The country’s first major investment in an aging national industrial complex
Building permit usually takes 3 years → reduced to 10 months.
Construction will begin in September, full-scale operation from the end of 2025.
The site of the former Myeongcheong-dong driving test site, Buk-gu, Ulsan, where the Hyundai Motor Company’s EV-only plant will be located. Courtesy of Ulsan City
The building permit for Hyundai Motor Company’s new electric vehicle plant was granted 10 months in advance, about two years earlier, and construction will begin in September.
Ulsan announced on the 24th that it had received approval on the 19th to build a new 330,000-square-meter electric vehicle factory at the 550,000-square-meter Hyundai Motor Ulsan Plant site in Myeongcheong-dong, Bukgu. As a result, Hyundai Motor Company plans to start construction in September and complete it in 2024 after it announces the start of the safety work plan. Full production of electric vehicles is expected around the end of 2025, when test operation is completed.
Hyundai Motor’s project to build a new electric vehicle plant is practically the first large-scale reinvestment in an old national industrial complex in Korea. Because of this, great difficulties arose in the approval process, such as the retroactive application of all relevant laws such as the environment, traffic, disaster impact assessment, and the study of cultural properties that did not exist at the time the plant was completed in the industrial complex in the past.
In particular, the key to the success of the project was the reduction of the permit period, which usually takes about three years, as there are many complexities in complex technological plans, such as the demolition and relocation of existing facilities that do not interfere with production activities, the construction of replacement facilities, the opening of access roads, negotiations on the location and use of national and state facilities.
In response, the city of Ulsan, for the first time in September last year, sent to the place a special government official among the local governments in the country to support the administration, such as various permits and permits. As a result, a process that normally takes about three years from setting up a factory site, constructing an alternative parking lot for finished vehicle storage, and approving a new factory was completed in about 10 months with a one-stop shop.
Ulsan Mayor Kim Doo-gyum said, “I am proud of the successful completion of the first case, when a special government official was sent for the first time in the country to support the company’s large-scale investment project.
Ulsan= Eunkyeong Park the reporter change@hankookilbo.com