Hyundai to decide hydrogen fuel-cell factory location this year - exec
TOKYO (Reuters) - Hyundai Motor Co <005380.KS> and its affiliates are ready to decide the location of a new hydrogen fuel-cell system factory this year, which could be in South Korea or overseas, an executive said on Wednesday.
The factory will be capable of producing more than 100,000 fuel cell systems, which include the fuel-cell stack and power control unit, annually from around 2024, Jeon Soon-il, a Hyundai Motor Group executive in its fuel cell division, said at a conference in Tokyo on Wednesday.
He declined to name which countries had been shortlisted.
A new factory in Chungju, South Korea, capable of making 40,000 systems a year, will be ready by the end of June, some two and a half years ahead of schedule, Jeon said.
Hyundai's current fuel-cell system production capacity is about 12,000 annually, Jeon said.
A spokesman for Hyundai Mobis <012330.KS>, the unit of Hyundai Motor Group that makes fuel-cell systems, declined to comment about any plans for new hydrogen fuel-cell systems production, but confirmed that the group is considering a new eco-friendly auto parts factory, with details not yet decided.
(Reporting by Kevin Buckland; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul; Editing by Jason Neely and Tom Hogue)
