Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution (LGES) have signed a joint venture agreement to establish a electric vehicle (EV) battery cell manufacturing operation in the US to supply the South Korean automaker’s current and planned North American assembly plants.
A signing ceremony was held at LGES headquarters in Seoul.
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The two companies will each have a 50% stake in the joint venture and invest a combined US$4.3bn (KRW5.7trn). The facility will be built in Bryan County, Georgia, next to Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America’s (HMGM) dedicated EV plant which is currently under construction.
HMG also has a Kia assembly plant in Georgia and assembles Hyundai models in Alabama.
The JV factory will have an initial production capacity of 30 gigawatt hours (GWh) of batteries per year, enough to power 300,000 EVs and matching the annual capacity of the HMGM plant. Construction is set to start in the second half of 2023 with production scheduled towards the end of 2025.
This is the second LGES/HMG EV battery cell manufacturing JV with the automaker saying it would “continue strengthening its ties” with LGES.
In 2021 the two agreed to build an EV battery cell joint venture plant in Indonesia scheduled to be completed in 2024.
Hyundai Motor said its components unit, Hyundai Mobis, will assemble the battery packs using cells from the new JV and supply them to HMGM for installation into Hyundai, Kia and Genesis models.
Assembly of the electrified Genesis GV70 SUV began recently at the Hyundai plant in Alabama.
This new joint venture brings the number of LGES existing or planned battery plants in North America to seven, including standalone operations and joint ventures with General Motors, Stellantis, Honda and (possibly) also Tesla.
