Would You Buy a Car From the Company That Builds iPhones?

If you know the name Foxconn, it’s almost certainly through its most visible manufacturing effort: the smartphones the company has made in abundance over the years, most prominently Apple iPhones. But Foxconn has also become increasingly diversified in recent years, including a collaboration with Nvidia announced earlier this year. Now, the company has taken a big step towards another market as its first EV goes on sale.

At Reuters, Wen-Yee Lee and Eduardo Baptista reported that Foxconn’s first production electric vehicle — the product of a joint venture with the Taiwanese automaker Yulon under the name Foxtron Vehicle Technologies — was formally launched this week. That EV is the Bria, which Reuters noted is the first Taiwanese EV intended for customers around the world. This vehicle began its life as a prototype under the name “Model B.”

This follows an announcement earlier this month that Foxtron would acquire part of Yulon’s business — specifically, Yulon’s Luxgen marque — at a deal valued at just under $25 million. Nikkei Asia reported that the deal would increase Foxconn’s presence in Taiwan’s domestic automotive market.

An anonymous source cited in Nikkei Asia’s reporting compared Foxconn’s move into EVs to some other high-profile companies making forays into hardware. They told Nikkei Asia that this deal “would provide an opportunity for Foxtron to show its clients and potential clients what the optimization of its designs and integration of software and hardware can achieve in a car.”

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As for what Foxconn is getting with its acquisition of Luxgen, CleanTechnica’s Raymond Tribdino — who had experience working at Yulon for several years — pointed out that the marque faced a particular dilemma, writing that “the challenge is carving out a distinct identity that leverages both its Taiwanese heritage and technological partnership with Foxconn.”

Can the new ownership pull this off while also becoming a global EV player? It’s a daunting task.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…