Foxconn sells EV factory in Ohio
Foxconn sold the land and buildings for approximately $88 million and EV-related machinery and equipment for an additional $287 million, based on filings to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The buyer of the 6.2 million square foot site is an entity named Crescent Dune LLC, described by Foxconn as an “existing business partner”. However, according to public records, the company was founded in Delaware less than two weeks before the transaction.
Foxconn initially purchased the facility from now-bankrupt US electric vehicle startup Lordstown Motors in 2022 for $230 million. At the time, chairman Young Liu described it as the “most important electric vehicle manufacturing and R&D hub in North America”. Foxconn then built electric tractors for Monarch at the US facility. However, plans to produce EVs at scale failed to materialise, with several of Foxconn’s EV partners subsequently filing for bankruptcy.
“The overall EV industry is too weak. The North American EV industry capacity is much larger than the actual market demand at this moment. A move to revitalise the Lordstown facility was necessary,” a person close to Foxconn told Nikkei Asia.
The move to now re-sell the plant apparently comes amid a strategic shift away from EV manufacturing, while Foxconn is planning to repurpose the facility for artificial intelligence data centre operations. A Foxconn spokesperson confirmed to Nikkei Asia that the site would become an AI data centre and said: “The purpose is to provide greater flexibility and revitalise assets in Lordstown to focus on the company’s AI data centre business strategy, especially to help our clients to speed up the building of AI servers and AI data centres in the US.”
However, that does obviously not mean Foxconn is moving away from electric vehicle production altogether, just in the US. Just as an example, it was recently reported that the Taiwanese company is looking into manufacturing EVs at Nissan’s Oppama plant in Japan. Nissan has confirmed it will end vehicle production at its Oppama plant in Japan by the end of fiscal year 2027 (March 2028), and a partnership with Foxconn seems likely. The company is also developing and building an electric car for Mitsubishi.
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