Mini Electric Cars Originally Made in China to Be Produced in Korea Starting Next Year... Sebo, Reshoring

The Sebo Mobility micro electric car exhibited at the Yeonggwang E-mobility Expo

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Dae-yeol] A domestic micro electric vehicle company has decided to relocate its production process, which was operating in China, back to South Korea.

Sev Mobility announced on the 14th that it will start producing electric vehicles at its factory in Yeonggwang-gun, Jeollanam-do, around September next year. The company and Yeonggwang-gun signed a reshoring (return of overseas enterprises to the domestic market) business support agreement the day before.

The company has been designing 1-2 seat micro electric vehicles and directly developing powertrains and various electric vehicle parts. However, vehicle production was carried out at its Chinese subsidiary (factory) to secure price competitiveness.

Hong Soon-gon, director of Sev Mobility, said, "We plan to invest 3.8 billion KRW in the Yeonggwang factory, which mainly handled battery installation and pre-delivery inspection (PDI) tasks, to add production and quality control facilities," adding, "We will have an annual production capacity of about 2,000 units." The company expects to employ about 50 to 100 local talents through this reshoring.

Camsys Subsidiary Sebo Mobility Yeonggwang Factory

The return to Korea is aimed at improving production efficiency and management capabilities. The company explained that after considering various factors such as rising labor costs in China, COVID-19 lockdowns, and geopolitical risks, it judged that producing in Korea would be more effective. They plan to localize key driving components such as motors and increase the proportion of domestically produced safety devices like ABS and airbags.

CEO Park Young-tae said, "While having production bases overseas has positive aspects such as cost reduction, we believe it is now time to focus on operational stability and product reliability improvement by starting domestic production."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.