Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Company this week held a ground-breaking ceremony for a new NTD6bn (US$202m) electric vehicle (EV) battery centre in the island’s southern city of Kaohsiung, which is expected to play a key role in the company’s expansion in the automotive industry.
Hon Hai, also known as Apple’s leading contract manufacturer Foxconn, has ambitions of becoming a significant player in the global electric vehicle (EV) market and related supply chain through its newly established Foxtron Vehicle Technologies. It is positioning itself as a global EV contract manufacturer, having developed a dedicated EV platform – the MIH Open Platform, which it offers to customers.
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Last month the company agreed to acquire a former General Motors vehicle plant in Ohio from local buyout company Lordstown Motors Corporation in a deal worth US$230m.
The new EV battery centre, to be built in the Ho Fa Industrial Park, is scheduled to be operational in the first quarter of 2024 and will comprise a research and development (R&D) facility and a plant with an initial production capacity of 1 GWh of lithium-ion batteries for passenger cars and commercial vehicles, as well as for energy storage devices. The EV batteries will be developed and produced with the collaboration of MIH partners.
The MIH platform, which has 2,300 members including vehicle and component manufacturers, materials companies and research institutions, was developed three years ago with the aim of reducing production lead times for EVs and of helping to generate economies of scale among small-volume vehicle manufacturers.
Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said: “The Ho Fa Industrial Park centre is just the beginning of Hon Hai’s development of batteries in Taiwan. We hope to build a battery supply chain entirely in Taiwan, from battery materials to battery cells and battery packs. We hope to localise the whole supply chain. he Kaohsiung facility will play a crucial role in our company’s global EV business expansion.”
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By GlobalDataHon Hai said it planned to make further investments to make Kaohsiung a key testing ground for internet-of-vehicle technology.
