Electric Growth Engines
“We will increase Korea’s electric vehicle production capacities five times by 2030 to grow Korea into one of the top three global future car powerhouses,” President Yoon Suk-yeol emphasized on April 11. Hyundai Motor Group also announced its strong will to seize the hegemony of the electric vehicle world by investing 24 trillion won (US$18 billion) in the Korean electric vehicle sector by 2030.
“The Korean government will also team up with Hyundai Motor Group so that it will be able to lead global mobility innovation,” President Yoon said in the groundbreaking ceremony for an electric vehicle-only plant held at Kia Corp.’s Autoland Hwaseong in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province on the same day.
Kia Corp.’s EV-only plant is a car manufacturing plant built in Korea 29 years after Hyundai Motor Group broke ground for a plant in Asan, Korea in 1994. It is the first electric vehicle-only plant in Korea and the world’s first purpose-based vehicle (PBV) production facility. PBVs are used for various commercial purposes such as e-commerce, logistics, and shuttles.
Hyundai Motor Group will invest 1 trillion won (US$753 million) into a site of about 99,000 square meters in Autoland Hwaseong to build a dedicated factory and start volume production in the second half of 2025. After securing a production capacity of up to 150,000 units per year, the Korean automotive group plans to gradually increase the capacity. Kia Corp. exclusively produces customized electric vehicles at its new plant. A medium-sized PBV to be introduced in 2025 is expected to be the first mass-produced product at the plant.
Hyundai Motor Group also laid out a plan to invest 24 trillion won (US$18 billion) in the Korean electric vehicle sector by 2030. The purpose is to enhance Korean electric vehicle ecosystems and strengthen its roles as a hub that will lead innovation in the global future car industry. Through this, Hyundai Motor Group plans to scale up Korea’s electric vehicle production to 1.51 million units by 2030 and will export 920,000 units, or 60 percent of its production.
For the first time, Hyundai Motor Group also set the goal of joining a club of the top three players in global electric car sales by 2030. For the first time since its founding, Hyundai Motor Group performed remarkably, taking third place in the global car sales standings following Toyota and Volkswagen in 2022. It wants to do the same in the electric vehicle sector. To this end, Hyundai Motor Group has also raised its electric vehicle production target for 2030. It raised its global electric vehicle production goal by 12.7 percent from 3.23 million units to 3.64 million units by 2030, and electric vehicle production in Korea by 4.8 percent from 1.44 million units to 1.51 million units.
Hyundai Motor Group plans to expand domestic investment to advance the Korean electric vehicle industry. To this end, it is promoting a combustion engine car production line’s conversion into an electric vehicle-only one at existing factories to expand its electric vehicle production capacities in Korea. Starting next year, the production line at Kia Corp.’s Gwangmyeong Plant in Korea will be sequentially converted to an electric vehicle-only one. Also in the pipeline is the construction of a plant dedicated to electric vehicles on a test drive site at Hyundai Motor’s Ulsan plant.
Korean-made intelligent robots will be used in the electric vehicle production plant built by Hyundai Motor Group so the plant’s facility localization rate will reach 99 percent. Since most of the plant facility investment will be used in giving Korean companies orders for plant facilities and equipment, the expansion of electric vehicle-only lines will be able to contribute to boosting the power of the Korean economy and Korea’s industrial competitiveness, analysts say.
Hyundai Motor Group is also planning to develop a platform for next-generation passenger electric vehicles which will follow its E-GMP platform for electric vehicles. Through this, it plans to expand its electric vehicle models to 31 types by 2030. It plans to strengthen the integrated marketability of hardware and software, such as upgrading power electric (PE) systems, including batteries and motors, which are the core of electric vehicles, and developing technology to increase mileage per charge.
The Korean government responded to Hyundai Motor’s efforts. “The government will also work as one team with Hyundai Motor Group so that Hyundai Motor Group will lead the world in mobility innovation,” President Yoon said. In addition, the presidentd ordered relevant ministries to provide the automaker with strong supports in terms of plant sites, research and development (R&D), human resources development and taxation to expedite private investment in high-tech industries such as electric vehicles. Under the direction of President Yoon, the government plans to devise comprehensive measures to transform Korea’s automobile ecosystems into future car-oriented ones and announce them during the first half of this year.