Hyundai Is Moving the Tucson Hybrid to Alabama
About $500 million for Alabama engines, hybrid parts, and an EREV line. The Tucson Hybrid sold in America today is still built in Korea. Hyundai wants the next ones built in Montgomery.
DETROIT — The Tucson Hybrid on American lots is still a Korean export. Jose Munoz, president and CEO of Hyundai Motor, said the next ones will be built in Alabama.
Speaking Tuesday at the Automotive News Congress in Detroit, Munoz said Hyundai will invest about half a billion dollars in its Alabama manufacturing facilities. The money funds new engines, hybrid components, and an extended-range electric powertrain. For buyers, the change is simpler: Tucson hybrids move to Montgomery.
"We are bringing Tucson hybrids to Alabama, and then we will bring also the Santa Fe," Munoz told Automotive News publisher KC Crain.
Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama already assembles gasoline Tucsons. The hybrid version that competes with the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid and Honda CR-V Hybrid still leaves the Ulsan plant, crosses the Pacific, and enters the United States under a 15 percent tariff on Korean-built vehicles. Alabama-built cars do not carry that duty. Hyundai has not tied the move to a lower sticker price. What the company gains is the ability to build its volume hybrid closer to U.S. demand without paying the import tax on every unit.
Timing matters. The redesigned 2027 Tucson and Tucson Hybrid, shown last week in Paju, are aimed at a fourth-quarter launch. Moving hybrid production to Alabama is how Hyundai plans to support that redesign in the market that buys the most of them.
Santa Fe follows on the same campus. Munoz has said the Santa Fe extended-range EV will be built in Alabama and arrive in the United States in the first half of 2027, with more than 600 miles of total range. A company spokesman said the Alabama investment also funds that EREV hardware for North American Tucson and Santa Fe models: electric miles for the week, a gasoline generator for longer trips.
None of this is a side project. About 4,200 people work at the Montgomery plant, and roughly four in ten Hyundais sold in the United States already come off that line. Tuesday's half-billion dollars sits inside the $26 billion U.S. investment plan Hyundai announced in 2025.
Hybrids explain the urgency. Hyundai's U.S. hybrid deliveries rose 33 percent in August and accounted for a record 29 percent of the brand's American sales. Cox Automotive has Hyundai Motor Group, including Kia and Genesis, on pace to outsell Ford in the third quarter. That kind of share only holds if the factories can feed it.
Households comparing a Tucson Hybrid with a RAV4 Hybrid or CR-V Hybrid should treat Alabama as a 2027 supply story, not a same-weekend discount. Ask which plant built the VIN on the window sticker, then run the payment through the car affordability calculator and the hybrid premium explainer.
From Toronto or Vancouver, this remains a U.S. plant answering a U.S. tariff. A Montgomery VIN will not show up in the GTA on the same clock.