.
Foxconn has wanted to get into the EV game for a while. It makes sense, too, considering the company’s insane supply chain capabilities: batteries, electronics, EV motors. Hell, it already makes half of the components you need to build an EV, anyway. That means blank slate to full product on a schedule that most OEMs could only dream of.
It’s not clear what brand Foxconn has lined up to sell its Model C stateside just yet. Foxconn has already tapped Mitsubishi to sell its Model B in Australia, though neither brand has formally announced any such news for the U.S. market. All we know is that Foxconn says it has a U.S. customer that plans to sell the Model C later this year and that its factory could pump out an annual volume of nearly half-a-million cars per year (plus some all-electric farm tractors). For context, that’s more vehicles than BMW produced at its Spartanburg assembly plant, which leads the U.S. as the largest automotive exporter by value.
Given how messy, expensive and uncertain EV production has become lately, don’t be too surprised if other OEMs start looking to letting Foxconn into the henhouse. More and more automakers are looking to domesticate production of vehicles thanks to tariffs, so something like contract manufacturing could be a big hit for brands like Foxconn—at least in the short-term.
