iPhone manufacturer wants tie-up with Nissan as Honda merger plans evaporate

Nissan and Honda’s plans to merge have hit the skids, while a new potential partner has emerged on the scene.

The Financial Times reports Taiwanese company Hon Hai Precision Industry – better known as Foxconn, Apple’s main contract electronics manufacturer for the iPhone – is keen to work with Nissan.

While Foxconn’s interest in Nissan has been reported on previously, this is the first time the Taiwanese firm has publicly stated its plans.

However, it doesn’t necessarily plan to acquire Renault’s existing 36 per cent stake in Nissan, which includes 18.7 per cent in a French trust. And even if Renault did want to sell its stake to Foxconn, Nissan has the first right of refusal.

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“We did have talks about acquiring a stake in [Nissan],” Foxconn chairman Young Liu told reporters, per The Financial Times’ report.

“If [taking a stake] is necessary for co-operation, we will consider it, but buying shares is not our main goal. Our main goal is co-operation.”

Such co-operation could see Foxconn contracted to produce vehicles for Nissan or even Renault or Honda, according to Mr Liu.

The Foxconn boss told reporters he had approached both Nissan and Honda about potential cooperation, with The Japan Times reporting it also plans to announce a new Japanese customer for its own electric vehicle (EV) contract manufacturing business this quarter.

Nissan has effectively walked away from merger discussions with Honda due to growing differences, with the former reportedly not wanting to become a subsidiary of the latter.

The Financial Times reports Jun Seki, chief strategy officer for Foxconn’s EV division and a former Nissan executive, met with Renault boss Luca de Meo in December 2024 to discuss acquiring shares held in the trust.

This reportedly triggered panic within Nissan and led to the negotiations with rival Honda. When these fell apart, Bloomberg reported word from Nissan sources that the carmaker would instead look for a partner “from the technology sector and US-based”.

The impact of this failed merger may be seen in Nissan and Honda’s quarterly financial results, set to be released today.

Foxconn already has a presence in the automotive world via a joint venture with Taiwan’s biggest carmaker, Yulon, a company which Nissan had a partnership with for decades.

In 2021, Foxconn announced it would sell electric vehicles under the Foxtron brand, referring to itself as the “Android of EV” – in contrast with Tesla, which it considered to be the “iPhone of EV”.

In order to bring the Android model to electric vehicles, Foxconn planned to make its EV architecture open to other car manufacturers to access, program and modify.

But despite subsequently revealing a sprawling range of EVs, many of which were supposed to go on sale by the end of 2024, Foxconn has only ended up providing contract manufacturing services to Taiwanese brand Luxgen, in addition to building buses.

Plans to build vehicles for Lordstown and Fisker in the US were dashed by the bankruptcies of those two companies, with Lordstown suing Foxconn for allegedly failing to follow through on its investment.

The Taiwanese company hasn’t been without other controversy, with the company the subject of an exposé by The Verge, which found a massive factory it built in the US to employ 13,000 people ended up mostly unfinished and unutilised.

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