Hyundai to begin EV production in Indonesia in 2022

According to news reports, Hyundai is set to begin manufacturing electric vehicles (EV) in Indonesia in 2022. The Korean automaker is presently constructing a new assembly plant in Cikarang, West Java, and this is expected to be completed next year, said Hyundai Motor Asia Pacific vice president and COO Lee Kang Hyun.

“With the support of ministries and the local West Java government, the factory’s construction is 65% complete despite the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said at the 2020 West Java Investment Summit in Bandung earlier this week. The facility wiil be the company’s first full scale manufacturing centre in Southeast Asia.

Lee said that the factory will be up and running by the end of 2021, and it will begin operations by producing combustion engine models, with EV production starting in 2022. The plant will have an initial production capacity of 150,000 units a year, but this will eventually be increased to 250,000 units a year when investment plans are completed.

It was previously mentioned that the company plans to export 53% of the plant’s output, mostly to ASEAN markets as well as Australia, with the remaining 47% for domestic consumption. The automaker had first announced its intention to establish the plant in December 2018, with a US$880 million (RM.36 billion) investment slated for the project. This amount was later expanded to US$1.55 billion (RM6.34 billion) last year.

Indonesia is of course not the only country in the region where the automaker is ramping up its presence. Last month, it announced that it had begun construction of a new innovation centre in Singapore, which will act both as an open innovation lab for the company’s future mobility research and development as well a small-scale manufacturing plant for EVs.

The Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Centre (HMGICS), located at the Jurong Innovation District (JID), will be operational by end-2022, and the facility will be able to assemble 30,000 vehicles a year by 2025 at the production facility that will be located on site. Reports have indicated that models from its Ioniq sub-brand will be assembled at the plant.

GALLERY: 2021 Hyundai Kona Electric facelift
GALLERY: Hyundai Ioniq Electric facelift