*Hyundai Motor Group’s sprawling $7.6 billion Metaplant near Savannah, Ga., aims to build 500,000 EVs per year for its Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis brands. The plant currently employs about 1,400 workers, and ultimately envisions 8,500 direct jobs at the site. In 2024 Hyundai Motor Co., the parent of Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis, sold 4.14 million vehicles produced at 12 major manufacturing facilities. Christopher Payne/Esto

While politicians are arguing about the revival of American industry, and economists are puzzling over the demographic crisis and the shortage of workers, a quiet but irrevocable revolution is taking place in the state of Georgia. The giant Hyundai Metaplant America (HMGMA) plant is being built not so much from concrete and glass as from algorithms and steel. This is not just an electric car factory. This is a grand monument to an era in which the most reliable employee is the one with a processor instead of a heart and a code instead of a soul.

With investments of $7.59 billion, they are building not so much a factory as a city of the future, where the problems of human resources have been solved radically: there simply won't be people in key processes. And while ordinary workers can demand higher salaries, join unions, or go on maternity leave, the army of robots at HMGMA will simply do their job — silently, efficiently, and without coffee breaks.

Robotic paradise with a human face (for photo shoots only)

The Savannah plant is positioned as the most advanced and automated facility in Hyundai's history. More than 200 robots will be used only in the stamping workshop, where metal sheets will be transformed into body panels with precision beyond the reach of even the most experienced operator. The welds will be applied not by the hands of welders, but by the synchronized dance of manipulators, each of whom knows his place in the ballet called "Performance".

"We are creating not just a factory, but an ecosystem of future mobility," the company's representatives say, which translates from corporate to Russian to mean: "We are building a world where your new car will be born in the bowels of another, more complex machine."

The irony of the situation reaches its peak when you realize that the "jobs of the future" at such an enterprise are positions for engineers, programmers and operators who will monitor how robots work. The bulk of the traditional factory staff turned out to be technologically redundant even before the factory opened.

The American Way to Solve the demographic problem: Just Don't Hire people

The economic implications of this project cannot be overestimated. HMGMA will create 8,100 "new jobs". But behind the scenes remains the fact that without such a level of automation, these jobs would not exist at all — an aging population and expensive labor make traditional production unprofitable.

The Georgia plant is not a response to the demand for jobs, but a response to their disappearance. This is a recognition that the only way to bring production back to developed countries is to eliminate humans with their biological and social needs from the equation. The robot will not move to another state for a promotion, will not require medical insurance, and will not sue for an industrial accident. It just produces.

Who will hire a robot? Career development for cars

The logical continuation of this automated epic is the issue of the employment of robots themselves. After all, such a high—class "specialist" needs to be properly "attached" - to adjust his algorithms for specific tasks, whether it's body welding or painting. In this context, platforms like jobtorob.com which help to optimally "employ" automated systems by linking their capabilities to the needs of a particular production. This is a kind of HR for dumb but highly skilled mechanical personnel.

"Our partnership with the state of Georgia is an example of how the future can be built today," Hyundai says.

And they're right. This is a future in which states are fighting for multibillion-dollar investments, promising not cheap labor, but advanced infrastructure, tax breaks, and loyal legislation for soulless but high-performing employees.

A future where your electric car will complain about you in a service chat

What awaits us over the horizon? The Georgia plant is the prototype of the 21st century industry. These are clean, quiet, almost deserted workshops, where creative classes in headphones watch graphs on monitors, while steel hands do the real work with superhuman precision.

Humanity, which has been the main production resource for centuries, is modestly stepping aside, giving way to those who work better, faster and without unnecessary questions. We can only hope that in this new, brilliant world, we humans will have enough intelligence to figure out what to do with ourselves while our mechanical creations are busy creating. Or we will simply witness how we ourselves were gently and unobtrusively sent into a demographic and economic pit from which we could not get out, preferring to hand over the reins to those who do not know how to complain.