When Foxconn set out to own 10 percent of the electric vehicle platform market by 2025, many thought it was a laughing matter, in their perception of Foxconn?" was just a smartphone maker?" . Yet if Tesla is seen as the Apple of the cellphone industry, then perhaps Foxconn aims to become the Google of the auto industry.

Tesla has been called the ?" the iPhone of electric cars." There are many similarities between them. Tesla fans will stand in long lines to buy the company's latest product, just like Apple supporters. Both eagerly await new software updates. Finally, both companies use ?" closed system?" work - only their products can have their software.

Tesla, on the contrary, has promised to sell software and components to other companies, but has never seen it actually happen, quite the opposite. Sandy Munro, Sandy?Munro, an automotive engineer specializing in machine tools and manufacturing, joined Ford Motor Co. in 1978, then started his own consulting firm, Munro & Associates, which specializes in lean design, disassembling automotive products to conduct research and suggest improvements and innovations. Ask Tesla for Nobe parts and the response?" No", because Tesla wouldn't sell them to an ?" insecure program," and it also does everything possible to prevent Root.

Being a manufacturer of Apple's iPhones, but Foxconn wants to be ?" Android of the EV world," or perhaps I should say the Google of EVs, with its platform product MIH benchmarked against Android. Licensing developers and other automotive companies to access its MIH open platform, an EV architecture that includes both the hardware and software to build EVs.

Foxconn hopes to use the ?" power of software?" and?" power of openness?" to change that. Using cell phones as an example, he mentioned how the iPhone helped Apple beat Nokia to become the king of that industry. However, Apple developed its own software and didn't allow anyone else to touch it, yet it was this strategy that caused it to lose its smartphone leadership to Android and its open source strategy. It was for the same reason that Apple lost the computer market to Microsoft in the first place.

If Tesla is the ?" iPhone of electric cars", then Hon Hai wants to be the ?" Android of EVs" by getting everyone to help it develop its EV platform. The strategy is a bit of an irony coming from the company that OEMs iPhones for Apple, but it also shows that Foxconn has really learned something during the OEM process.

In order to become ?" Android of electric cars," Hon Hai hopes to replicate the aggressive strategy Tesla has taken with its cars. Instead of letting them be ?" defined by hardware," Foxconn wants cars based on its platform to evolve, offering new features or improving old ones like range. The only difference compared to Tesla is that it accepts third-party contributions.

Wei argues that this strategy will help reduce vehicle depreciation, as Elon Musk said not long ago. More accurately, the Tesla CEO said that Tesla's products will grow with autonomous technology to become ?" appreciating assets."

We can almost hear Tesla's supporters laughing at this point: they think Tesla has the cutting-edge technology associated with autonomy. Foxconn has something to offer in that regard, too. In some ways, it may be more advanced than what Tesla has shown so far.

Wei said this open-source approach to the MIH open platform will allow for hardware and software ?" layering and isolation" so they can be developed independently. This collaborative development will lead to lower R&D costs.

While this may seem very difficult on the hardware side, it is worrisome on the software-related side, especially when it comes to autonomous driving. Anyone familiar with what hackers can do to some cars will be terrified. Anticipating this, Wei promises that the open-source platform for electric cars will have a high level of cybersecurity. The question is whether that's enough to make anyone feel comfortable traveling in their own open-source car.

The hardware component was introduced by Zuo Zisheng, Hon Hai's vice president and an executive with more than 35 years of experience in the automotive industry. Hon Hai's plan: to build cars for its partners. We may never see a Foxconn electric car -- or a Hon Hai car. And even if it does appear, as we've seen with Google's Nexus and Pixel smartphones, it'll be an outlier. Hon Hai hopes its platform will help develop and produce new vehicles, components and software.

Zuo Zisheng played a video showing that Foxconn's EV platform can have a wheelbase ranging from 2.75 meters to 3.10 meters, a wheelbase ranging from 1.59 meters to 1.70 meters, and ground clearance ranging from 12.6 centimeters to 21.1 centimeters. Three battery packs are available, and the EV can be RWD, FWD or AWD.

