Hyundai, LG to spend combined $7.6 bn to build EV, battery plants in US

Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution Ltd. will spend a combined $7.59 billion to build electric vehicle and battery cell plants in Georgia, the US state said on Thursday.

The amount is about 40% higher than the $5.54 billion Hyundai unveiled last year and includes the revised $4.73 billion that Hyundai and LG announced in May of this year to build an EV battery cell plant in Savannah, Georgia.

The finalized figure of $7.59 billion excludes overlapping costs between the aforementioned two figures and reflects elevated inflation, which has pushed the construction cost more than 30% higher than originally planned, according to automobile industry officials.

Given this, Hyundai said in a filing on Friday that the $7.59 billion does mean it needs to stump up additional money to build the facilities in Savannah’s Bryan County, on top of the money it pledged to contribute to the $4.3 billion joint venture with LG Energy announced in May.

That figure of $4.3 billion has now been revised to $4.73 billion.

Georgia said their investment will create a total of 8,500 jobs in the state over the next eight years.

The EV plant under construction in Savannah’s Bryan County will be up and running in the second half of next year.

It is six months earlier than its original schedule in response to the US Inflation Reduction Act, enacted in August of last year, so that the cars to be produced there won't miss out on US subsidies.

It will produce up to 300,000 units of vehicles under the Hyundai, Kia Corp. and Genesis brands a year.

The battery cell plant, a 50:50 JV between Hyundai and LG Energy, is expected to produce 30 gigawatt hours of battery cells to fuel the vehicles.

Hyundai expects EVs to be churned out at the new plant to qualify for US subsidies and challenge market leaders there.

Write to Il-Gue Kim at Black0419@hankyung.com
 

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.