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Just like the first supplier, the second company set to help Hyundai Motor Group produce its first American-made electric vehicles in Georgia is no stranger to the state.
Hyundai Mobis will provide EV powertrains to the new Hyundai Meta Plant in Bryan County, placing a $926 million, 1.2 million-square-foot facility nearby that will hire more than 1,500 people.
The scale would be massive at full production, churning out more than 900,000 battery power systems and 450,000 per year once the plant hits its stride, according to a news release from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s office.
The tier-one Hyundai supplier is the latest and will likely be one of the largest among the parade of new suppliers expected to flock to the area around the plant. Its announcement, combined with Joon Georgia’s commitment to build a $317 million body components factory in Statesboro, puts supplier investment already at $1.2 billion, surpassing the $1.1 billion officials projected when Hyundai broke ground on its $5.54 billion plant.
Mobis technically is not new at all to Georgia, having worked with Kia Motors across the state in West Point for more than a decade. Since setting up there, Mobis has supplied cockpit modules, chassis modules and bumper assemblies to Kia and other automakers around the Southeast. It now employs 1,200 people in Georgia, and its system of 44 plants around the world includes sites in Alabama, Ohio and Michigan. The Bryan County plant, to be located in the Belfast Commerce Park in Richmond Hill, is also set to provide components destined for Kia’s plant in Georgia and Hyundai’s in Montgomery, Ala.
Since it won the right to produce the electric powertrain for the e-GMP platform on which Kia and Hyundai are building their electric future, Mobis has been forecasting rapid acceleration in North America on top of already strong growth.
The company expects compound annual growth rate to average 36 percent through 2030, executives said in announcing plans for a new U.S. site in September, not disclosing the location at the time. Order volumes stood at $660 million in North America in 2020, $1.4 billion in 2021 and $1.7 billion in the first half of 2022 alone, the company said in a release.
H.S. Oh, vice president of Hyundai Mobis’s Electric Powertrain Business Unit, said EV investment is moving faster than expected.
“We’re going to be a major production player in the EV market, and that’s going to trigger more growth within the sector,” Mr. Oh said in the release.
Construction could begin as early as January, with production most likely commencing in early 2024.
In October, about a month before this announcement, Mobis also said it would spend $200 million on a new battery module assembly facility in Montgomery, Ala., where it has operated on an 83-acre site for 20 years. That plant will supply Hyundai’s Montomery facility, which is investing $300 million into a production line that will make electrified Genesis G70 SUVs.
