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Source: Smart Car Reference
Just after being exposed as an OEM Apple car, Foxconn ushered in another latest development in the field of car manufacturing:
$230 million won the car factory, and the transaction party is Lordstown, a new American car manufacturer founded in 2018.
In addition to the $230 million purchase, Foxconn also sent Lordstown a $465 million investment + loan spree. Therefore, in order to win the car factory, Foxconn paid a total of 695 million US dollars in the entire transaction, equivalent to 4.7 billion yuan.
Of course, the spree cannot be given away for nothing. The trading conditions are as follows:
Formed a joint venture with Lordstown to develop new models based on Foxconn’s MIH electric platform.
So far, Foxconn’s “Android Dream” in the field of car manufacturing has made substantial progress.
There is also new news. When asked about market rumors of OEM Apple cars, Foxconn gave a “no comment” response.
DDDD now…
4.7 billion won the car factory
The news comes from the transaction party Lordstown, an American electric vehicle manufacturer founded in 2018. The trading facility is located in Ohio, USA.
The deal started in November last year. After seven months of negotiation and paperwork, the terms of the deal were finally announced today. According to the deal, the factory was sold to Foxconn for $230 million, with a series of investment conditions attached. :
First, after the transaction is completed, Foxconn will take over the factory, and all employees of the factory will join Foxconn. The two parties also signed an OEM contract, and Foxconn will produce its model Endurance pure electric pickup for Lordstown.
Second, Foxconn will invest an additional $100 million in the cash-strapped Lordstown and provide $27 million in operating and expansion costs. In addition, Foxconn has purchased $50 million in Lordstown stock.
Finally, in order to support Lordstown’s production plan, Foxconn decided to form a joint venture with Lordstown: MIH EV Design LLC, which will develop electric vehicle products based on Foxconn’s Mobility-in-Harmony (MIH) open source platform released in October 2020.
In addition to this, Foxconn provided Lordstown with a $45 million loan to meet Lordstown’s initial capital commitment to the joint venture.
That’s all there is to this deal.
From the perspective of transaction conditions, Foxconn’s acquisition of the factory paid much more than the 230 million US dollars the factory paid for.
What does Foxconn want to do by paying three times more than the original price for a factory?
The secret is the MIH open source platform mentioned above. What Foxconn really wants to buy is not a factory, but the first mass production partner of the MIH open source platform.
So here comes the question:
What is the origin of this MIH open source platform that makes Foxconn attach so much importance?
Foxconn’s transformation into car manufacturing has been preparing for many years
To answer this question, let’s look back at Foxconn’s foray into auto manufacturing.
Although it has not appeared in the field of car manufacturing for a long time, from the perspective of Foxconn’s early preparations and accumulation, it is a real “newcomer and veteran”. Looking back at Foxconn’s car manufacturing, we can probably sort out three stages:
The first stage: automotive components foundry.
As early as 2005, Foxconn purchased all the shares of Taiwan’s Si’an Tai Electric Industry with 370 million yuan. Since then, it has officially set foot in the OEM production of automotive components. The main products are various types of wiring harnesses and electronic products for vehicles.
In the following ten years, Foxconn has successively won orders for electronic components from major OEMs, including but not limited to mainstream automakers such as Tesla, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz.
It can be found that Foxconn at this stage mainly exists as a foundry of automotive electronic components, and does not involve the manufacture of complete vehicles.
The second stage: the whole industry layout.
Around 2015, the new forces of car manufacturing ushered in a climax, and Foxconn is also at this outlet to carry out the layout of the whole industry of new energy vehicles.
It was also in 2015 that Harmony Futeng was established as a joint venture with the then Harmony Automobile and Tencent, and the first shot to enter the new energy vehicle industry was fired.
Since then, Foxconn has successively invested in Didi, Ningde Times and Xiaopeng Motors to make layouts in the fields of batteries, complete vehicles and travel.
It is a pity that in 2016, due to high-level entanglements, Harmony Forteng was split into Byton Motors and Aiways, and Foxconn also withdrew from Harmony Forteng. Later, Foxconn injected $200 million into Byton Motors to help Byton advance mass production, but no follow-up progress has been reported since.
At this stage, although the joint venture Harmony Forteng has not been resolved, the more significant significance is that Foxconn has completed the layout of the entire industry chain of new energy vehicles, and also laid the foundation for the subsequent MIH platform.
