Monarch tractors will not be built by Foxconn after the sale of Ohio factory

Foxconn will no longer build electric tractors for the Start -up Tractor in California after the Taiwanese technology giant recently sold its Ohio factory to SoftBank.

The CEO of Monarch, Praveen Penmetsa, confirmed the news in A LinkedIn Comment Tuesday. He also declared that his company had worked with Foxconn to “accumulate the inventory” before the sale of the factory, noting that his startup was “enough to meet customer demand for the next 12 months, as well as many spare parts”.

“In the coming weeks, we will share our plans more to introduce more monarch products on the market thanks to new manufacturing partnerships,” wrote Penmetsa.

After the sale, SoftBank should work with Foxconn to use the factory to make equipment for the Stargate AI project led by Openai and Oracle.

Foxconn bought the former General Motors factory from the startup EV Lordstown Motors in 2022. Young Liu, president of Foxconn, said before the sale of the sale that the installation was going to be the “manufacturing of the most important electric vehicles and Hub R&D in North America”.

Monarch was one of the four promoted companies that Foxconn has promoted as customers (or potential customers) of the electric vehicle manufacturing operation that he tried to establish in the former General Motors factory. Foxconn built a few hundred tractors for monarch at the factory, but the startup was struggling. Last year, it went through Two laps of layoffs And had to quickly rotate new types of customers as the California wine industry crashed.

The other three companies Foxconn wanted to build vehicles for having all filed for a bankruptcy. While Foxconn made a handful of Lordstown Motors microphones at the factory, the startup went in 2023. The other two potential customers were Fisker Inc. and a small Californian startup called Indiev. Foxconn has never built vehicles for these factory companies, and they both went bankrupt.

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