Hyundai Motor, South Korea's biggest automaker, said Monday that it will build a plant dedicated to the production of electric vehicles (EVs) in its homeland in a bid to start mass production in 2026.
Hyundai held a groundbreaking ceremony earlier in the day for the new EV-dedicated plant in Ulsan, some 300 km southeast of the capital Seoul.
The company will invest about 2 trillion won (1.5 billion U.S. dollars) in the 548,000-square-meter EV factory with a capacity to manufacture 200,000 EVs per year.
It aimed to launch mass production in the first quarter of 2026, marking the carmaker's first factory construction in its homeland in almost three decades.
An electric sport utility vehicle (SUV) from Genesis, Hyundai's luxury brand, will be the first model to be produced at the new plant, the automaker said.
"The new EV-dedicated plant in Ulsan is the beginning of a promising future for the next 50 years and the era of electrification," Chung Eui-sun, executive chair of Hyundai Motor Group, said