Hyundai just built a $7.6 billion EV factory in Georgia to compete with Tesla and GM — see inside

Business Insider

2 days ago

The Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America is an all-new $7.6 billion EV factory.
HMGMA, located near Savannah, Georgia, opened its doors in March of this year.
The factory will be able to build 500,000 EVs and Hybrids for Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis every year.
The $7.6 billion Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, or HMGMA, is one of the newest and most technologically advanced car factories in the world.
The plant, located near Savannah, Georgia, opened its doors in March and will be a key production facility for Hyundai's EVs and PHEVs, as well as those belonging to its Genesis luxury brand and sister company Kia.
In a recent interview with Business Insider, Genesis North America COO Tedros Mengiste cited the investment as an example of Hyundai's track record for "visionary and strategic, and long-term thinking."
I recently took a behind-the-scenes tour of Hyundai's new megafactory packed with autonomous robots and state-of-the-art tech.
The Hyundai Metaplant is situated on a 3,000-acre campus in the south Georgia town of Ellabell.
Located just 20 miles from the Port of Savannah, one of the busiest in the US, the plant not only gives Hyundai much-needed manufacturing capacity in the US to avoid import tariffs, but it also affords the company the flexibility to export vehicles abroad.
It also gives Hyundai the production footprint to compete against rivals like Tesla, GM, and Rivian, which is also building a new factory in Georgia.
Driving up to the factory, it's easy to be wowed by the sheer scale of the sprawling complex.
It's Hyundai Group's second car factory in the state. The company also operates a $3.2 billion, 2,200-acre facility in West Point, Georgia, that builds Kia EV and ICE SUVs.
I drove to the factory in a new 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9 EV SUV, which is one of the vehicles assembled at the Metaplant.
My tour began in the plant's modern main lobby.
Hyundai broke ground on the facility in the fall of 2022 and took just two years to complete construction on the main production buildings.
The Metaplant site consists of 11 buildings totalling 7.5 million square feet of space.
The Metaplant is a marvel of vertical integration, with the goal of having as many key components, ranging from battery packs to seats, made on-site.
Here's a Hyundai XCIENT hydrogen fuel cell semi truck used to transport parts and supplies to the factory.
The production process starts in the stamping shop, where sheet metal is cut and stamped into parts that will make up the frame of the car.
The sheet metal is supplied by the on-site Hyundai Steel facility.
Stamped parts are transported by automated guided vehicles, or AGVs.
The stamped metal panels are then stored in these massive racks.
The Metaplant was originally expected to produce up to 300,000 electrified vehicles annually. However, Hyundai announced at the plant's grand opening in March that its capacity will be expanded to 500,000 units in the coming years as part of a new $21 billion investment in US manufacturing.
Here are parts of the Ioniq 9, Hyundai's new flagship three-row EV SUV.
The next part of the tour is the welding shop.
Here, the stamped metal pieces are welded together by robot to form the body of the vehicle.
The work done by the welding robots is then inspected by the plant's human employees known as Meta Pros.
There are employee meeting and break areas located along the inspection and assembly areas.
An employee cafeteria with remote ordering capability is located in the main assembly building.
In addition to human eyes, the vehicles are also inspected by a pair of Boston Dynamics robot dogs called Spot.
In 2021, Hyundai acquired an 80% stake in Boston Dynamics in a deal that valued the company at $1.1 billion.
After the inspections are complete, a robot loads the partially assembled vehicles onto a conveyor system.
Next stop, the paint shop.
Unfortunately, my tour did not get access to the paint shop due to concerns that outside visitors may compromise the quality of the paint application.
Here, the painted bodies are married with their battery packs and skateboard chassis.
Hyundai Mobis produces the skateboard chassis in a building next door to the general assembly facility. The Metaplant's on-site battery factory, operated in a joint venture with LG, is expected to come online next year. The plant currently sources its batteries from Hyundai's other facilities, including one in North Georgia that's a joint venture with SK.
The vehicles' interiors are then assembled by hand.
The further along the production process, the more you see human workers on the assembly line.
Partially assembled EVs are shuttled through from area to area by the automated robots.
The entire facility was immaculately clean, quiet, and felt beautifully choreographed.
Assembled vehicles are loaded onto different AGVs that navigate the facility by reading the QR codes embedded into the floor.
These AGVs shuttle the vehicles through the plant's various quality control tests.
At the end of the assembly line, completed EVs are put through their paces at the on-site test track before being sent to the vehicle preparation center, or VPC, to get them ready for shipping.
Vehicles destined for dealerships in the region are put on trucks, while those traveling more than 500 miles are shipped by rail at the Metplant's on-site train terminal.