Mitsubishi Fuso & Foxconn announce electric bus partnership
Back in June, Japanese business news service Nikkei reported that Foxconn was allegedly close to signing a supply contract with Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation for fully electric buses. Now the rumours have been confirmed: both companies have announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore strategic cooperation in the field of zero-emission mobility.
The focus is on the bus business: the two subsidiaries Mitsubishi Fuso Bus Manufacturing and Foxtron Vehicle Technologies are to collaborate on the development, production, supply chain management and distribution of electric buses. As suspected back in June, this involves adapting the existing Foxtron Model T and Model U electric buses.
The Model T, which has nothing to do with the classic Ford of the same name, was unveiled in 2021 and is now in service in several Taiwanese cities, including the capital Taipei, as well as in Indonesia. The vehicle has the classic city bus length of 12 metres and is said to have a range of 400 kilometres.
The Model U, on the other hand, is a microbus that was unveiled in October 2024. The interior is modular and luxuriously appointed, as the following video shows. Depending on the seating configuration, it can carry up to 21 passengers. The official dimensions and technical data are not yet known, as the vehicle is still in prototype status.
For several years now, Foxtron has been developing ‘reference designs’ for vehicles that are not necessarily intended to go into series production in exactly this form. Rather, the Foxconn subsidiary Foxtron wants to use them to show what is possible with its own platform. Vehicle manufacturers can then approach Foxconn and customise their models based on such a reference design – as Daimler Truck subsidiary Fuso now plans to do. According to the press release, the jointly developed e-buses will subsequently be manufactured in Japan.
Foxconn became known worldwide as the contract manufacturer of the iPhone and is the largest electronics manufacturer in the world. For several years now, Foxconn has been trying to bring its IT and manufacturing expertise to the automotive industry. For example, the Foxtron automotive division is soon to build an electric car for Mitsubishi, and there are also rumours of joint electric car production with Nissan. In addition, Foxconn has been operating a joint venture with German supplier ZF since last year for passenger car chassis systems called ZF Foxconn Chassis Modules.
This article was first published by Florian Treiß for electrive’s German edition.
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