Hyundai and the battery maker LG on Friday confirmed final details for a joint battery venture to be located in Georgia and due to supply cells for Georgia-made electric vehicles starting in late 2025.
The total investment of the 50/50 joint venture will be $4.3 billion, the companies confirmed, and it will produce 30 gigawatt-hours of battery cells annually—to potentially fully support the Georgia plant’s projected production of 300,000 EVs annually, and maybe beyond that.
The new battery plant won’t just be near vehicle assembly; it will be adjacent to the Savannah-area location that Hyundai announced in 2022 and is calling Metaplant America—a location that’s due to start making EVs for Hyundai, Genesis, and Kia in 2025.
Hyundai Motor Group E-GMP platform
Affiliate tech supplier Hyundai Mobis will manage building the packs themselves using cells from the new plant, and a release on the battery facility itself notes that packs using these cells will be supplied for U.S. production of Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis EVs.
Hyundai hasn’t yet confirmed which upcoming models will be built at the Georgia assembly plant. Kia has already announced that its upcoming EV9 will be built at a different Georgia plant—in West Point, Georgia, starting in 2024.
With this venture, LG will now have a total of seven battery plants either operating or being constructed in the U.S., the companies said, “where the company is concentrating most of its resources to expand the production capacity.”
2023 Hyundai Ioniq 5
Qualifying for the full $7,500 EV tax credit with vehicles that are American-made and American-sourced is likely a priority here, and it’s likely spurred by Biden administration EV policy—and, of course, soaring demand for EVs.
“The new facility will help create a stable supply of batteries in the region and allow the Group to respond fast to the soaring EV demand in the U.S. market,“ the companies said.
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