Korean auto conglomerate set to open newest megaplant in Georgia this week
Hyundai Motor and Kia are expected to hit the milestone of selling 30 million cumulative units in the United States this year as they look to accelerate their decadeslong growth there, according to the Korean auto conglomerate on Monday.
Since Hyundai and Kia began selling cars in the US market in 1986, the two have sold approximately 29.3 million units as of February, with the former having sold 17.12 million vehicles and the latter having sold 12.19 million.
Hyundai and Kia sold 911,805 and 796,488 cars in the US last year, respectively. The combined total of 1.7 million vehicles sold set a new annual record for the Korean auto group. It also retained No. 4 on the list of the biggest auto-selling brands there for the second consecutive year behind General Motors, Toyota and Ford.
The Korean automakers surpassed the benchmark of 1 million cumulative vehicles sold in 1990 and went on to hit the 5 million mark in 2004 and 10 million in 2011. Hyundai opened its first local production site in Alabama in 2005, while Kia completed the construction of its first US manufacturing plant in Georgia in 2010.
With the added local assembly footholds, Hyundai and Kia were able to sell over 1 million cars in the US every year since 2012 to log 20 million total cars sold by 2018.
The Hyundai Avante, a compact sedan sold under the name Elantra in the US market, is the brand’s most-sold model. By the end of February, 3.88 million cumulative units had been sold since it hit the market in 1991. The Kia Sorento, a family sport utility vehicle, is the most popular model in the US with 1.83 million units sold as of 2024 since it went on sale in 2002.
The Korean automakers diversified their portfolio to meet the rising customer demands for SUVs in the US by expanding the SUV lineup to different segments. As a result, the SUV sales of Hyundai and Kia in the US reached 1.28 million units last year, accounting for over 75 percent of the total US sales to drive the brands’ growth there.
Hyundai and Kia have been strengthening their electric vehicle presence in the US as well. Despite a quiet start with the Kia Soul EV in 2014 and the Hyundai Ioniq in 2017 logging about 1,000 units sold per year, the automakers stepped up their EV game by launching the award-winning Ioniq 5 and EV6. With these models, their EV sales shot to a record-setting 123,861 units sold in 2024 from only 19,590 in 2021.
The Korean auto conglomerate is set to hold an official completion ceremony later this week for Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America — a state-of-the-art vehicle manufacturing plant in Bryan County, Georgia, constructed to bolster local production of EVs and hybrid vehicles. According to Hyundai Motor, its newest US plant is capable of rolling out 300,000 cars per year with expansion plans to ramp up the annual capacity to 500,000 units. The HMGMA began mass production in October 2024.
hwkan@heraldcorp.com
