Hyundai
Pushes Ahead on $2.7bn EV Manufacturing Plan in US Despite Immigration Raid and
Local Tensions
Hyundai Motor Group is pressing forward with its
massive $26 billion U.S. investment plan — including a $2.7 billion expansion
of its 2,900-acre Metaplant America near Savannah,
Georgia — even after a federal immigration raid detained over 300 South Korean
workers accused of visa violations at an associated battery facility.
The Ellabell complex, jointly developed with LG
Energy Solution, is central to Hyundai’s U.S. strategy as Chinese electric
vehicles face high tariffs and limited access to the American market. The
company aims to produce 80% of vehicles sold in the U.S. domestically by 2030.
Despite strong backing from Georgia’s leadership,
the project has stirred controversy. Some locals resent the influx of foreign
workers and rapid industrialization, while others embrace the jobs and economic
opportunities. Safety concerns have also emerged following multiple worker
fatalities during construction.
The raid — and its subsequent policy reversal by
the Trump administration — underscores the tension between America’s
“reindustrialization” drive and growing scrutiny of foreign investment. Still,
Hyundai remains committed to embedding itself deeper into the U.S. economy,
training local workers and expanding supplier networks across the Southeast.
Hyundai
Motor Group has spent the last three years building a sprawling 2,900-acre campus
30 minutes from Savannah, Ga., to make electric vehicles and showcase the marvels
of modern manufacturing.
Invited
guests — and soon the public — can take tours of the factory. Visitors ride golf
carts through cavernous halls, watching robots fetch parts for human workers. Mechanical
arms weld panels onto the vehicle bodies.
Hyundai
hoped the facility, in Ellabell, would become a shining example of car assembly,
an image that also aligns with President Trump’s desire to re-industrialize the
nation. Even its name, Metaplant America, nods at the
company’s ambition to make a public statement, not just another assembly line.
But
then, last month, more than 300 South Korean workers, who the United States said
were working on the wrong kind of visas, were shackled and detained at one of the
facilities under construction there, a battery plant jointly owned by Hyundai and
LG Energy Solution, both Korean companies. The raid led many in South Korea to call
on Hyundai to pause its expansion in the United States.
It
is plowing ahead. Hyundai Motor Group, which includes
Kia and dozens of other affiliates and suppliers, plans to spend $26 billion in
the United States through 2028, including an additional $2.7 billion in Ellabell.
The
carmaker has little alternative. As Chinese brands become increasingly popular elsewhere,
the United States market is not only Hyundai’s biggest, but one of its best growth
opportunities, regardless of who sits in the White House. Between very high tariffs
and other restrictions, Chinese cars have in effect been shut out of the United
States.
“My
top three priorities are U-S-A,” José Muñoz, chief executive of Hyundai Motor Company,
the car-making subsidiary, said at the company’s annual investor gathering after
the raid in New York, pausing for effect after each letter. “If we do well here,
it’s very good for Korea. It’s very good for the company.”
Yet
risks abound. Electric vehicles have not been as popular in the United States as
many expected. This month, the federal government stopped offering a $7,500 tax
credit that was meant to encourage people to buy E.V.s. And, as the raid made plain,
spending billions here is no guarantee of political favor.
If anything, it demonstrated how foreign investment in the United States has become
at once more urgent and more fraught in an age of “America First.”
Georgia’s
political establishment strongly backs the plant, which is often described as the
largest economic development project in state history. Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican,
views it as a part of his legacy.
But
even before the raid, there were signs in Ellabell that tensions were building.
Some residents abhorred the factory and the influx of foreigners it brought. Others
have raised safety concerns, as three workers have died there since construction
began. Yet some embraced the opportunities that have come with Hyundai’s investment.
Still
the mixed response here reflects a deeper problem the company and others like it
face in their desire to expand in Mr. Trump’s complicated America.
On
a September afternoon, Tucker Sims sipped a beer at Rooster’s, a restaurant near
the campus, as a group of South Korean workers sat together for lunch. A local handyman,
Mr. Sims recounted seeing workers who appeared to be Latino plunge into a pond behind
his house on the day of the immigration raid in an unsuccessful attempt to escape.
Mr.
Sims said he welcomed the raid because he hated how Hyundai and its suppliers were
changing the rural character of his hometown. He would never work in one of their
factories, he declared, and neither would his relatives, even though the paper mill
where some of them worked had recently shut down.
The
mill “was American-owned,” Mr. Sims said.
Hyundai
and LG are chaebols, powerful family-controlled conglomerates that occupy a special
place in South Korean society. But American spokesmen for Hyundai have begun to
describe the company as a global firm with Korean roots. In a sign of the growing
importance of the U.S. market, this year’s annual investor day was held in Manhattan’s
upscale Hudson Yards neighborhood, the company’s first
such event outside Korea.
The
Ellabell plant is the conglomerate’s third U.S. auto plant; it runs a factory in
Montgomery, Ala., and a Kia plant in West Point, Ga. The company has pledged to
create 8,500 jobs on the site by 2031, more than Ellabell’s population. About 3,200
people already work there.
