Hyundai Motor's move to house an electric vehicle factory in Singapore marks the first time the giant South Korean automaker has located a manufacturing plant in a country that has neither a car industry nor a substantial home market. The 28,000 sq m facility in the Jurong Innovation District will be called the Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Centre and cost almost $400 million. Construction is expected to be completed by end-2022 and the factory may produce 30,000 vehicles every year by 2025. About a fifth will be sold in the market and the rest exported. With the facility sited close to what is to be the world's most futuristic port, who knows where else the cars will be sold. For now, Asean beckons as a key destination.

There is little doubt that this is a significant development for both Singapore and the Korean automaker. In an earlier era, Singapore housed the car assembly plants of Ford Motor and Mercedes-Benz. But that ended four decades ago as the country began to focus its energies on higher-value production, and services. Today, it can once again welcome back the auto industry because the industry's future clearly is with electric power and Singapore itself has embarked on plans to catalyse electric vehicle (EV) demand. EVs have fewer mechanical parts and more electronics, factors that, when combined with automation and robotisation, offer a huge opportunity for customisation - where the future of production is thought to lie.