Monarch Tractors Won’t Be Built By Foxconn After Ohio Factory Sale

Foxconn will nary longer build electrical tractors for California startup Monarch Tractor aft nan Taiwanese tech elephantine precocious sold its Ohio mill to SoftBank.

Monarch CEO Praveen Penmesta confirmed nan news successful a LinkedIn comment Tuesday. He besides said his institution worked pinch Foxconn to “build up inventory” earlier nan waste of nan factory, noting his startup has “enough to meet customer request for nan adjacent 12 months, on pinch ample spare parts.”

“In nan coming weeks, we will beryllium sharing much astir our plans to present much Monarch-enabled products successful nan marketplace done caller manufacturing partnerships,” Penmesta wrote.

Following nan sale, SoftBank is expected to activity pinch Foxconn to usage nan mill to make instrumentality for nan Stargate AI task led by OpenAI and Oracle.

Foxconn purchased nan erstwhile General Motors mill from EV startup Lordstown Motors successful 2022. Young Liu, Foxconn’s chairman, said anterior to nan waste closing that nan installation was going to beryllium nan “most important electrical conveyance manufacturing and R&D hub successful North America.”

Monarch was 1 of 4 companies Foxconn promoted arsenic customers (or imaginable customers) of nan electrical conveyance statement manufacturing cognition it tried to found astatine nan erstwhile General Motors factory. Foxconn built a fewer 100 tractors for Monarch astatine nan plant, but nan startup has struggled. Last year, it went done two rounds of layoffs and had to quickly pivot to caller types of customers arsenic California’s vino manufacture crashed.

The different 3 companies Foxconn wanted to build vehicles for person each revenge for bankruptcy. While Foxconn made a fistful of Lordstown Motors pickups astatine nan plant, nan startup went nether successful 2023. The different 2 prospective customers were Fisker Inc. and a mini California startup called IndiEV. Foxconn ne'er built immoderate vehicles for those companies astatine nan factory, and they person besides some since gone retired of business.