Busan is the cleanest city I have ever seen. There are no cigarette butts or gum wrappers on the ground. There are no trash cans. When people see trash on the ground, they pick it up, put it in their pockets, and leave it there until they can throw it away.
Last month I was in South Korea’s second-largest city to attend the Busan International Motor Show 2024, which has been held every two years since 2001. Starting this year, the motor show has a new name, the Busan International Mobility Show, to better reflect the wide range of transportation innovations it hopes to showcase.
[Hyundai] The company has built every vehicle it makes, hybrid, gasoline or electric, and the clever thing it did was, “Let’s make it like Lego, take the same body and change the driveline underneath.”
Though I didn’t see any flying cars, my visit provided an opportunity to reflect on the growth of South Korea’s auto industry over the past two decades.
Korean cars have been in the U.S. market since 1986 with the Hyundai Excel. The car was a big hit with American consumers, but a long history of quality issues has earned it and other Hyundai vehicles a bad reputation.
In 1998, Hyundai decided to change its bad reputation overseas by investing heavily in design, quality and marketing.
The company took inspiration from how Japan offers packaged trim levels and did the same.
The company also decided to take the three-year, 32,000-mile warranty typical in the U.S. and more than triple it: 10 years, 100,000 miles, including basic maintenance. To this day, no other manufacturer has tried to compete on warranty. The German manufacturer extended its warranty to four years, 50,000 miles, but that hasn’t prevented Hyundai from gaining a larger share of the market.
Hyundai also began manufacturing in the US, opening a factory in Montgomery, Alabama in 2005, followed by a Kia factory in West Point, Georgia (Hyundai has been Kia’s parent company since 1997) in 2010. Kia plans to produce its 5 millionth car in 2025.
Hyundai’s luxury brand, Genesis, began producing the electrified GV70 SUV at its Montgomery plant last year, the first Genesis model to be made in the United States.
I spoke with Hyundai President Jay Chang about the company’s EV strategy. The Kia EV9 has been well-received, but I asked him matter-of-factly what would happen if the EV market collapsed. His answer was simple: If people want them, we’ll make electric cars.
Unlike us, Hyundai doesn’t have an EV mandate. Plus, the company realizes that electric cars aren’t the answer. So instead of going all-in, they’re making every vehicle they make as either hybrid, gasoline, or electric. The company was smart enough to say, “Let’s make it like Lego, the same body, but different drivelines underneath.”
Now that the Genesis series is competing with luxury brands like Lexus and Mercedes, the company is aiming the Magma series at the performance market, similar to BMW’s M series and Audi RS. I spoke briefly about this with Luc Donckerwolke, Hyundai Motor Group president and chief creative officer, and the company is attracting top talent, including veteran Porsche engineers. Manfred Haller So does BMW veteran (and these days Hyundai’s head of research and development), Albert Biermann.
During my stay in Korea, I visited Ulsan and did some sightseeing. The world’s largest car factoryUnfortunately, cameras were not allowed, but I watched as the vehicles were loaded onto the ship with incredible grace and precision — it was like one big musical act — and they loaded 12 floors full of cars (over 10,000 in total) in six hours.
It’s worth noting here that not only is Hyundai half-owned by the South Korean government, but it’s also extremely vertically integrated: It owns a steel company and a semiconductor company, the latter of which is a megachip company that gave Hyundai a huge advantage during the supply chain crisis.
Check out some videos from the 2024 Busan International Mobility Show below:
– YouTubeYouTube
