To the new metapping of the Hyundai Motor group, just outside Savannah, in Georgia, workers assemble the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 electrical crossroads without ear protection because the factory was designed to be so silent.
Automated platforms roam the floor transport components, partially assembled cars and even finished from one place to another. Boston Dynamics robotic dog, spot, wanders around quality controls on vehicle welds. About 5% of the factory electricity will be provided by the large solar network covering the parking lot.
The metaplant is one of the most advanced car factories not only in America, but all over the world. This is the fall in Hyundai expansion plans in the United States and it will be crucial for years of electrified investment to vehicles.
Photo of: Patrick George
Hyundai Georgia Metaplant
Perhaps more importantly, the metaplant is open to business in the right place and at the right time. The construction of American manufacturing vehicles helps protect Hyundai depending on export from the prices offered by 25% of President Donald Trump on cars and imported parts.
“This is something remarkable today,” said the World CEO of Hyundai Motor Company and President José Muñoz last week at the opening of the factory. “Before even starting, it will already be extended as a second factory, with 500,000 (cars built each year) and two battery factories.”
Photo of: Patrick George
Hyundai Georgia Metaplant
However, even with 12.6 billion dollars invested in Georgia alone and 14,000 expected jobs generated, the metapping of Hyundai will not make the automaker completely immunized against prices. And the factory – as well as the immense cost and time spent to build it – illustrate the complex situation that each car manufacturer now finds that Trump aims to reset the order of world trade, potentially this week.
Advanced factory, American manufacturing vehicles
Of all the so-called traditional car manufacturers, the Hyundai Motor group has no doubt experienced the most success in the United States with electrified vehicles. His battery-EV sales finished only in Tesla in America last year, and cars like the Ioniq 5 also experienced praise of criticism and even elusive profits. In addition, his hybrid game is strong.
Photo of: Hyundai
However, almost all this success has gone through exported cars. While Hyundai and Kia have factories in Alabama and Georgia since 2005 and 2010, respectively, all its electric vehicles to date (except for the Genesis GV70 electrified at low volume) have been exported from South Korea. Until recently, only around 35% of the world production of Hyundai and Kia was carried out in America, according to Korea Chosun every day. This makes Hyundai vulnerable to currency fluctuations, to hooks in the supply chain, long shipping time and other challenges as it develops.
The metaplant and other American conglomerate investments aim to solve these problems by planting a flag on its most important market. By making cars and components locally, it can adapt production to local demand, lower prices and get around certain price costs. And it should qualify the IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 9 tax credits for US EV tax credits as long as this system is in place.
Photo of: Patrick George
Hyundai Georgia Metaplant
Photo of: Patrick George
Hyundai Georgia Metaplant
Photo of: Patrick George
Hyundai Georgia Metaplant
In the automotive industry, entirely new car factories built from zero tend to be rare events due to the massive scale and the investments necessary to create them. Before building its Austin, Texas Gigafactory, Tesla started by modifying an old factory of General Motors-toyota in California. And while Rivian tries to conclude the agreement on a new Georgia factory, it is currently building its electric vehicles in an old Mitsubishi factory in Illinois. Many US EV and Battery factories are underway in response to tax credits, which has rekindled interest in new projects.
However, Muñoz quickly stresses that the metaplant has never fully armed on EV tax credits, a by-product of the law on the reduction of inflation of the Biden administration. The factory planning has actually started earlier than that, during the first Trump administration. “America has become by far the largest market in the group,” said Muñoz.
The grandiosity of the metapping reflects these objectives. With 16 million square feet of factory floor space, it is fundamentally impossible to miss when driving along the United States, 16 of Savannah; It makes an NFL stadium look like a football field in high school. Ioniq 5 and 9 can be seen from the outside moving along a carpet belt inside a sky bridge which connects the paint workshop and the final assembly area. The factory has the capacity to initially produce 300,000 vehicles per year; 200,000 other capacity units, including for hybrids and unnamed models of Kia and Genesis, will be added as it develops.
