The Hyundai Motor Group has recently set a target of 560,000 annual electric vehicle sales by 2025, according to a report from Reuters.
The announcement comes on the eve of their previous announcement pledging $35 million in investments by 2025 in future mobility, including both electric cars and autonomous technology. Those investments will no doubt come in handy for ramping up their production.
The 560,000 mark represents a 17-fold in their current electric vehicle production and the group plans to launch 16 different electric models by 2025 to help fill out the numbers. Some say that this number is still conservative for the South Korean automaker.
The Hyundai Motor Group, which includes Kia, produced over 7 million vehicles in 2017. While their current outlook for this year has drastically gone down to just under 5 million cars, this goal still represents just over 10% of their total annual production. When we talk about Tesla, 500,000 cars annually is a very big deal. But when we are talking the third-largest automaker behind only the Volkswagen Group and Toyota, 500,000 vehicles annually does not seem like much. It also does not help, when in comparison, Volkwagen is flexing their muscles and planning to produce 22 million electric cars over the next decade.
Lee Jae-il, an analyst at Eugene Securities & Investment voiced his concern over the rather conservative plan:
“That is not an ambitious target. If Hyundai fails to boost volumes fast enough, costs of electric cars will weigh on profitability,”
Ka Suk-hyun, vice president of Hyundai Motor believes that the plan is good as it is believed that the supply will quickly outpace the demand for electric cars.
“EV supply is expected to surpass demand from the second half of next year,”
It certainly is very weird that Hyundai would be so conservative with the electric cars, given the fact that the few that they have released already have been very well received and acted as great alternatives to people who do not want to buy Teslas. The company, however, has been marred with several battery shortages that have resulted in long waits for their cars. We’ll see how true Suk-hyun’s prediction will be in the coming year and if Hyundai had made the right choice with their target.
What do you guys think? Let us know down in the comments below.
Source: Reuters
