The groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday for Hyundai Motor Group’s electric vehicle manufacturing Meta Plant America – expected to employ 8,100 people after the company invests $5.54 billion to build and equip it here in southeastern Georgia – proved bipartisan as well as both international and local.

Gov. Brian Kemp, Republican, Georgia’s two U.S. senators, both Democrats, and the Republic of Korea’s ambassador to the United States were among the officials who wielded shovels in a sort of big sandbox in front of the stage within a huge, walled and carpeted tent at a previously remote location in Bryan County. This is on the 2,287-acre “Mega Site” purchased by the state and a Joint Development Authority, or JDA, whose four member counties are Bryan, Bulloch, Chatham and Effingham. With actual construction slated to begin in early 2023 for the plant to be producing vehicles in the first half of 2025, portions should soon become visible to passersby on I-16.

Kemp during his remarks identified the plant as “Georgia’s largest economic development project ever,” and Ambassador Tae-yong Cho proclaimed, “This is a great day for both the United States and the Republic of Korea.”

Sen. Jon Ossoff and Sen. Raphael Warnock did not speak from the stage. But when U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves did, his assertion of the role played by President Joe Biden’s goals for electric vehicle, or EV, production contrasted somewhat with Kemp’s crediting of Georgia’s long-term “conservative, common-sense governance” with bringing a surge of new manufacturing to the state.

The first speaker on stage before the shovels were plunged into the symbolic earth was José Muñoz, global president and chief operating officer of Hyundai Motor Company and CEO of Hyundai and Genesis North America.

“We heard the clarion call of this administration to hasten the adoption of new electric vehicles and reduce carbon emissions,” Muñoz said. “So, we took action.”

‘A massive operation’

In April, the company announced that its Alabama plant would produce the first Genesis-branded EV in the United States, he noted. Genesis is Hyundai Motor Group’s luxury brand. In May, the company announced that the Hyundai Motor Group Meta Plant America would be built “right here in Bryan County.”

“And here we are, five months later, ready to break ground and start construction, Muñoz said. “This is going to be a massive operation with a scale that’s hard to comprehend, but don’t just take my word for it, let me show you what I mean.”

Widespread clearing has already been done, seen in aerial photography included in a slide show on the screen behind Muñoz. Another image showed conceptual outlines of the buildings to be spread out there, acres of roofs from an aerial perspective.

Actual construction is still slated to begin early next year, said company public relations sources, such as Michele Tinson, Hyundai Motor America Midwest and East Coast senior P.R. manager.

‘First half 2025’

The Detroit Bureau, an automotive industry news website, reported in August that Hyundai Motor Group was accelerating its timetable with a goal to begin EV production at the factory in the second half of 2024. But the proposed start of production remains in the first half of 2025 on the official timeline, with only a “potential possibility” for earlier, Tinson said.

However, one prediction from the Detroit Bureau’s story was realized Tuesday, when the company broke ground in 2022 instead of 2023.

When Kemp came to the microphone, he personally thanked Muñoz and Hyundai Motor Group’s Executive Chair Euisun Chung and other Hyundai and Kia executives by name.

“To the entire Hyundai Motor Group team, on behalf of all Georgians, I want to say thank you for bringing even more jobs to the number-one state for business,” Kemp said. “I also want to say thank you to our original HMG partners, Kia, who made a transformational investment in our state over a decade and a half ago and continues to be such a valued friend.”

Kia’s plant at West Point, Georgia, announced in 2006, builds gasoline-powered SUVs and now employs about 3,000 people.

All three labels

Meta Plant America, in the Black Creek and Ellabell area of Bryan County, will manufacture electric vehicles under all three of the Motor Group’s brands: Hyundai, Kia and Genesis, corporate officials said Tuesday.

Expected to ramp up to make 300,000 vehicles annually, it is called a “meta” plant because it will also produce parts for supply to its own assembly lines and the company’s other EV plants, with a battery factory being part of complex.

Hyundai Motor Group’s announced global goal is to sell 3.23 million fully electric vehicles annually by 2030.

Kemp on economy

The governor, who didn’t mention he is in a race for re-election with early voting underway, called the plant’s construction “incredibly monumental” even for a state he said seems “to make history every day” with its economy.

“We have the lowest unemployment rate in the history of our state, and we’ve never seen as much job creation and investment in the Peach State in a single year, all because we made the tough call, and the right call, to protect and fight for both lives and livelihoods during the pandemic, and that’s because we trusted our citizens instead of a lot of short-sighted politicians, and because we did, we’re now making history yet again,” Kemp said.

Since 2020, by his count, he has announced 30 “electric mobility-related projects” expected to bring more than more than $13 billion in investment and more than 18,910 jobs to Georgia, including the 8,100 at the Hyundai plant.

“These jobs of the future are coming to Georgia because businesses know we’re not only a sure bet today, we will continue to be for generations in the future,” he said. “That is the result of many years of careful, conservative, common-sense governance.”

But Ambassador Cho mentioned President Biden’s visit in May to South Korea and its President Yoon Suk Yeol, which included discussions of goals for addressing climate change.

Biden’s goal

Graves, the deputy commerce secretary, then credited U.S.-Korea cooperation in this project to the administration’s goal for electric vehicles.

“It’s a reflection of President Biden’s direct engagement with our friends in South Korea, which is leading to new investments just like this,” Graves said. “Hyundai’s electric vehicle expansion is also in line with the Biden administration’s effort to tackle climate change, move to clean energy, move to domestic sources of energy and set the U.S. on the path to achieve net-zero admissions by 2050.”

He noted that Biden has set an “ambitious target” to make EV sales half of all new car sales by 2030.

Two celebrations

Area local government officials and news media personnel – including those from Bulloch, Bryan and Effingham counties – traveled to Savannah to board buses at the Enmarket Arena, which opened earlier this year, and were driven to the groundbreaking site, to which access was controlled.

After the morning ceremony, the buses returned to the Enmarket Arena, where a “community celebration” was held into the afternoon, including an indoor exhibit of Hyundai Motor Group electric vehicles, to welcome the company to the Savannah area.

The previous evening, the Statesboro-Bulloch County Chamber of Commerce, with the Savannah Airport Commission as a presenting sponsor and cooperation from Georgia Southern University, hosted a State of the Region and Business Expo at J.I. Clements Stadium on the Statesboro campus. Kemp also spoke there, as did some local and regional officials. About 400 people attended.

Thursday’s edition of the Statesboro Herald will include additional reporting from these related events.