Contract Manufacturing | 南港展覽館二館, 18 October 2021 — Three Cars With the Group's Own Badge on the Nose

At 10:18 on the morning of 18 October 2021, in Hall 2 of the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, Hon Hai put three vehicles on a stage: a crossover, a saloon and a city bus. The start time was picked to match the date, and the date was the birthday of the group's founder, 郭台銘. They were called Model C, Model E and Model T, and the badge across the nose read FOXTRON. Foxtron is 鴻華先進科技, formed in November 2020 by Hon Hai and the Taiwanese carmaker Yulon (裕隆), which folded in 華創車電, the engineering house Yulon had run since 2005. Hon Hai and Yulon hold roughly 46 and 44 per cent of it today. A contract manufacturer showing cars of its own looks like a company changing sides. That was not the pitch. The platform on stage was MIH, an open electric-vehicle architecture: Hon Hai would supply the chassis, the electronics and the software, and a carmaker would put its own badge on the finished vehicle. Yulon's Luxgen (納智捷) was named as the first customer to do it. Model E, the long saloon, was styled by Pininfarina in Turin. Model C was promised for under NT$1 million. Model T was a low-floor bus carrying a 400 kWh pack. The bus arrived first. Foxtron began selling Model T in 2022, and it now runs in ordinary service for 大都會客運 in Taipei, on routes including the 612, as well as in 高雄 and 台中. Model C took longer. It reached the road as the Luxgen n⁷, unveiled in October 2022 and delivered to customers from March 2024. Then the arrangement folded in on itself. In December 2025 the boards of Yulon and Foxtron agreed that Foxtron would buy Luxgen outright for NT$787.6 million, subject to clearance by Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission. The platform had bought its own first customer. Foxtron's management said the n⁷ would be the last car sold under the Luxgen name, with later models carrying Foxtron's own. Hall 2 is at 經貿二路 in 南港, open only when a show is running, and nothing of that morning is left inside it. The results are easier to find on the street. The cover photograph shows a Model C on a motor show stand in Bangkok in March 2022, five months after the Taipei launch. The second image is a Model T in 大都會客運 livery, signed for route 612. Photos: Navigator84, CC BY-SA 4.0; 臺北市公共運輸處, Attribution; both via Wikimedia Commons.