Nissan is reportedly back in discussions with Foxconn regarding EV assembly. Previous negotiations pertained to the Taiwanese company buying a major stake in the Japanese automaker after the prospect of a Honda-Nissan merger was abandoned. Foxconn (famous for building Apple iPhones) reportedly wanted to help Nissan with production and software development, with a bend toward all-electric vehicles. Now, Foxconn is allegedly interested in utilizing Nissan-owned facilities to build its own vehicles.
It’s not a secret that Nissan is looking to downsize at the moment. The company wants to streamline operations and reduce costs as it seeks a new partner. According to Japan’s Nikkei, this has opened up the door for negotiations that could lead to Foxconn utilizing Nissan’s Oppama plant as a venue to manufacture its own EVs.
Located in the Kanagawa prefecture city of Yokosuka, Nissan’s Japanese facility is quite large and presently employs over 4,000 people. In addition to assembly, it likewise serves as a development facility and comes with a test track to assist with R&D. This could make it an ideal venue to serve as an all-encompassing facility for Foxconn — which has expressed a desire to build EVs of its own for several years now.
The Oppama facility is also underutilized at present. Peak production is said to be capped at 240,000 vehicles annually and Nissan is estimated to only be using about half that at present. Due to the fact that many Japanese brands are considering shifting even more production to Western markets in a bid to avoid U.S. tariffs, the site is not assumed to see increased demand and presently focuses on smaller vehicles serving the Japanese market.
That could make it an ideal location for Foxconn to try its hand at large-scale vehicle manufacturing. While the company already helps build EVs for Yulon Motori, it is actively developing models of its own. It has likewise agreed to help Mitsubishi (which is already allied with Nissan) develop all-electric vehicles. Oppama could become the birthplace of some of those models while helping Nissan’s bottom line.
However, negotiations are reportedly in the early stages and we’ve seen things fall apart for Foxconn before. In the United States, Foxconn was supposed to manufacture EVs for Lordstown Motors in Ohio. That deal fell through following numerous scandals and Lordstown went bankrupt in 2023 after selling the former GM facility to Foxconn. The site was then supposed to become a venue for building Fisker EVs. But that company likewise went under the following year.
While we cannot fault Foxconn for those startups going bankrupt, it does underscore how unpredictable these industrial agreements sometimes pan out. The company has said it would like to build EVs of its own at the Ohio plant in the coming years. But this likely wouldn’t be able to serve the Asian market, necessitating additional production at a location like Nissan’s Oppama facility.
[Images: Nissan]
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