Looking at Hyundai’s big investment in electrification

Presentation scene of Jaehoon Chang, president and CEO of Hyundai Motor Company

Hyundai Motor will be investing tens of billions of dollars the rest of this decade with a portion going to electrification.

Hyundai updated its ‘Strategy 2025’ which was announced in 2020. These investments are designed to fast-track the company’s electric vehicle business and will be made in the Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America markets through 2030.

The company’s total investment is almost US$80 billion. More than US$16 billion will be towards its EV-related businesses. Hyundai’s goal is to represent 7 per cent of the global EV market by 2030, selling 1.87 million battery electric vehicles annually by that time.

“The new investments will strengthen Hyundai’s position in key EV markets such as Europe, North America and South Korea,” observed Bakar Sadik Agwan, senior automotive consulting analyst at GlobalData, a data and analytics firm. “The investments will help Hyundai to achieve deeper penetration in high-demand regions and develop other capabilities which include — boosting production capacity, new EV facility, developing battery technologies, developing hardware and software capabilities and hence achieving higher profit margins.”

The investments will also aim to procure adequate batteries for its future EVs. Agwan described these as must-haves “to sustain in the future mobility market given the volatile nature of the supply chain observed in the post-pandemic era.”