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In the current era of the popularity of electric cars, many enterprises are looking forward to getting a piece of the pie in this industry. According to foreign media reports, Fiat Chrysler (FCA) is planning to set up a joint venture with Foxconn, a high-tech company in Taiwan, to jointly develop and produce electric cars, and will take the lead in the Chinese market. In response to this matter, the Fiat Chrysler (FCA) Group also issued a document confirming the plan.

According to a public trading document, the joint venture will be more than 50 per cent owned by the FCA group, while Hon Hai will hold no more than 40 per cent directly and indirectly. In the partnership, FCA Group is mainly responsible for automobile manufacturing, while Hon Hai is responsible for supporting electronic technology, including hardware and software. According to the data, Hon Hai is the parent company of Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of Apple iPhone.

According to sources, there are still many details of the current agreement between the two sides, and the cooperation is expected to be completed in the first quarter of this year, when Hon Hai's Hong Kong-listed company Hongteng will also participate in the cooperation. In addition, the source also mentioned that the two sides have been discussing cooperation for seven or eight months.

In the field of electrification, the development of FCA is later than that of most car companies. Now, in the face of the most stringent emission policies in Europe, FCA has to accelerate the development in this area. Including the previous merger with PSA Group, hoping to cope with the development and changes of the automobile industry in the future through cooperation. Compared with FCA Group, PSA Group has launched a number of new energy models at the Paris Motor Show in 2018, but it is also an urgent transformation.

It was also reported earlier that FCA was in talks with two troubled electric car startups, Faraday Future (FF) and Seres (formerly known as SF Motors), to use their technology to produce electric cars to accelerate their electric vehicle ambitions.

As to why Foxconn Group is chosen to cooperate, it is not surprising. In recent years, Foxconn has made a number of investments in the automotive sector, including car-hailing giant DiDi, as well as Baiteng and Xiaopeng of China's new car companies. In addition, Foxconn has also invested in the domestic battery giant Ningde era.

However, Liu Yangwei, chairman of Foxconn, has said that the company still focuses on contract manufacturing, focusing on three key areas: electric vehicles, digital medicine and advanced robots, but will not enter the field of car assembly.

In his view, the domestic new energy market is currently the largest in the world, so the volume of business will be very large, even if the overall market demand is generally low, coupled with the government began to gradually reduce subsidies, resulting in a decline in sales in the domestic electric car market. However, he added that in the future, the auto business will only account for 10% of the company's overall sales, so the overall performance will have little impact on the company.

In fact, there are many companies that cross the border into the automotive industry, including Apple, which manufactures Foxconn, and has been doing research in the field of self-driving, as well as Skyworth, Dyson, Sony, etc., but Dyson found that electric cars were not so easy to do and decided to quit halfway.

With the change of times, more and more enterprises have entered the field of electric vehicles, but with the withdrawal of subsidies and the decline in sales, the new power of Chinese car-building companies have accelerated to enter the knockout stage of the industry. FCA and PSA, which have already lost their market advantage in China, can only seek more blessing.

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