The third stage: Join hands with Yulon to launch the MIH platform.
In October 2020, on Foxconn Technology Day, Foxconn launched the MIH electric platform, and at the same time came up with Foxconn’s car-making plan: MIH Alliance.
The biggest feature of this MIH platform is that it is open source. In short, it is to include players in the new energy vehicle industry chain to create a standardized platform suite that combines software and hardware.
According to public information, as of the end of last year, there were nearly 2,000 members of the MIH Alliance, including industry leaders such as CATL and BYD Electronics. Moreover, OEMs such as BAIC Blue Valley and Geely have also become Foxconn’s car-making partners. .
Based on the MIH platform, Foxconn’s role is still OEM, but this OEM is not another OEM, and the right to speak on the MIH platform is in the hands of Foxconn.
In other words, what Foxconn provides is a standardized template that integrates the underlying software and hardware, and the OEM only needs to make personalized changes according to their own needs.
This idea is a bit like OEM production in the era of smartphones. The operating systems and basic hardware of various manufacturers have been finalized. The biggest difference is the brand and configuration parameters.
The identity of Foxconn has become the Android of the new energy vehicle era.
The subsequent development also confirms Foxconn’s car-building ideas. In 2021, Foxconn will launch three prototype cars based on the MIH platform: Model C, Model E and Model T, including sedans, SUVs and electric buses.
At the same time as the product launch, Foxconn also officially revealed its attitude towards car manufacturing: 3 prototype cars are mainly used as a reference for car companies, and then car companies can make personalized adjustments according to their own requirements.
It’s almost a complete OEM route.
Here we can answer why Foxconn’s three new models have not been mass-produced so far: since they appear as a model room, who has seen which developer mass-produce the model room?
All sorted out, why Foxconn attaches so much importance to the MIH platform, the answer is very clear:
In the era of smartphones, Foxconn, an Apple foundry, has rapidly grown into the “OEM emperor” in the media’s mouth, but in terms of industrial value, Foxconn’s distribution of profits is extremely meager. ability.
For OEM car manufacturing, what Foxconn wants to earn is not only hard-earned money, but also more right to speak in the process of profit distribution.
The MIH platform is the scepter.
What other mobile phone industry chain companies have entered the automotive industry?
Finally, Foxconn’s entry into the automotive field can also see a general trend:
In the new energy vehicle market, more and more companies in the mobile phone supply chain are starting to turn to the automotive supply chain track.
The most representative Qualcomm, in the era of smartphones, the Snapdragon processor has become the first choice of many mobile phone manufacturers, and it is almost standard for Android flagships, including Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo, which are deeply bound to Qualcomm.
In the era of smart cars, Qualcomm’s layout mainly revolves around the two cores of intelligent driving and digital cockpit:
In terms of intelligent driving, the Qualcomm Snapdragon Ride platform will be released in 2020, and it has already received orders from Great Wall, which will provide the underlying hardware support for the latter’s high-end models.
For the digital cockpit with faster progress, the SA8155P cockpit chip released by Qualcomm, known as the industry’s strongest mass-produced cockpit SoC chip, has been installed on many models such as Xiaopeng and Weilai.
In addition, Arcsoft Technology, the first AI stock on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, was previously the largest label supplier of AI vision head for Android mobile phones, and its vision algorithms are applied to mainstream models such as Huawei and Xiaomi.
In 2016, Arcsoft Technology began to enter the automotive field. Relying on its visual processing experience accumulated in the mobile phone era, Arcsoft Technology began to develop in the fields of driver monitoring, blind spot monitoring, and high-level autonomous driving. The financial report shows that in the first quarter of this year, Arcsoft’s revenue in the field of intelligent driving reached 20.1 million yuan.
In addition, there is another player that has to be mentioned – Luxshare Precision – Like Foxconn, it is also an OEM company for Apple.
In February this year, Luxshare Precision announced that it has signed a cooperation agreement with Chery to form a joint venture company whose main business is the R&D and manufacturing of new energy vehicles.
By the way, I would like to add here that Wang Laichun, the founder of Luxshare Precision, was a factory girl who came out of Foxconn at that time. The most well-known before is the order to grab Apple with Foxconn.
And now, they are about to meet again on the car-making track.
(Disclaimer: This article only represents the author’s point of view and does not represent the position of Sina.com.)
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