The new star of the Korean car company Hyundai Motor Group runs on two legs and is called Atlas. The humanoid robot, which was developed by the American subsidiary Boston Dynamics, is almost two meters tall, can carry up to 50 kilograms, can move all of its joints all around, and can do so at temperatures between 20 and 40 degrees Celsius for several hours at a time. He should be able to learn new tasks within a day thanks to Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence. Boston Dynamics has already set up a production line for pilot models at its headquarters. By the end of this year, the car company wants to use the first robots in its new factory in the US state of Georgia alongside human colleagues, as Hyundai Vice President Lee Seung-jo confirmed on Thursday when the annual figures were presented at an analyst conference. Atlas will initially be used there to provide components in the correct installation order, and from 2030 onwards also in assembly. By 2028, Hyundai wants to build a factory with Boston Dynamics in the United States that can produce 30,000 such robots a year. Hyundai’s share price rises by 77 percent in three weeks. Investors are excited about the prospect that the third largest car manufacturer in the world after Toyota Motor and Volkswagen could soon largely automate its production – and possibly that of many other industrial groups – with the help of robots. Since Atlas was presented at the CES electronics trade fair in Las Vegas at the beginning of January, Hyundai Motor’s share price has increased by 77 percent. Several analysts have increased the value of Boston Dynamics and thus also the valuations of the Hyundai Group after the presentation of Atlas. The Korean investment company KB Securities now expects Boston Dynamics to have sales of 290 billion dollars and profits of 45 billion dollars by 2035. Lim Eun-young, an analyst at Samsung Securities, sees the potential use of the robots in the factories of Hyundai and its subsidiary Kia as a major competitive advantage for Boston Dynamics over other manufacturers. “Robots can collect data while working in the factories of Hyundai and Kia,” she told a Korean newspaper. This data could then be directly applied to refine the AI models for further use in factory and logistics environments. Most other robotics companies are still in the “venture stage”, i.e. still far away from being used in real environments. Trump’s tariffs are weighing on day-to-day business. On Thursday alone, Hyundai’s share price rose by more than seven percent. The fact that the traditional car business is currently doing significantly worse than expected, primarily due to customs charges in the United States, has virtually evaporated on the financial markets. North America is by far the most important sales market for the Koreans. In the United States, they sold almost one in four of their 4.1 million vehicles. But the tariffs, which were initially raised to 25 percent by Donald Trump in the spring and reduced to 15 percent in the fall, are weighing heavily on the results. Across all brands, especially Hyundai, Kia and Genesis, the Hyundai Motor Group paid tariffs amounting to 7.2 trillion won (4.2 billion euros) for the entire year. The group expects a burden of a similar extent for the current year – although the uncertainties here are great. Just a few days ago, Donald Trump threatened South Korea to raise tariffs back to 25 percent because the Korean parliament had not yet passed an important law for the implementation of the trade agreement. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reiterated in a television interview on Thursday that the deal would only be complete once the Koreans passed this law. A key driver of sales was Hyundai’s wide range of hybrids and electric vehicles. In Europe, every second car sold in the final quarter was equipped with such climate-friendly engines. In the United States it was about one in three. “We have to invest in a rapidly changing environment.” The group announced investments of 17.8 trillion won (10 billion euros) for the current financial year, which will, among other things, flow into the further development of environmentally friendly technologies, such as electric vehicles with extended range, but also autonomous driving and artificial intelligence. “This year, we must continue to invest in technologies in order to secure a leading position in future technologies in a rapidly changing management environment at home and abroad,” said Lee Seung-jo, Vice President at Hyundai Motor.More on the topicThere is protest among Hyundai’s workforce against the introduction of robots into car factories. The Korean Metalworkers Union warned of an employment shock once the robots are introduced. “Not a single robot can come into the factories unless there is an agreement with the workforce,” warned a union representative in a Korean newspaper.
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