Report: Foxconn will partner with Cowin to produce a smart car

The race to China’s first truly-connected smart car is about to get even more crowded. According to a report in China’s 21st Century Business Herald, Foxconn and Chinese automaker Cowin have agreed to a partnership that would see the two produce a smart car together, and are currently looking for the right time to announce it.

Cowin is a subsidiary of China’s larger Chery group that’s focused directly on producing smart, connected cars for Chinese consumers in their 20s and early 30s. It already offers three vehicle models with in-dash touchscreens and smartphone integration aimed at China’s youth. But according to the report, the company hopes that Foxconn can help it capture this demographic better with its screen technology advantage. “Foxconn is an Apple supplier, and they’re leaders in screen technology,” a source at Cowin told the Herald.

Having high-quality screens will be important in the jointly-produced car, which Cowin envisions as featuring a wholly virtual HD dashboard. The car would also feature some virtual games, and additional screen-based technology like handprint recognition for keyless entry and starting.

The in-dash touchscreen interface in Cowin’s C3 and C3R models.

Neither Foxconn nor Cowin has yet confirmed the partnership officially, but Cowin’s CEO posted publicly on his Weibo account last year that Cowin was looking for internet and technology firms to collaborate with. According to the Herald‘s source at Cowin, several big internet firms including Xiaomi and Baidu got in touch. Discussions with those companies are reportedly ongoing, but an additional partnership is likely as Foxconn’s contribution to the smart car will be hardware-based and Cowin will need another partner to take charge of the software.

If Cowin does end up partnering with Foxconn to take on the smart car market, it will be facing stiff competition, including competition from its own partner. Foxconn has already partnered with Tencent and China Harmony to work on a smart car, and other tech firms including Alibaba, Baidu, and LeTV are also working on their own smart car projects in tandem with car manufacturers.

Both companies also face the challenge of producing a product for a market that, at least for the moment, doesn’t really exist. Many Chinese companies are betting that some combination of “smart”, “internet-connected”, and “electric” will be what it takes to conquer China’s auto industry in the future, but with no successful products yet on the market, it’s not clear what a great smart car offering would look like. Like several other companies, though, Cowin is betting that “affordable” will also have to be part of the equation. Cowin hopes that Foxconn’s scale and history of producing high-end goods at low cost will help it to make a smart car that China’s twenty-somethings both desire and can actually afford.