Hyundai Motor Group to invest $21 billion in the US over four years

Hyundai Motor Group has announced today that it will invest $21 billion (Rs 1,74,951 crore) in major sectors such as automobiles, parts and logistics, steel, and future industries in the United States from this year to 2028.

The Korean automotive major's fresh and mega investment programme in the US, which is the Hyundai Motor Group's largest overseas investment and business country, can be viewed as a measure to increase its local manufacturing presence and also to prevent getting impacted by the looming threat of tariffs. 

Hyundai's massive new investment is expected to create more than 100,000 direct and indirect job opportunities by 2028, including 14,000 direct full-time jobs in the US. 

To reinforce its production capabilities, the Group will invest a total of US$ 9 billion to establish an annual production capacity in the U.S. of 1.2 million vehicles across its automotive brands, Hyundai Motor, Kia, and Genesis.

At present, the Korean auto major has a production capacity of a million vehicles in the United States, starting with Hyundai Motor Company's Alabama plant (360,000 units), which began operation in 2004, Kia's Georgia plant (340,000 units) in 2010, and HMGMA (300,000 units) this year.

The new strategic investment will see the Hyundai Motor Group expand production capacity at its Metaplant America (HMGMA) from 300,000 units to 500,000 units in the future, and will promote the construction of an electric furnace integrated steel plant in Louisiana.

In addition, existing factories such as the Alabama plant and the Georgia plant will also make supplementary investments such as modernization and efficiency of production facilities so that they can continue to produce high-quality new vehicles. Through this, the goal is to solidify the foundation for the production system of 1.2 million units in the future.

In the parts, logistics, and steel sectors, a total of $6.1 billion will be spent by Hyundai Motor Company and Kia to strengthen the supply chain between automakers and parts companies.

In line with the expansion of HMGMA production capacity, the localization rate of parts will be increased by expanding facilities, and local procurement of key parts for electric vehicles such as battery packs will be promoted.

In addition, a 2.7-million-ton electric furnace steel mill will be built in Louisiana, USA. As a steel mill specializing in low-carbon automotive steel plates, it will increase its ability to respond to uncertain external risks such as tariffs by localizing the supply of high-quality automotive steel plates. In addition, it is expected to generate stable profits based on solid steel demand to secure new growth engines in the steel sector.

In the future industrial and energy sectors, $6.3 billion will be spent to expand cooperation with leading U.S. companies related to future new technologies such as autonomous driving, robotics, AI, and AAM, and speed up the commercialization of Hyundai Motor Group's U.S. subsidiaries, Boston Dynamics, Supernal, and Motional.

Hyundai Motor Group has established strategic partnerships with leading American innovative companies and is expanding mutual collaboration. The company is working on various projects with NVIDIA to intelligentize core mobility solutions such as SDV (software-driven vehicles) and robotics and strengthen the application of AI technology across business operations, and is working with Waymo, a U.S. autonomous driving company, to expand its self-driving taxi service (Waymo One) using IONIQ 5, produced by HMGMA in the United States.