Foxconn does not normally care too much about style. Even its investor conferences are held at the drab concrete-block building that houses the Apple supplier’s headquarters in an industrial suburb of Taipei. But in March, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer put on a real show: hosting 500 executives at a chic event space in a historic factory building in the Taiwan’s capital.
The showpiece on stage was not the latest smartphone model but a gleaming steel and rubber prototype of a car chassis. It was the star of the first members’ meeting of MIH, an industry alliance founded by Foxconn to offer a complete software and hardware platform for making electric cars. And it was a statement of intent: the company that has been making your iPhone for more than a decade is now ready to make your car as well.
The advent of electric vehicles is turning the structure and inner workings of cars upside down. In the process, it is creating a much stronger fusion between two of the world’s biggest industries — autos and electronics.