Both Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors have decided to expand the number of their car brands from seven to 22 by 2020, leaning heavily on environmentally friendly vehicles in the hope that they will lead the global car market.
The Hyundai Motor Group’s new global strategy might represent Chairman Chung Mong-koo’s last dream as he reaches his 80s -- to lead the world car market with hybrid, battery and hydrogen-powered passenger cars.
Its has been 16 years since Chairman Chung split from Hyundai Group, taking auto makers and other related affiliates such as Hyundai Mobis and Hyundai Glovis with him to pursue an independent operation.
The two car makers produce four hybrid brands, two batter-driven cars and a hydrogen-powered car. By 2020, the target year of the strategy, the two automakers would be producing 12 hybrid car brands -- including six plug-in hybrid cars -- two battery-driven cars, and two hydrogen-powered cars, which will range from mini to SUV in size. They will all be environmentally friendly.
The group’s new strategy entirely represents the chairman’s life-long design for the group, to be a world-leading environment friendly car maker. Chung said in his New Year speech that the group should produce more reformative products and leading technologies to find new growth engines. The chairman called for increased investments in green cars and high-tech development to emphasize the crucial importance that R&D plays in those areas, which shows that the environment friendly cars will be the future growth engines for the group.
The market for environmentally friendly cars has been growing in recent years.
Officials of both Hyundai and Kia project that the market for those cars will grow to 64 million units by 2020 from just 2.2 million now, expanding close to 30 times, putting the future of the global major car makers up in the air.
Chung’s dream is not only crucial to the group, but also to the creation of jobs and the growth of the national economy. Chung has always said that synergy should be created from the development of new environmentally friendly cars, such as hybrids and other technologies would be huge to for related industries.
The projects to develop new hybrid and other high-tech driven cars would be a significant driver for the national economy.
The two automakers have already drawn up action plans for expanding the number of car brands. The action plans focused on three categories: expanding brands in the Hybrid plug-in car category; extending the distance for battery-driven cars; and maintaining the lead in technologies for hydrogen-powered cars.
They will first produce Hybrid plug-in cars which don’t have yet [1]with the Sonata Hybrid plug-in model in the first half of next year. They will also develop another EV model after the Soul EV. They also plan to develop a new battery to run the car for longer distances from the current 148 km before a recharge is needed..