In terms of electric motors, Foxconn plans to offer at least three power choices for the front axle: 95 kW, 150 kW and 200 kW. The rear axle can have four power options: 150 kW, 200 kW, 240 kW and 340 kW. In other words, the MIH platform can accommodate everything from a small 95-kilowatt front-wheel drive to a 540-kilowatt all-wheel drive vehicle.

In the same strategy that Tesla has so far adopted only for the Model?Y, Foxconn has succeeded in reducing each of the seven front-suspension body panels and 27 rear longitudinal-rail components to a single casting.

At Hon Hai's Technology Day, Jerry?Hsiao Chai-Yau, Hon Hai's chief product officer (CPO), further clarified the point. The company has a 4,200-ton die-casting machine that currently produces battery cases for BMW, it said. Accordingly, Tesla currently uses a 5,500-ton IDRA die casting machine. Foxconn uses a special alloy that has high ductility, corrosion resistance, excellent casting formability, high strength, and requires no heat treatment. It's almost identical to the giant castings described by Elon Musk at Tesla Battery Day.

Foxconn has been involved in automotive manufacturing since 2007 and has been involved in core automotive technologies for more than a decade. For example, Foxconn has developed friction stir welding technology for use in smartphones, with the main advantage being improved heat dissipation for electronic components.

Some data show that battery packs account for 30 to 35 percent of the total production cost of an EV. In addition, the powertrain accounts for 20 to 25 percent, EEA (embedded electronic architecture) 15 to 20 percent, bodywork 13 to 15 percent, and other costs (wheels, tires, etc.) 10 to 12 percent. Of these costs, the body structure is one of the least important in an EV. The most relevant of these, the electronics part, is Foxconn's specialty. the MIH platform will be ready for 5G and 6G, AUTOSAR and ISO?26262 compliant, and ready for OTA updates and V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communications, and Hon Hai's progress on the electric motors will be significant.

Some companies have motors with integrated inverters and gearboxes in a 3-in-1 arrangement, while Foxconn's motors are a 6-in-1 solution that adds a DC to DC transformer, on-board charger and distributor to the package.

Foxconn also said it is making great progress on solid-state batteries with partners such as CATL and SES, a Silicon Valley battery company. Foxconn will sell solid-state batteries in 2024, hinting that they will be based on the MIH open platform. These new SSBs (solid-state batteries) will use LMNO (lithium-manganese-nickel-oxide) as the anode and SiC (silicon-carbon) as the cathode.

For the electrolyte, a metal oxide ceramic membrane that Foxconn has been working on since 2017. The additive will help increase battery cycle life by 10 percent, reduce weight by 50 percent, and shrink size by a little more than 16 percent. Whoever dominates solid-state batteries by 2025 will dominate the industry, according to Hsiao Tsai-You.

Hon Hai wants the battery management system (BMS) to be intelligent, based on a dual improvement approach of hardware and software. A cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) management system has been developed to achieve this goal.

Hon Hai's BMS will receive big data from each vehicle's battery pack, allowing it to continuously learn, optimize, and perform software upgrades in the background, all based on how each driver uses the EV. Hsiao Chai-You believes that the range will get longer and longer over time.

Hsiao said: Japan currently has an airport shuttle with L3-level autonomous driving that uses Hon Hai's technology.

Hon Hai may just be showing the tip of the iceberg of what it envisions for the auto industry. If all goes according to plan, that leaves few options for automakers: join or hide, or turn a blind eye. If MIH is successful, automakers that adopt it will be able to use the platform to deliver the cars their customers want. Those that skip it will have to be competitive enough to be a real alternative. Microsoft did try to have its own mobile operating system, but it has clearly failed.

This article comes from the authors of Automotive Home Car, and does not represent the viewpoint position of Automotive Home.