Hyundai’s first US-built EV will be the tax credit-ready Ioniq 5

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 will reportedly be the first car rolling out of the company’s new Georgia factory this fall. Moreover, company CEO Jose Muñoz tells Automotive News he expects the US-made version will net buyers the full $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which the South Korea-made vehicle isn’t otherwise eligible for (outside of a leasing loophole).

Hyundai will start producing the Ioniq 5 at the Georgia plant in October, but the company won’t be making batteries there for “about a year,” Automotive News writes. For now, the article says the company will source its batteries from a Hungarian factory operated by Hyundai’s partner for its Georgia battery production, SK On.

One important question, though, is whether or not the first vehicles off the line will use the North American Charging Standard (NACS), which has quickly become the go-to standard for major US EV automakers. The company said in October last year that its cars will get Tesla Supercharger access in the fourth quarter of 2024, and that starting in the same period, all of its “new or refreshed” EVs will come with NACS charging ports.

But the quarter covers October all the way to December, meaning there’s plenty of room for some US-made Ioniq 5s to roll out of its Georgia factory with CCS ports instead. It seems logical to assume they will. When asked, Hyundai representative Christopher Paukert referred The Verge back to that previous October announcement but declined to explicitly confirm whether the first US-made models off the line will definitely have NACS ports to start.