Rivian, Hyundai make Georgia a major auto player - Automotive News

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Georgia economic developers have spent two decades chasing auto assembly plants that bring global cachet, thousands of jobs and a constellation of suppliers.

They've tried to land some high-profile projects and came close, but no cigar.

While the state has struggled to find the momentum enjoyed by neighbors Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi and South Carolina, Georgia is suddenly luring next-generation EV production.

In just the past six months, Georgia has scored twin wins that will deliver more than $10 billion in auto industry investment and more than 15,000 assembly jobs.

In late December, California-based EV upstart Rivian announced a $5 billion factory outside Atlanta. That project brings 7,500 jobs and the renown of landing a promising auto startup.

At the time, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp crowed that Rivian's investment, lured with $1.5 billion in state and local incentives, was the largest economic development project in the state's history.

But on a hot afternoon in mid-May, Kemp was back to announce a new claimant to that title: South Korea's Hyundai Motor Group said it will locate its first dedicated EV factory in the world about 30 miles northwest of Savannah, Ga. The $5.54 billion project will deliver 8,100 production jobs and an additional $1 billion investment by suppliers.

"After today," Kemp said at an event announcing the Hyundai deal in May, "no one can doubt that Georgia is ... the unrivaled leader in the nation's emerging electric mobility industry."

Kemp's deputy chief of staff, Bert Brantley, said the mobility industry, anchored by the automotive sector, is Georgia's top economic development priority.

"We have spent the lion's share of our time and effort in that industry because that's where the action is," Brantley told Automotive News last week. "We've been very intentional about it."

That has meant laying the groundwork needed to attract a new level of auto manufacturing.

Last summer, Kemp established the Georgia Electric Mobility Innovation Alliance to help recruit EV makers. The public-private initiative between government, industries, electric utilities and universities focuses on developing charging infrastructure, work force programs, supply chain and innovation.

"It shows Georgia is willing to invest in building up the work force and ecosystem necessary to support assembly plants," said Brantley, who previously was COO at the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

Georgia has worked on assembling and preparing ready-to-build industrial properties to help automaker prospects get their factories off the ground faster.

"What's changed recently is the planning and the foresight of the state to work on pieces of property and get them purchased [and rezoned], which we didn't have in previous rounds of going after automotive projects," said Trip Tollison, CEO of the Savannah Economic Development Authority. "The governor has placed a big emphasis on trying to create those large-scale manufacturing-type sites for projects like this."

That effort was crucial for luring Hyundai's EV plant to southeast Georgia.

The 2,923-acre Bryan County megasite was purchased in 2021 through a partnership between the state of Georgia and the Savannah Harbor-Interstate 16 Corridor Joint Development Authority.

The wooded property is a 40-minute truck drive from the Port of Savannah, the largest and fastest-growing container terminal in the U.S. In recent years, the site attracted interest from several automakers, including Daimler and Volvo.

"Speed to market is critical," Tollison said of automaker needs today. "Whoever is first in producing electric vehicles in the United States has a better chance of winning the race."

The Hyundai project is expected to open the floodgates for supplier and carmaker investments in the region. Tollison said he has not received an exact number of suppliers but expects job numbers in the thousands.

"This industry is seeing a transformation that we haven't seen in the last 100 years related to automobile manufacturing," he said.

While the Hyundai and Rivian projects are similar in scale, investment and job creation potential, the companies took different approaches to selecting a plant site. Brantley used an automotive analogy to describing their difference: Rivian just knew it needed a car, he said; but Hyundai knew what features it wanted, down to the car's color.

Rivian's site selection took the better part of 2021 to complete, and was run by an in-house team that involved high-level executives "doing substantial analysis" and conducting site visits, Brantley recalled.

Being Rivian's first greenfield factory, the startup was more flexible during site selection.

"Rivian came in with a set of things they were looking at, but they were more willing to adjust their search parameters as they went through the process," he said. "They were willing to think through different ideas and options."

But Rivian was searching for more than a manufacturing site in Georgia. The young automaker was also looking to drive electric vehicle adoption in the state and to grow the EV ecosystem.

Hyundai, meanwhile, leaned on external consultants to navigate the site selection process.

The more established automaker was "more analytical and numbers-driven," Brantley said. "They were certainly very prescriptive about how they wanted all that to work."

Georgia was one of four states on Hyundai's shortlist.

Hyundai Motor Co. CEO Jaehoon Chang made multiple site visits, with Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Euisun Chung meeting with Kemp and touring the site before signing off on the deal.

Interest in the megasite from other automotive prospects also brought urgency to the Hyundai negotiations. Vietnamese EV maker VinFast was interested in the site, as was another undisclosed global automaker.

"The fact that we had a site that multiple suitors were seeking sped up the process," Brantley said.

In the end, Georgia saved the site for the Hyundai project, given its long-term potential.

"The Hyundai plant will be a force multiplier in investment and job creation," Brantley said. "You're talking about the quality of life just increasing for families throughout the coastal Georgia region."

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