The Mobile in Harmony Open Electric Vehicle Platform (MIH Open EV Open Platform) held a partner conference and an overseas investment promotion conference today. During the conference, members announced their plans and ideas for future products, helping partners make strategic plans as early as possible, especially in overseas regions such as the United States and Thailand, and received support from manufacturers and platforms including Lordstown, PTT, Fisker, Aptera, Monarch, with a goal realizing a coalition effect by 2025.
After a year of trials, the MIH EV Alliance focused on the difficulties and trends of the new energy vehicle (NEV) industry. Through the collaboration of 16 working groups in autonomous driving, information security, electronic, and electrical architecture, etc., it seeks to achieve standardization and modularization. By gradually forming a complete vehicle, it will show its partners the way, actively integrate the strength of MIH members, and build a Foxconn EV supply chain.
Foxconn Chairman Young Liu stated that the transition to EVs is a once-in-a-century opportunity. Facing impending explosive growth, now is just the beginning. In the EV era, the most important key technologies include batteries, motors, electronic controls, plus software and semiconductors. Whomever masters these technologies first will be able to master the world of EVs.
MIH CEO, Jack Cheng, stated that in the future EV supply chain, Taiwan will not only act as the best relay station connecting China and the world, but also have an unshakable international position in the electronic components, innovation, and semiconductor industries. Taiwan has excellent performance in flattening and transparency, especially in freedom and flexibility of cooperation with Tier 1, 2, and 3 suppliers. Thu, it will be difficult to be ignored by the international market in the future.
Jack Cheng pointed out that the purpose of MIH is to establish an open standard and supply chain for EVs, so that members can freely choose to cooperate with different industry players to improve speed and reduce costs. Therefore, MIH adopted a five year plan of first officially introducing an open EV platform concept to the public in 2020 and then establishing the MIH Alliance in 2021.
Jack Cheng shared that Foxconn will release an Electric Vehicle Reference Design this year, launch Model C/Model E investment promotion conferences in various regions and, at the end of the year, there will be autonomous driving, including level 2 and level 4 reference designs developed based on the drive by wire API to provide a for a safe development environment for vehicles based on a zero-trust design concept, and an Electronic Electrical Architecture (EEA) chassis control test bench for zonal designs.
Jack Cheng emphasized that the MIH Alliance is expected to be ready to enter the market between 2023 and 2024 and achieve an alliance effect in 2025 to expand the export. Therefore, how to more effectively integrate important partners and resources and work together to develop Reference Designs will very important topics this year.
MIH's close partners are all present for support. Among them, Foxconn has an EV OEM manufacturing base in North America through the acquisition of the Lordstown plant in Ohio. President of Lordstown Motors, Edward Hightower, said that through cooperation with Foxconn, there will be huge synergies in vehicle development, procurement, and manufacturing, while developing new products on the MIH platform, sharing key components, sharing vehicle architecture and sharing engineering to further expand economies of scale.
Horizon Plus has been established as a joint venture between Arun Plus, an electric vehicle subsidiary of PTT Group (largest company in Thailand by market value), and Foxconn. In the future, it will provide OEM services to OEMs and brand in Thailand and ASEAN markets. PTT executive vice president, Ekachai Yimsakul, stated that everything is ready and future cooperation with Foxconn is a perfect partnership, achieving upstream and downstream integration, greatly shorten development time and reduce costs for customers, and ultimately benefiting end users of EVs.
Fisker, which has just partnered with Foxconn to solicit new car orders, also announced to its partners that "it is time for a revolutionary change in the automotive industry!" Chairman and CEO of Fisker Inc. in the U.S., Henrick Fisker stated that he is excited to deliver a new way of going out into the world and to witness this huge opportunity with people who want to disrupt what is almost the oldest industry in the world.
Representative revolutionary new car company Aptera Motors, features the world's first solar electric vehicle that does not need to be recharged, with a cruising range of 1,000 miles per full charge. The autonomous electric tractor launched by Monarch, an agricultural vehicle brand that leads the digital transformation of agriculture, utilizes a replaceable battery design and a fully automatic remote mode that, can not only be monitored remotely through a mobile phone or computer, but can also collect and analyze a large amount of crop data.
In addition, Foxtron, Gartner, and IHS, which have just delivered electric buses, also support MIH's future cooperation through actions. American Institute in Taiwan and Thailand Arun+ have also provided investment opportunities for MIH members and development plans in the Middle East and Southeast Asia are also in active progress. MIH hopes that through this event, it can better integrate with its partners and move forward together.
（Image：MIH）