Hyundai Motor Group will complete its sophisticated assembly plant in Singapore in 2022, where it will assemble, sell and export the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Hyundai Ioniq 3 for Singapore and the rest of the Asia Pacific region. This puts the company in a prime position to leverage Singapore’s ongoing Land Transport Master Plan 2040 and the government’s push to transition from combustion engines to cleaner transportation by 2040. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 will be built first, followed by the smaller Hyundai Ioniq 3 two to three years later.
The manufacturing plant will be part of the Hyundai Motor Group Singapore Global Innovation Center (HMG) in Jurong, Singapore. The building will consist of both the assembly plant as well as a futuristic R&D center. The plant itself will consist of a smart factory that uses AI, IoT and robotics. It is expected that the site will put together SKD/CKD kits that are sourced from an overseas site rather than deploy full-scale manufacturing.
Hyundai may consider applying the Battery as a Service (BaaS) ownership model for its next-gen Hyundai electric cars (EVs). Under BaaS, the battery price would be excluded from the vehicle sales price/finance payments, which makes the initial cost low when switching from a traditional vehicle model to a Hyundai Ioniq 5 or a Hyundai Ioniq 3. In contrast, an outright purchase without a battery subscription plan would be expensive, as the battery typically accounts for 50% of the electric vehicle cost.
It is expected that HMG could build up to 30,000 Hyundai EVs at the Singaporean site annually. Annual sales volume for Hyundai EVs in the domestic market is estimated to be 5,000 to 6,000 units.
(Source: Electric Vehicle Web)
