Hyundai CEO Chang shifts resources to pursue EVs

Hot-selling Hyundai has successfully checked off a long to-do list as the mass-market brand and its Genesis luxury stablemate have moved up the sales chart. Higher quality? Check. Better design? Check. More crossovers? Done and done. A fuller premium portfolio? Roger.

Now, Hyundai Motor Co. has a new order of business: mastering electric vehicles.

CEO Jaehoon Chang is so bullish about the company's prospects that he forecasts Hyundai and Genesis global EV sales surging 57 percent to 220,000 vehicles in 2022 from a tally of 140,000 expected this year.

The outlook is part of a newly upgraded internal goal at Hyundai Motor Group to sell 1.7 million EVs in 2026. That revised objective covers the Hyundai, Kia and Genesis brands and represents an ambitious extension of the earlier goal of 1 million worldwide in 2025.

To get there, Hyundai will invest in EV factory capacity in the U.S. under a $7.4 billion plan that will be detailed next year. It will introduce a new dedicated EV platform to underpin an expanded global lineup that will include 13 all-electric offerings, leveraging the Ioniq EV subline. At the same time, the automaker will all but halt investment into new internal combustion engines as it splurges on areas ranging from new battery technologies to EV production bases.

"That's the transition that we would like to pursue. As fast as possible," Chang told Automotive News this month. "We will go very aggressively on electrification."

Chang, who was Genesis' global boss before being tapped as head of Hyundai Motor Co. in December 2020, has the helm at a critical turning point for South Korea's flagship automaker.

Hyundai's big push into EVs comes as the company fleshes out several key business components in its rapid ascent to the top tier of global carmakers — nailing quality control, turning heads with sexy styling, rounding out a full line of crossovers, and putting Genesis on the premium map.

Hyundai long played catch-up to global rivals in those areas, but Chang said the work is now largely complete. And it's time to shift gears for the brewing battle in electrification.

"The point is how we can be competitive by introducing new models. That is our big momentum, the game-changer," Chang said of the EV plunge.

The ramp-up will springboard off a trio of offerings from the Ioniq series. The push begins with the Ioniq 5 compact crossover on sale now and continues with the Ioniq 6 sedan and Ioniq 7 three-row crossover.

But those are just three of some 13 EVs the Hyundai brand intends to have on the market in 2026, including electric derivatives of existing nameplates. While the Ioniq series rides on Hyundai Motor Group's new E-GMP platform , the carmaker will also introduce another dedicated EV platform to underpin the expanded lineup.

Chang declined to offer details about the upcoming architecture.

"This is to explain our confidence in how we can build up those numbers with a single platform. We are not simply looking at only one platform," Chang said.

"We are expanding our volume for EVs. And we have a plan for how we can do that."

Chang declined to specify a U.S. target for EV sales or overall volume in 2026. But he said the Hyundai brand is focusing on record market share rather than pure volume. Through November, combined sales of Hyundai and Genesis climbed 28 percent to 731,363 vehicles, with Hyundai up 24 percent to 686,741, on track to be within striking range of its 2016 peak of 768,057.

The Hyundai brand's U.S. market share was up 0.7 percentage point to 5 percent through September. Genesis' share stood at 0.3 percent, up from 0.1 percent a year earlier.

Looking to 2030, Hyundai expects to get half of its U.S. sales from EVs, riding surging customer interest in the technology and growing government support for it. Globally, Hyundai and Genesis EV sales are forecast to reach 220,000 in 2022, from just 90,000 in 2020.

Genesis will start phasing out internal combustion in 2025 and launch eight battery-electric and fuel cell electric replacements to make it an all-EV brand by 2030.

"I think there is a big momentum in how customers feel about EVs," Chang said. "We see a clear signal from the market that demand will be increasing."

In May, Hyundai said it will invest $7.4 billion in the U.S. by 2025 to produce EVs, upgrade plants and further cultivate its ambitions in areas such as urban air mobility. Chang said those plans will be detailed next year but emphasized that the capacity expansion will focus almost solely on EVs.

The company is also pursuing development of solid-state batteries, but Chang said it is too early to promise commercialization by 2030, as some Japanese automakers have done. In the meantime, the company will continue to work on a next-generation version of lithium ion and lithium metal batteries. That will be done in partnership with South Korean battery makers.

Hyundai is all but ending development of all-new combustion engines. It will upgrade existing powerplants as much as possible to meet new emissions standards and then roll out gasoline-electric hybrid systems as a bridge until EV demand really takes hold.

"We will align our powertrain product to be applicable under the new regulations," Chang said. "Which doesn't mean we need to have full, new engine development."

As Chang aptly summed the Hyundai zeitgeist: "We are focusing on EVs from now on."