At the Hyundai Motor Group's new Metaplant just outside of Savannah, Georgia, workers assemble the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 electric crossovers without ear protection because the factory was designed to be so quiet.
Automated platforms roam the floor carrying components, partially assembled cars and even completed ones from place to place. Boston Dynamics' robotic dog, Spot, roams around performing quality checks on vehicle welds. About 5% of the plant's power will be supplied by the expansive solar array covering the parking lot.
The Metaplant is one of the most advanced car factories not only in America, but anywhere in the world. It's the linchpin of Hyundai's expansion plans in the U.S. And it will be crucial for making years of electrified vehicle investments pay off.
Perhaps more importantly, the Metaplant is open for business at the right place and right time. Building American-made EVs helps to protect export-dependent Hyundai from President Donald Trump's proposed 25% tariffs on imported cars and parts.
"This is something remarkable today," Hyundai Motor Company's global CEO and president José Muñoz said last week at the plant's opening. "Before we even start, it's already going to be expanded like a second plant, with 500,000 [cars built annually] and two battery plants."
Yet even with $12.6 billion invested in Georgia alone and an expected 14,000 jobs generated, Hyundai's Metaplant won't make the automaker completely immune to tariffs. And the factory—as well as the immense cost and time spent to build it—illustrates the complex situation every carmaker finds it in now that Trump aims to reset the global trade order, potentially as soon as this week.
Cutting-Edge Factory, American-Made EVs
Of all the so-called traditional carmakers, the Hyundai Motor Group has arguably had the most success in the U.S. with electrified vehicles. Its battery-EV sales were second only to Tesla in America last year, and cars like the Ioniq 5 have seen widespread critical acclaim and even elusive profits as well. Plus, its hybrid game is strong.
Nearly all of that success has come through exported cars, however. While Hyundai and Kia have had factories in Alabama and Georgia since 2005 and 2010, respectively, all of its EVs to date (save for the low-volume Electrified Genesis GV70) have been exported from South Korea. Until recently, only about 35% of Hyundai and Kia's global output was made in America, according to Korea's Chosun Daily. That leaves Hyundai vulnerable to currency fluctuations, supply chain snags, long shipping times and other challenges as it grows.
The Metaplant, and other U.S. investments from the conglomerate, aim to fix those issues by planting a flag in its most important market. By making cars and components locally, it can tailor output to local demand, bring down prices and skirt certain tariff costs. And it should qualify the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 for U.S. EV tax credits for as long as that system is in place.
In the auto industry, entirely new car factories built from the ground up tend to be fairly rare occurrences due to the massive scale and investments needed to create them. Before it built its Austin, Texas Gigafactory, Tesla got its start by retrofitting an old General Motors-Toyota plant in California. And while Rivian is trying to seal the deal on a new Georgia factory of its own, it currently builds its EVs at a former Mitsubishi plant in Illinois. Many U.S. EV and battery factories are underway now in response to the IRA tax credits, which has rekindled interest in new projects.
Yet Muñoz is quick to point out that the Metaplant never hinged entirely on EV tax credits, a byproduct of the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act. Planning for the factory actually began earlier than that, during the first Trump administration. "America has become, by far, the largest market for the group," Muñoz said.
The Metaplant's grandiosity reflects those goals. With 16 million square feet of factory floor space, it is basically impossible to miss when driving along U.S. Interstate 16 out of Savannah; it makes an NFL stadium look like a high school football field. Ioniq 5s and 9s can be seen from the outside moving along a conveyor belt inside a sky bridge that connects the paint shop and final assembly area. The plant has the capacity to initially produce 300,000 vehicles annually; another 200,000 units of capacity, including for hybrids and unnamed models from Kia and Genesis, will be added as it expands.
It is as high-tech as modern car factories get. Hyundai officials said that all logistics are optimized by AI. Parts will be transported via hydrogen fuel-cell electric trucks. The solar panels in the parking lot are expected to generate 5.2 megawatts of energy. Everything feels heavily automated, with robots of all kinds outnumbering humans. All told, the Metaplant deploys a number of new technologies previously only seen at Hyundai's Singapore "microfactory" on a much grander scale.
Even so, the threat of tariffs—not to mention the potential loss of EV tax credits—loomed over the plant last week as dignitaries from around the world christened Georgia's largest-ever economic development project.
The Tariff Conundrum
Yet not even copious U.S. investments, or even being an American company, will likely protect any automaker from 25% tariffs on imported vehicles and imported parts, as Trump says will go into effect on Wednesday. Broadly, price increases of around $4,000 to $10,000 are expected for most vehicles, and $12,000 or more for EVs, a recent Anderson Economic Group report said.
Like essentially all car companies, Hyundai has not disclosed how much its car prices could increase once those tariffs go into effect. But take the Metaplant's Ioniq 5 as an example. A window sticker for the 2024 model year of Ioniq 5, a Korean-built example of the EV crossover, lists just 1% of parts as being made in the U.S. and Canada. The rest—or at least, 95% of it—was sourced from Korea.
While the Metaplant had its grand opening last week, production of the U.S.-made 2025 Ioniq 5 has been underway for months and those EVs are already on sale. A sticker for that vehicle lists 29% of parts as being U.S.-made, while 29% are Korean-made and 33% are sourced from Hungary. The latter would be the car's battery, an SK On unit made in Hungary. Soon, however, Hyundai officials said these batteries will be U.S.-made. In theory, that should push its U.S.-made content well past 60%. (Hyundai officials said that U.S. production of the battery pack is expected to start in the first half of the year.)
However, the remaining 29% of parts could, in theory, make the Ioniq 5 more expensive if tariffs increase their prices. Right now, a 2025 Ioniq 5 starts at $42,500, excluding destination fees. So while the Metaplant seems to be doing exactly what Trump wanted—building American cars with American labor and American parts—no car for sale in the U.S. is completely made with domestically-sourced content.
Granted, this approach leaves Hyundai in a considerably better position than other automakers. The Volkswagen Group, for example, has but one U.S. factory for its namesake brand, but many of the cars it sells stateside are from Mexico. Its Audi brand imports from there and Europe, and all of Porsche's models are European-made as well. Mazda barely has any U.S. manufacturing presence, and while Nissan does better, the tariffs come at a financially precarious time for the company.
As the Wall Street Journal reported today, while Mercedes-Benz has a factory in Alabama, its U.S. content share is much smaller than Hyundai's—and it's not a large-volume manufacturer like the Korean company is. Meanwhile, General Motors, Ford and Stellantis are all heavily dependent on Canadian and Mexican production, leaving them far from unscathed if tariffs hit.
Ultimately, it's hard to parse any winners from such stiff tariffs, including consumers. These potential price increases arrive at a time when most Americans' bank accounts are already squeezed tightly. While Trump has said he expects the tariffs to be "permanent," he has also indicated he would settle for some kind of deal with car-producing countries as well.
It's difficult to parse what this all means for Hyundai in the interim, as is the case with most car companies. Even with tariff-driven cost increases, the Metaplant could also allow the automaker to deliver some of the most affordably priced EVs on the market, especially if other electric options become so expensive as to be untenable in the market.
Whatever happens, Muñoz said that the investment in America is a long-term one. And as is the case with making hybrid cars at the plant as well as EVs, it allows Hyundai to stay agile. "We will try to move the entire supply chain very, very fast," he said. "If you remember during COVID, our company started to do better than others in relative terms. One of the reasons this happened was because we were more flexible than others, and we were very fast in adjusting."
Even after all that time and money spent, it may need to do the same yet again.
Gallery: Hyundai Georgia Metaplant Grand Opening
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
