To Strengthen Robotics Business
Hyundai Motor Group is planning to acquire a U.S. robot company in order to strengthen its robotics business, one of its major businesses for the future.
The group is in negotiations with Japan's SoftBank on the acquisition of Boston Dynamics and is expected to soon close the deal. The acquisition price is estimated to be between 800 billion won and 900 billion won, below the reported US$1 billion.
Boston Dynamics is a venture company established by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 and has mainly concentrated on developing walking robots. The company’s major achievement is the Spot, a robot dog equipped with a 360-degree camera and can run at 1.58 meters per second on all four legs and climb stairways. Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google in 2013 and sold back to SoftBank in July 2017.
Hyundai Motor Group is planning to accelerate the development of future mobility solutions using robots by absorbing Boston Dynamics. The group's chairman Chung Eui-sun plans to make robots account for 20 percent of the group’s future products. Previously, Hyundai Motor Group also secured a 2.62 percent stake in the U.S. robot startup Real Time Robotics by investing 1.75 billion won. In Early 2019, it took the wraps off the Elivate walking car concept, which walks on four legs and move on wheels, at CES 2019.
However, some analysts expressed concerns about Hyundai Motor Group's takeover of Boston Dynamics. Since Boston Dynamics is a research and development (R&D)-oriented organization, it has not made any profits so far. They say that large companies gave up investing in the company after finding that its technologies have been commercialized at huge costs but are nowhere near break-even points. In addition, others point out that Boston Robotics is losing its competitive edge as Chinese companies are producing much cheaper robots at similar technology levels.