Photo of: Patrick George
Hyundai Georgia Metaplant
It is also high technology as modern car factories. Hyundai officials said all logistics are optimized by AI. The parts will be transported via electric trucks with hydrogen batteries. The parking lots of the car park should generate 5.2 megawatts of energy. Everything feels highly automated, with robots of all kinds, humans are more numerous than humans. All in all, the metaplant deploys a number of new technologies previously seen that the “microfactory” of Singapore de Hyundai on a much larger scale.
Despite this, the threat of prices – not to mention the potential loss of EV tax credits – allowed the factory last week as dignitaries around the world baptized the largest economic development project for Georgia.
Photo of: Patrick George
Hyundai Georgia Metaplant
The price enigma
However, even abundant American investments, or even being an American company, will probably protect any car manufacturer against 25% of prices on imported vehicles and imported parts, as Trump says between Wednesday. In general, price increases of around $ 4,000 to $ 10,000 are expected for most vehicles, and $ 12,000 or more for electric vehicles, according to a recent report from the Economic Group in Anderson.
As essentially all car manufacturers, Hyundai has not revealed to what extent its car prices could increase once these prices come into force. But take the metaplant ioniq 5 as an example. A window sticker for the 2024 model year IONIQ 5, a Korean example of the EV crossing, lists only 1% of parts as being manufactured in the United States and Canada. The rest – or at least 95%, was from Korea.
A window sticker for a 2025 Ioniq 5.
Photo of: Hyundai
While the Metaplant had its great opening last week, the production of the 2025 Ioniq 5 manufactured in the United States has been underway for months and these electric vehicles are already on sale. A sticker for this vehicle lists 29% of parts as manufactured in the United States, while 29% is made in Korean and 33% come from Hungary. The latter would be the car battery, a SK unit on Hungary. Soon, however, Hyundai officials said these batteries would be manufactured in the United States. In theory, this should push its content made in the United States far beyond 60%. (Hyundai officials said that American battery production should start in the first half.)
However, the remaining 29% of the parts could, in theory, make the ioniq 5 more expensive if the prices increased their prices. Currently, a 2025 Ioniq 5 begins at $ 42,500, excluding destination costs. Thus, while the metaplant seems to do exactly what Trump wanted – to build American cars with American games and American parts – no car for sale in the United States is fully manufactured with content in national origin.
Photo of: Patrick George
Hyundai Georgia Metaplant
Admittedly, this approach leaves Hyundai in a position considerably better than other car manufacturers. The Volkswagen group, for example, has only one American factory for its homonymous brand, but many of the cars it sells in the United States come from Mexico. Its Audi brand imported from there and Europe, as well as all Porsche models are also manufactured in Europe. Mazda barely has an American manufacturing presence, and although Nissan is doing better, the prices are at a financially precarious time for the company.
Like the Wall Street Journal Reported today, while Mercedes -Benz has an Alabama factory, its share of American content is much smaller than Hyundai – and it is not a manufacturer of large volumes like the Korean company. Meanwhile, General Motors, Ford and Stellantis all depend strongly on Canadian and Mexican production, leaving them far from being unscathed if the prices struck.
In the end, it is difficult to analyze all the winners of such rigid prices, including consumers. These potential price increases arrive at a time when most of the Americans’ bank accounts are already tight. Although Trump said he expects the prices to be “permanent”, he also said that he would also be satisfied with a kind of agreement with the cars producing countries.
Photo of: Patrick George
Hyundai Georgia Metaplant
It is difficult to analyze what all this means for Hyundai in the meantime, as is the case with most car manufacturers. Even with cost increases focused on prices, the metaplant could also allow the car manufacturer to deliver some of the most affordable electric vehicles on the market, especially if other electrical options become so expensive that they are untenable on the market.
Whatever happens, Muñoz said that the investment in America was long -term. And as is the case to make hybrid cars to the factory as well as electric vehicles, it allows Hyundai to remain agile. “We will try to move the whole supply chain very, very quickly,” he said. “If you remember Covid, our company began to do better than the others in relative terms. One of the reasons why it happened was because we were more flexible than the others, and we were very quick to adjust.”
Even after all this time and this money spent, he may have to do the same thing again.
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Source: Patrick George
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
