The Hyundai Motor Group's new Metaplant near Savannah, Georgia has been hailed as the state's largest economic development project ever. Now, the automaker is planning for it to get even bigger.
Officials from the southern state and the Korean car company announced that while the original plans called for 300,000 fully electric cars to be produced annually at the Metaplant, it will now aim for 500,000 per year. Many of those vehicles will include hybrid cars as Hyundai plans for potentially uneven demand in the electric vehicle space.
"We soon saw that the pace of electrification was not going to be as fast as everybody thought," Hyundai Motor Group's Global CEO José Muñoz told reporters at the Metaplant's grand opening ceremony today. "Then we saw that the hybrid age was [moving] much faster. We have been flexible before, and we're going to be flexible now."
The Metaplant is already producing the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 electric SUVs, the first of several new EVs from the Korean conglomerate to be made in the United States. Unlike their Korean-built predecessors, those cars come equipped with a Tesla-style North American Charging Standard (NACS) plug from the factory and have native access to Tesla's Supercharger network.
Officials from Kia, another Hyundai Motor Group division, said that eventually about 40% of the cars made at the Metaplant will be from that brand, but are not yet saying what vehicles those will be. Hyundai currently makes several hybrid models, including the Tucson Plug-In Hybrid and strong-selling Sonata Hybrid.
The factory is due to be one of the region's largest employers, projected to generate more than 14,000 jobs. It is one of the world's most advanced car factories, built from the ground up with a high degree of automated manufacturing and robotic labor.
Muñoz said that he did not anticipate that the hybrid expansion would necessitate a separate building at the Metaplant, but it will "require significant investment."
Though the EV market has seen uneven growth in the U.S., the Hyundai Motor Group has emerged as a strong player in the space. Last year, its three brands, Hyundai, Kia and Genesis, came in second to Tesla in U.S. EV sales. Along with General Motors, the Korean automaker surpassed 100,000 all-electric vehicles sold for the first time ever. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 in particular has proven to be one of America's top-selling EVs.
Muñoz said the automaker is banking on that continued momentum this year, especially as it adds the larger Ioniq 9 to the fold. "At the moment, we have more demand than we are producing," he said. Production of the U.S.-made Ioniq 5 started late last year and the EV is currently on sale.
Even so, the plant's grand opening coincides with a time of tremendous uncertainty for the American auto industry writ large.
President Donald Trump has continually threatened stiff tariffs on foreign-made vehicles and has also ordered a halt to national EV charger funding. What's more, Trump has said his administration seeks to end the EV tax credits—a key driver of electric sales, including for Hyundai—which has led to fears that the hundreds of thousands of cars made at this plant may not find buyers as easily as in past years.
But Muñoz and other Hyundai officials have said that this factory was initially planned in the first Trump administration, before any tax credits were ever on the table. Moreover, by building these EVs and hybrids in America, Hyundai's goal is to circumvent any tariffs on foreign-made cars; until now, Hyundai and Kia production has been heavily dependent on Korean exports. On Monday, Euisun Chung, the executive chair of Hyundai, met with Trump at the White House to announce an even bigger U.S. investment in the form of a $6 billion steel plant in Louisiana.
"We didn't do this because of incentives or anything," Muñoz said. "For us, we saw the opportunity in America."
Gallery: Hyundai Georgia Metaplant Grand Opening
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
