True to the tradition of South Korean bosses speaking to their employees at the start of the year, Chung Eui-sun, Hyundai’s executive vice-president, presented a very ambitious roadmap for the five on Thursday. years to come.
The South Korean automaker is expected to invest more than 100,000 billion won by 2025, or about 87 billion dollars.
A sum intended above all to finance his ambitions in the car of the future. This covers the development of electric or hydrogen vehicles, as well as autonomous cars and even flying models.
A range of 44 electric vehicles
Ambitions that stick to the conviction, expressed several times in recent months, that these segments will ultimately be the most important. “In the future, traditional vehicles will probably represent 50% [of the market], private air vehicles and robotics respectively 30% and 20%”, had thus underlined Chung Eui-sun last October.
It is therefore to stick to this vision of the future of the sector that the executive vice-president of the Korean group indicated this Thursday plan to propose“44 electric vehicles, including 11 100% electric models, by 2025”. Of these 44 models to be offered (15 more than in 2019), there will be 13 hybrid vehicles and two that will only work with a fuel cell.
Autonomous car and flying vehicle
The group also wants to develop autonomous car models and again has a rather precise route plan. After a development phase in 2022, then a period of tests in certain regions in 2023, Hyundai wants to be able to market its first autonomous car in the second half of 2024.
A vehicle which will be designed on the basis of the prototype baptized “M.Vision” which is to be unveiled next week as part of the CES in Las Vegas, which even after 53 years of existence remains the largest world fair dedicated to technological innovation.
On the occasion of this event, the South Korean group must also lift the veil on its flying vehicle projects. The latter should not see the light of day until 2025, date on which, if all goes well, the South Korean authorities, which support the project, will have put in place specific legislation for this type of means of transport.
For the moment, Hyundai, which is convinced that air transport in shared vehicles is an axis of development for the future, launched last September its “Urban Air Mobility” division and hired a former Nasa engineer, Jaiwon Shin , who had just retired from the US space agency.
A reasonable sales target in 2020
After having sold 4.42 million cars in 2019 (including 3.6 million internationally) the group expects for 2020 a pivotal year in its development, and indicates that it wishes to sell 4.58 million vehicles this year.