Hyundai Looks South to New Georgia Battery Plant
Hyundai is the latest major automaker to announce a major electric vehicle battery production facility in the United States. Ford, General Motors, and others have already broken ground on new facilities, and Hyundai is joining them with an up to $5 billion investment in Bartow County, Georgia.
Hyundai signed a memorandum of agreement with SK, part of the same company Ford has partnered with on its massive facility in Kentucky. SK On is the company’s battery subsidiary and already has significant operations in Georgia, employing more than 2,000 people. The pair hope to have the facility up and running by 2025 and says the project will create more than 3,500 jobs in the region.
This announcement comes just over a month after Hyundai announced that it had broken ground on a $5.54 billion EV plant in Georgia. The facility could begin operations as early as 2024, and the automaker says it will build to a 500,000 annual production volume. Hyundai has said it would make a range of EVs at the plant but hasn’t given specific model names.
Tesla remains the EV sales king in the United States, but Ford and Hyundai have begun closing the gap. Ford recently gained the number-two spot on the list, but combined Hyundai-Kia EV sales would like to have a word. That said, the gap is still relatively large. Tesla has more than two-thirds of the electric market share here, so there’s work for Hyundai to do.
[Image: nitpicker via Shutterstock]
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Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.
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Yet more great manufacturing jobs, thanks to the IRA.
Good for them! They just as easily could have built a plant in Mexico and saved a ton of money on south-of-the-border land and labor. Hopefully this is the first of MANY foreign manufacturers who decide to build EVs domestically.
I'm starting to think the IRA should have excluded all those southern anti-union states from being allowed to qualify for that subsidy money. I mean, it's not like the south even pretends to be a first world country.
we have had a very difficult job in The South balancing attracting jobs and good worker's rights, I definitely think we have a lot of work to do.