Model S Plaid

Make
Tesla
Segment
Sedan

Just last year, iPhone manufacturer Foxconn announced that it would enter the electric vehicle manufacturing industry with a new company called Foxtron, which showed off three concepts. Since then, the company has improved its creations by collaborating further with industry giants, most notably signing Pininfarina to pen its new designs. And although the company is still very new to this industry, it's already impressing us with what it has planned for the future.

There's a lot of drive and ambition here, and that point has only been reinforced with the news via CNBC that Foxconn's CEO says the company wants to one day build cars for Tesla.

"I hope one day we can do Tesla cars for Tesla," said Young Lio, CEO and chairman of Foxconn, adding that the company is targeting 5% of the global market share of electric vehicle manufacturing by 2025.

But why does the company want to build the Tesla Model S of the future if it already has its own cars in the pipeline? Well, those cars are not really in any pipeline at all. They are a showcase of what the company can do, and just as Foxconn doesn't produce its own iPhone alternative, the technology corporation wants to design and manufacture cars for other automakers.

Think of how Magna Steyr produces the Z4 for BMW and will soon begin producing the Fisker Ocean. Magna Steyr gets no recognition from the general public, but its processes and quality controls are exemplary to those in the manufacturing industry.

Foxconn wants the same reputation for making EVs but also offers the service of designing the vehicles. Foxconn "can design and build EVs that are good-looking and can stand up to safety," said Liu.

It says that it can cut the design time by half and cut a third of the development cost for an automaker. Those are impressive claims, especially considering that Foxtron was only founded last year.

There are going to be a lot more EV startups in the coming years, and Foxconn can help them save money - huge amounts of money. And if one of these new EV startups fails for whatever reason, Foxconn's reputation would be safe. As its expertise improves further and its facilities grow, the company could someday offer the service to Tesla. But would Tesla be interested?

Sure, it has its own gigafactories, but Tesla is arguably more a technology company than a car company. With the improved oversight of Foxconn's manufacturing, Tesla could improve its quality standards. The money it may save could be reassigned to that humanoid Optimus robot, neural chips, the Tesla Pi smartphone, or other more important projects that can better facilitate Elon Musk's next wild idea. Will it happen? Probably not for many years, if ever, but perhaps someday.

Perhaps when Tesla decides to launch a replacement for one of its current cars, or perhaps when an ill-conceived gamble turns into a share price-decimating poisoned chalice. Who knows? All we can say for sure is that there are a lot of companies sinking fortunes into the EV craze, and a lot of them are going to be winners, but more of them are going to be losers. We love our iPhones, so we sincerely hope Foxconn falls into the former camp.