Struggling EV company Lordstown has completed the sale of its Ohio plant to Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles Apple’s iPhone. The factory, which sold for $230 million, will now be the site of a joint venture between the two companies†
The deal was originally supposed to be closed last month, but Lordstown kept pushing the deadline. If the sale wasn’t completed by May 18, the company would have to repay the $200 million Foxconn had made as a down payment — an amount Lordstown has said it doesn’t have.
The new joint venture will be called MIH EV Design LLC and will be 55 percent owned by Foxconn and 45 percent by Lordstown. Foxconn will pledge $100 million to the joint venture, including a $45 million loan to Lordstown, to build a line of electric pickup trucks. Since Lordstown Motors bought it from General Motors in 2019, it has put in about $240 million in work to get the plant ready for the construction of its electric pickup truck, the Endurance.
The deal gives Foxconn its first auto factory and a significant new presence in the US – one that the company will use to establish itself as a global electric vehicle automaker. Foxconn previously announced a massive LCD panel manufacturing facility in Wisconsin, but has failed to deliver on the numerous promises it made to that state.
Foxconn has talked a lot over the past year about expanding into electric vehicles as a way to diversify away from consumer electronics. It has struck deals with the likes of Geely, China’s largest privately-owned carmaker, as well as Fisker Inc., a California EV startup that has yet to create an electric vehicle. Foxconn has also developed its own electric vehicle platform that it plans to sell to other automakers.
