To be or not to be. Racine County continues to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Lake Geneva Reginoal News, 9/30/2021
"After months of careful evaluation, Foxconn will work to acquire pre-existing manufacturing operations in Lordstown, Ohio for the initial production of electric vehicles for our customers and partners. Existing automobile manufacturing facilities, infrastructure, employees, and location in Ohio with robust supply chain resources will give Foxconn speed to market that meets our customer’s needs for production by end of 2023," reads a statement from Foxconn Technology Group.
According to Foxconn, its massive and still mostly empty Mount Pleasant property could in the future "serve as a ... location for additional investment for Foxconn’s electric vehicle growth in the United States."
"Everybody loves a moonshot," founder and CEO Steve Burns told NPR in January 2020. "And we are a moonshot, but we've been in orbit at least."
It was bathed in hype, including an unveiling with President Trump at the White House, and it was showered in cash from investors.
But production timelines kept getting delayed. This spring an investment firm that had bet Lordstown stock would fall accused the startup of fraud for overhyping its preorders and setting unrealistic timelines. And last month Ford unveiled an electric version of the F-150, which will compete head-to-head with Lordstown's vehicle and is promising to undercut its price.
Then Lordstown revealed it needed even more cash to actually produce its vehicles, and was at risk of going bankrupt within a year. And this week it admitted that some preorders had been exaggerated — and the CEO and founder, along with his chief financial officer, abruptly resigned.
7/8/2021 update, "Four years in, Foxconn still hoping to hit a bullseye", starts here.
In March, just weeks after it was announced that Fisker was considering partnering with Foxconn to produce electric vehicles, Foxconn Chairman Young Liu said that the company's Mount Pleasant property was in the running for being the hub of North American electric car manufacturing. He said a decision would be made by July.
6/6/2021 update starts here.
Construction Equipment, 6/4/2021
Mount Pleasant’s Foxconn plant says it plans to announce July 1 whether its Racine County site will be used to assemble 250,000 Fisker-brand electric vehicles. Foxconn’s chairman said in March that those cars will either be built in the U.S. or Mexico.
Original 3/16/2021 post starts here.
Racine Journal Times, 3/16/2021
“I took over the Wisconsin task, and I need to make it a viable one, so I need to find a product that fits that location,” Liu said. “Whether it’s Wisconsin or Mexico, it’s not political, it’s business from my perspective."
Sounds like
to Retiring Guy.
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