During his address to a recent industry gathering in Windsor, Ont., Rick Rajaie, Foxconn’s vice-president of North American operations, made a point of highlighting his dual citizenship.
“Today, I have a real agenda and a hidden agenda,” he said. The “real agenda” focused on a slide presentation of Foxconn’s development into an international electronics giant and recent foray into automotive. Rajaie joined Foxconn about 17 months ago and currently steers the company’s electric vehicle business in the United States, which includes a contract manufacturing plant in Ohio, building EVs for Fisker Inc., and Lordstown Motors.
The list includes: China’s GAC, Geely, Chery, SAIC Motor and BYD Auto; Vietnam’s VinFast; Amazon’s Zoox, Inc.; California’s Faraday Future, Rivian and Lucid. Governments in Canada and the United States, he noted, are “pushing for more nontraditional [automakers]. It will be a very profitable course.”