Volkswagen appears to be moving forward with its plan to build an electric SUV and pickup under the Scout brand it inherited when it bought the International Harvester successor. IH is the company that built the original Scout in the 1960s. According to a report by car week (paywall) that was picked up by AutoblogVolkswagen sources say the company is in talks with Foxconn about building the Scout vehicles on a contract basis.
Volkswagen said in May that it planned to reintroduce the Scout off-road brand and create an independent company to build Scout-branded trucks and SUVs from 2026. Those vehicles will be designed, developed and manufactured in the United States for US customers.
If you’ve been reading the news lately, you know that Taiwanese Foxconn, best known for manufacturing the iPhone for Apple and upsetting Wisconsin residents after its plan to build a touchscreen factory in the Badger State has gone up in dust has been getting a lot of press lately as it tries to become a contract mechanic for auto companies.
It bills itself as an equal opportunity manufacturer. If you have a product that needs assembly, Foxconn is happy to do it for you. In October it said it wanted to building cars for Tesla one day and anyone who wants to put the production burden on their broad shoulders. Earlier this month, it announced a deal with the Sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia build cars in that country.
And where would Foxconn build these Scout vehicles? No one knows for sure, but a good guess would be in the former General Motors Lordstown plant it bought from GM in 2019. electric farm tractors there and also starts production of the Stamina electric pickup. Lordstown is a huge facility with lots of extra production space.
If Volkswagen looks to Foxconn to build its Scout vehicles, it clearly expects relatively low demand for them. These will be specialty vehicles capable of selling around 50,000 units a year – much less than would justify building a dedicated factory to produce them.
car week also says Volkswagen floated the idea of producing its Scout-branded vehicles with Magna Steyer, a well-known mechanic who builds vehicles for a number of customers, including the Jaguar I-Pace. It is a subsidiary of Magna International and has an interest in building a factory in the United States. We will, everybody wants to build electric car, solar panel and battery factories in the United States because of the substantial incentives offered by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The Scout vehicles may be low-volume products for Volkswagen, but getting the contract to build them would be a feather in Foxconn’s cap as it looks at ways to increase its use of the Lordstown facility. maximize. Good for Volkswagen and good for Foxconn. And of course it would meet the stipulations of the new EV federal tax credit which require all qualified vehicles to be ultimately assembled in the U.S. and use the correct battery materials and components. This sounds like a marriage made in heaven.
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