Hyundai Mobis President Lim Young-deuk.

Hyundai Mobis racked up charming business performances for the second quarter of this year, thanks largely to a recovery of demand in China and an improvement of parts production profitability.

Hyundai Mobis posted 784.7 billion won in operating profit in the second quarter on a consolidated basis, a 13 percent surge over the same period of 2015. The company chalked up 9.854 trillion won in sales the second quarter, up 11.9 percent on a YoY basis and 843.8 billion won in net profit, a 1.5 percent decline from the 2nd quarter of 2015. 

The company’s better-than-expected results were owed to a recovery in car deliveries by Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors in China and a rise in revenues from the selling of value added modules and automotive parts for Korean and foreign deluxe automakers. 

Park Young-ho, researcher at Mirae Asset Daewoo, said, “Hyundai Mobis’s main clients, Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors saw global car deliveries, including ones in the Chinese market, surge 20 percent in the second quarter of the year, and Hyundai Mobis’s parts production and product mix profitability has improved thanks to a rise in sales of sports utility vehicles by the Hyundai Motor Group.”

A view of Hyundai Mobis pavilion at the 2016 CES in Las Vegas in January.

Hyundai Mobis’s Development of Self-Driving Cars

Hyundai Mobis has been given a temporary license to test-operate self-driving technologies, a big step in its goal to realize the mass-production of self-driving car technologies. Hyundai Mobis becomes the first Korean auto parts maker to have received a license to test-drive such technologies.

Hyundai Mobis said on June 9 it received a temporary license and a number plate to develop and certify self-driving technologies on real roads from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT).

Earlier, Hyundai Motor and a research team of Seoul National University received similar licenses. 

The go-ahead allows Hyundai Mobis to test drive car technologies in real driving conditions, rather than in lab simulations. 

Hyundai Motor’s Sonatas will be outfitted with Hyundai Mobis’s self-driving technologies. They will run on the 41 km Seoul-Hobeop section of the Gyeongbu Expressway, and 320-km stretches of national roads in such places as Suwon, Pyeongtaek, Yongin and Paju, designated by the MOLIT as test-operating courses.  

The Sonatas have radar arrays on the front, rear and sides, as well as a camera with a 360-degree view that together will provide information on road and driving conditions. It also comes with MicroAutobox, which plays the role of a “brain” that controls the radar and camera sensors that allow the car to keep a safe distance from the car ahead, change lanes and avoid collisions.

A view of Hyundai Mobis’s plant in Chungju, Chungcheongbuk-do. (Photos: Hyundai Mobis)