Stellantis & Foxconn To Announce New Partnership To Build Electric Vehicles For China:

Stellantis and Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn will announce a new strategic partnership tomorrow morning. The Tuesday announcement comes a year after then Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) had planned to set up a joint venture with Foxconn to develop and manufacture new electric and “connected” cars in China.

For those who aren’t familiar with connected cars, these are vehicles that are able to communicate bi-directionally with other systems outside of the car. A connected car has its own connection to the internet via a wireless local area network (WLAN) and does a number of things using internet capabilities like using an application to start your vehicle, conducting checks on the vehicle, helping navigation give you up-to-the-minute updates on traffic flow, being able to help find your vehicle, allowing passengers to run various infotainment, and even being able to relay information to several future autonomous driving capabilities.

China has a market that Stellantis is focused on gaining more market in. Carlos Tavares, the CEO for Stellantis stated in January that he had created a task force to find out “what went wrong” for FCA and PSA in China, where each company has had weak sales. The Jeep® brand already has a strong brand recognition in the marketplace, but has never taken off like the automaker has wanted it to with the launch of the Chinese-built Renegade, Compass, Cherokee, and Chinese-exclusive Grand Commander.

While Chrysler continues to sell the Pacifica in the Chinese market, it recently gained popularity thanks to Chinese-based AutoX using a fleet of self-driving driverless Pacificas known as RoboTaxis. Sources close to MoparInsiders have even told us that the Chrysler brand will more than likely be recieving a rebadged version of the GAC Aion LX all-electric crossover.

The two companies will hold their conference call will be held at 5:45 a.m. EDT / 11:45 a.m. CEST / 5:45 p.m. CST, to announce the partnership and answer the medias questions. We will be discussing details after the event.

Currently, Foxconn has been talks with several other electric car automakers including Faraday and Fisker Automotive.