On Friday, the 29th of March 2019, a South Korean supplier of Tesla Inc., the US-based e-vehicle giant, said that they had agreed to purchase a shuttered down auto factory from General Motor’s local manufacturing unit to produce electric vehicles.

The deal forged ahead after General Motor Co. had closed one of their four South Korean manufacturing plants in May 2018, and slashed thousands of jobs, as a push to restructure the Detroit-based US multinational automaker.

Although the US automaker had not yet revealed the sales price of their closed down Gunsan factory, yet the Tesla electric vehicle parts maker Myongshin had been quoted saying on Friday (March 29th) that they would purchase the buildings and lands of General Motor for $99.5 million (113 billion won) by June 28th.

Apart from acting as an EV part supplier for Tesla Inc., Myongshin has also been a supplier of Hyundai Motor. According to a statement issued by a provincial government on Friday (March 29th), the South Korean EV parts maker would initially be spending a lump-sum of 200 billion won in order to produce more than 50,000 electric vehicles by 2011 and about 1,50,000 e-vehicles by 2025.

Citing GM’s intention to close the deal as soon as possible, GM Korea said in a statement, “We aim to close this deal as soon as possible to ensure that there will be ongoing economic activity”.