Hyundai To Build Another Multibillion-Dollar Battery Plant In Georgia
Hyundai Motor Group is partnering with LG Energy Solutions on a new $4.3B electric vehicle battery plant in Bryan County, the second such plant in Georgia involving the South Korean automaker.
Hyundai CEO Jaehoon Chang and LG CEO Youngsoo Kwon inked a memorandum of understanding on Thursday to produce EV batteries at a factory just outside of Savannah, adjacent to Hyundai’s EV vehicle plant — dubbed Metaplant America — which is currently under construction, the companies announced Friday. The new plant will break ground later this year and begin to deliver batteries by 2025 at the earliest, employing 3,000 workers, according to a press release.
This represents the second Hyundai battery plant in Georgia following the car manufacturer’s plans for a Bartow County plant with SK On that is slated to manufacture enough batteries for 30,000 Hyundai vehicles a year churned out by the Savannah facility.
“Hyundai Motor Group is focusing on its electrification efforts to secure a leadership position in the global auto industry,” Chang said in a press release.
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia told The New York Times on Friday that Hyundai and LG were using incentives for clean energy manufacturing provided in the Inflation Reduction Act to help make the plant a reality.
The new power cell plant is projected to have a production capacity of 30 gigawatt-hours, which will then be inserted into Hyundai Mobis battery packs for Hyundai, Kia and Genesis EVs, according to the press release.
The new plant also is the latest win for state economic development officials in their efforts to make Georgia a nexus for EV vehicle makers and suppliers.
“This is exactly what we envisioned when Georgia landed the Hyundai Metaplant in May of last year, and this project is the latest milestone in Georgia’s path to becoming the EV capital of the nation,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The EV revolution in Georgia began in earnest when Rivian announced plans for a $5B EV factory outside of Atlanta in 2021 and SK Innovation, a division of SK On, started work on a lithium-ion battery factory in Commerce, Georgia. Those two deals opened the door for other EV battery, vehicle and parts makers and suppliers to flood into the state.
“Georgia is firing on all cylinders,” said John Boyd, a site selection specialist and principal of The Boyd Co. "This latest project really puts an exclamation point on Georgia and EV vehicles and products."
Since Rivian, SK Innovation and Hyundai’s first Georgia plant announcements, suppliers and clean energy manufacturers have invested in excess of $1B in new facilities throughout the state, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported. Those include Hanwha Group’s planned Qcells solar panel factory in Cartersville and SungEel HiTech Co., which plans to build a $37M battery recycling plant in Toccoa, Georgia.
Aside from incentives, Georgia’s lure for the EV industry is its relatively cheap power collection of development-ready megasites throughout the state that allows the industry players to start up quickly, Boyd said.
“We always talk about economic development multiplier effects. EV and battery is a great example,” Boyd said.
