South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group announced its ambition to become one of the world’s top three electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers by 2030 through the combined sales of Hyundai Motor, Kia and Genesis electric models. According to the latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), Chinese automaker BYD is the current market leader in terms of electric car sales (includes battery electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars) with an 18% global market share, U.S.-based Tesla is second and Germany’s Volkswagen is third. The report places Hyundai in sixth place.

The announcement was made during the groundbreaking ceremony of Kia’s dedicated plant for purpose-built vehicle (PBV) production in South Korea on April 11, 2023.

Hyundai Motor Group also announced plans to significantly expand the annual EV production in South Korea to 1.51 million units and global volume to 3.64 million units by 2030. To enable such plans, Hyundai Motor and Kia, alongside Hyundai MOBIS, plan to invest KRW24 trillion (USD18 billion) in the EV sector domestically by 2030.

The group’s large-scale investment aims to upgrade South Korea’s EV ecosystem and strengthen its role as a hub for driving innovation in the global automotive industry. It is also expected to promote a virtuous cycle of domestic EV production, R&D, infrastructure and related industries.

To enhance the group’s domestic EV production capacity, Kia is building a new plant dedicated to producing electric PBVs, while also expanding the existing EV lines at plants in order to expand the production capacity of EVs.

In addition, the group will invest heavily in R&D, such as developing a platform for next-generation EVs, expanding product lineups, developing core parts and advanced technologies, and establishing research facilities. It will also promote technology development with its partners.

This will enhance integrated marketability across hardware and software, including diversification of dedicated platform product lineups, advancement of power electric (PE) systems that are key to EV performance, such as batteries and motors, and development of technologies to increase all-electric range (AER) on a single charge.

Activities will be undertaken to accelerate the development of next-generation platforms to improve the performance of EVs. The group plans to sequentially develop dedicated platforms for each vehicle class under the Integrated Modular Architecture (IMA) system, including the ‘eM’ platform designed exclusively for passenger EVs, which will be introduced in 2025. Platforms using IMA can standardize batteries and motors to increase product development speed and efficiency.

In addition, the companies will actively build a high-speed charging infrastructure to maximise charging convenience for EV customers and to continuously expand the charging network in South Korea. In April 2021, the group launched E-pit, a high-speed EV-charging brand, and also launched the E-pit Charging Service Platform (E-CSP) the following year.