Foxconn is stepping away from the electric tractor business, at least when it comes to California startup Monarch Tractor. The Taiwanese tech giant had been building Monarch’s self-driving, battery-powered tractors at its Ohio factory. But after Foxconn sold that plant to SoftBank, the partnership is over. Monarch CEO Praveen Penmetsa confirmed the split in a LinkedIn comment on Tuesday.
Penmetsa said Monarch worked with Foxconn to “build up inventory” ahead of the sale, so the company now has enough tractors and spare parts to meet customer demand for the next 12 months. He hinted that fresh manufacturing partnerships are on the way, along with “more Monarch-enabled products” hitting the market soon.
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The Ohio factory, once a General Motors plant, has had a turbulent run. Foxconn bought it from Lordstown Motors in 2022 with big talk of turning it into North America’s “most important electric vehicle manufacturing and R&D hub.” Monarch was one of just four companies Foxconn promoted as customers for its EV contract manufacturing business there.
But that vision has largely collapsed. Of those four companies, Monarch is the only one still in business. Lordstown Motors went bankrupt in 2023 after producing only a small batch of pickups with Foxconn. The other two, Fisker Inc. and IndiEV, never saw a single vehicle roll off the line before going under.
Monarch has had its bumps. It went through two rounds of layoffs last year and shifted focus to new customers after California’s wine industry, a major buyer of its tractors, took a hit.
Now, the plant is in SoftBank’s hands. Reports suggest it will be repurposed to make equipment for the Stargate AI project led by OpenAI and Oracle, marking a sharp pivot from EVs to artificial intelligence hardware. The big question: If the dream of a bustling EV hub in Ohio has fizzled, can Monarch’s AI-assisted tractors still plow their way to the future, without Foxconn?
