The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Industry has signed a memorandum of understanding with the South Korean company Hyundai Motors to build a factory for the complete assembly of electric cars in the Kingdom, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
The memorandum of understanding stipulates planning to build a complete assembly plant with the “CKD” system for electric cars and internal combustion engine cars, to be located in Saudi Arabia.
The signing of the agreement came after Hyundai showed great interest and plans to explore joint investment opportunities with the Kingdom.
Saudi Arabia aims to localise the automotive sector and increase investment opportunities in it, in order to achieve the objectives of the national strategy for the industry in developing local manufacturing capabilities, and in line with the objectives of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.
The Kingdom is interested in developing this sector, as light vehicle sales in the country are expected to grow by 2.2 percent over the next decade.
In December 2022, Saudi Investment Minister Khaled Al-Falih said that the Kingdom aims to manufacture more than 500,000 electric cars by 2030.
In late November 2022, Saudi Arabia began the procedures for constructing the first factory for electric cars, through the national company, “Seer,” which specialises in this field.
In late May 2022, the “Lucid” electric car company began building an advanced factory for it in the Kingdom, with a production capacity of 155,000 cars annually, with investments of more than 12.3 billion riyals ($3.2 billion).