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44 PCB007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2023 Introduction You probably haven't heard of Foxtron, but if you follow electric vehicles (EVs), you will soon. is is Foxconn's EV startup, created in partner- ship with Yulon Group (YLM), a Taiwanese car manufacturer of NISSAN designs. In 2021, the company introduced three EV models in Tai- wan: a sedan Model E (sold by Yulon), a sport utility vehicle (SUV) Model C (Figure 1), and a passenger-transit bus Model T. In 2022, Fox- Can You Build EVs Like PCs? tron introduced a new all-terrain utility pickup Model V and a lower-cost Model B sedan. ough the company will begin produc- ing these vehicles in Taiwan, the company has plans to roll out production on a global scale. Its bigger plan is to pivot into a hyper-flexible company that focuses on working behind the scenes to become the No. 1 EV manufacturer, even if nobody knows who built the vehicle they're driving. The Big Picture is is organized by a Foxconn consortium called Mobility in Harmony (MIH). e MIH Consortium runs the Open EV Alliance, a new conglomerate built on the principles that Fox- conn pioneered in building consumer prod- ucts like PCs and smartphones. MIH hopes to foster innovation and collaboration to lower entry barriers for alliance partners. As Fox- conn passed $216 billion in revenue, there is a lot of confidence that this success story can be duplicated in EVs. My Perspective I am writing about this topic from a unique point of view, as I was a chief technology officer in one of Foxconn's business units for several years—one of the few non-Chinese employed by Foxconn. I was also one of the few Western- ers to meet Terry Gou in Taiwan in 1983 when he was just starting out in the electronics com- ponent business. At the time, I was managing Happy's Tech Talk #17 by Happy Holden, I-CONNECT007 Figure 1: Foxtron, a joint venture between Foxconn and Yulon via the MIH Consortium, prototype vehicles in 2021 and 2022 1-2 .