With
the American E.V. market growing more slowly than many carmakers had hoped, Hyundai
plans to start making hybrids in Ellabell. It already manufacturers the all-electric
Ioniq 5 crossover and Ioniq 9 sport utility vehicle. By 2030, Hyundai Motor Company
aims to make more than 80 percent of all the vehicles it sells in the United States
domestically, up from about 40 percent today.
“This
is Hyundai’s moonshot,” said Brent Stubbs, chief administrative officer for the
Metaplant.
The
campus dwarfs everything in sight. The main two-lane road near the plant, dotted
with mobile homes and handwritten signs advertising okra, has been renamed Hyundai
Way. The grocery store, once a Piggly Wiggly, is now a Viet Huong Oriental Market.
A staffing agency across the street advertises in English and Korean on its message
board.
It’s
not just Ellabell that is being transformed. Across the region, factories are sprouting
up as Hyundai’s suppliers and subsidiaries follow the South Korean automaker from
Seoul. About 45 minutes northwest, in Candler County, another South Korean company
called DAS Corporation is building a $35 million factory to make metal frames for
automotive seats. Doowon Climate Control America, which
makes heaters and air-conditioners for E.Vs, is building
a $30 million plant in Candler County as well.
Nate
Collins, who grew up in Ellabell, had never traveled abroad
before Hyundai hired him in 2023. Now he is about to take his third trip to South
Korea to learn how to assemble the latest models.
“I’ve
been living in Ellabell, Georgia, all my life,” said Mr. Collins, who had worked
at a gun factory and a bar before he became a “floater” installing parts on Hyundai’s
assembly line. “When something like this comes to an area like this and makes a
dramatic change, I love every moment of it.”
One
of his brothers works for a Hyundai supplier. Another does brisk business with a
food truck outside a new hotel and truck stop that have opened near the plant, a
sign that the plant has brought additional jobs to the community.
Hyundai
has taken more than 250 American employees — like Mr. Collins — to Seoul to teach
them not only how to make electric cars, but also about Hyundai’s history. New hires
are trained in cross-cultural communication, and Korean language classes are offered
at the plant. Managers practice toasting according to Korean tradition at corporate
dinners.
Although
Hyundai relied heavily on labor from South Korea and elsewhere
to build its factories in Ellabell, about 80 percent of the car plant’s permanent
employees come from the greater Savannah area, a spokeswoman said.
Still,
some American workers say they have missed out on job opportunities because they
are not Korean. Hyundai’s suppliers routinely recruit on Korean language websites
in the United States, and say fluency in Korean is preferred.
In
August, Bobby Dotson, who supervised a machine maintenance team in Ellabell for
Hyundai Engineering America, a subsidiary, filed a lawsuit alleging that he was
demoted because he did not speak Korean. Virtually all the training he received
about the upkeep on the machines was in Korean, according to the lawsuit. Hyundai
Engineering America declined to comment on the lawsuit but said it was committed
to complying with U.S. employment law.
There
have also been safety issues at the Ellabell campus. In May, a Michigan man was
crushed to death by a metal structure at the E.V. battery plant, according to an
incident report from the Bryan County Sheriff’s Office. In March, a forklift driver
ran over another man, killing him, and another worker had to be evacuated after
a pipe explosion. In 2023, a construction worker fell to his death at the car plant.
Hyundai
said in a statement that it “strengthened safety oversight across the site” after
the incidents.
Philip
Lienert, a spokesman for LG Energy Solution, said the battery maker prioritized
“the safety and well-being of our team at all our global operations.”
After
the raid, U.S. officials arrested and expelled the South Korean technicians, saying
they did not have the right kind of visas to install machines in a factory. But
then the Trump administration reversed course and said it would allow that type
of work on short-term visas after all.
Executives
for Hyundai Motor Company, which gets roughly 27 percent of its revenue from the
United States, have been eager to turn a page on the raid. The raid delayed completion
of the on-site battery plant by two to three months, the companies have said. Still,
Hyundai wasn’t counting on receiving batteries from the LG site until 2027, according
to Mr. Stubbs, who said it had been buying cells from SK On, a rival of LG.
Jae
Kim, president of the Southeast U.S. Korean Chamber of Commerce, which includes
members who work for Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, acknowledged that familiarity
with Korean culture could give an employee an edge, especially at this early stage
when so many of the project’s leaders come from South Korea.
He
also said that Ellabell was new to this kind of big investment from a foreign company
and that residents probably needed more exposure to Hyundai and Korean culture.
“When companies come, especially a new area where they are not used to foreign direct
investment, they need to do a lot more hand-holding,” he said.
Back
at the local restaurant in Ellabell, Mr. Sims acknowledged that it was too late
now to stop the changes that Hyundai was bringing. Still, Hyundai’s attempt to put
down American roots in Georgia doesn’t make a difference to him.