The South Korean group Hyundai wants to become the largest supplier of electric cars. Now a new factory in the USA is to be built for this purpose. It is not the first work of this kind.
VW competitor Hyundai wants to build an electric vehicle factory in the US state of Georgia for 5.54 billion dollars (about 5.24 billion euros).
In the planned plant in the southeastern United States, electric car batteries are also to be manufactured, as the Hyundai Motor Group announced on Saturday. Construction work is scheduled to begin in January 2023, and the first cars will roll off the assembly line in the first half of 2025. The planned investments would create more than 8,000 jobs, it said.
Visit from the US President
Hyundai’s announcement coincided with US President Joe Biden’s state visit to South Korea from Friday to Sunday. With additional production capacity for electric vehicles and batteries, the group aims to become one of the top three suppliers of battery-powered electric vehicles in the USA by 2026. The South Korean group is one of the ten largest car manufacturers with Hyundai Motor and the smaller subsidiary Kia.
The annual capacity of the new production facility near the port of Savannah is said to be 300,000 vehicles. Hyundai intends to announce which models will be built there for the US market at a later date. According to the information, the battery production will take place as part of a strategic partnership. No details were initially available on this either.
The automaker already has two plants in the US, one operated by Hyundai Motor in Alabama and the other by Kia in Georgia. The South Koreans want to achieve a ten percent share of the world market for battery-powered electric vehicles by 2025.
