Hyundai Starts Work on a Second EV-Only Factory

• This new factory will be built on the grounds of the company’s former Korean proving grounds.

• With the upcoming factory in Georgia, Hyundai will have enough capacity for 500,000 EVs annually.

• A third factory is being built in Saudi Arabia, but this facility will also produce combustion-powered vehicles.

Hyundai has now begun the construction of its second assembly plant dedicated to electric vehicles, this time in its native South Korea.

Built on the company’s former proving grounds in Ulsan, this upcoming facility will be the first new assembly plant built entirely by Hyundai in Korea since 1996.

A US $1.5 billion project, this 548,000 square meter factory will be able to manufacture 200,000 electric vehicles per year once production starts in early 2026.

Combined with the other EV-only factory Hyundai is building in the State of Georgia, scheduled for an opening in late 2024, this will give the automaker a capacity of 500,000 EVs per year toward the end of the decade, in addition to all of its current facilities which also produce EVs alongside combustion-powered models.

Furthermore, the company is working on another new factory that will produce both electric and gasoline vehicles in Saudi Arabia, although this facility will be much smaller, with a combined capacity of only 50,000 vehicles annually.

Going back to the future Korean plant, Hyundai says that full-scale construction will begin before the year is over, using low-carbon building methods in order to reduce the facility’s environmental impact. Operating only on sustainable energy will help the automaker establish this new factory as carbon-neutral, something that has been confirmed by the RE100 certification. Another point in which this factory will differ from traditional automotive assembly plants is its nature-friendly design, which will feature lots of natural light, open-concept rest areas, and a central park linking all of the buildings together.

Hyundai says that an electric SUV from Genesis, its luxury division, will be the first vehicle to roll off the assembly line, but no further details have been revealed. There is some speculation that the production versions of the Kia EV3 and EV4 concepts could be built there, but that seems unlikely since despite their very close relationships, both companies don’t typically share manufacturing facilities.

Source: Electrek