USA: Hyundai to build hybrid at its EV factory
“We are investing in facilities to produce hybrid cars at the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America,” said Hyundai Motor Chief Financial Officer Lee Seung Jo during an earnings conference call. The production facility will start operations in the fourth quarter of this year. It is not clear how much the carmaker intends to invest or whether or not it might push back the opening of the factory.
It is also not clear how many hybrids Hyundai plans to build in Georgia. The company only says that it wants to increase sales of hybrid electric cars worldwide by 28 per cent this year. That means selling about 480,000 units.
Also: Hyundai wants “to develop a system to apply hybrid (trims) to all models”, KED Global reports. However, there is no additional information about the plan. And the carmaker does emphasise that it will still introduce new Ioniq models – alongside more hybrids.
The move comes as global demand for electric cars is still low. Even Tesla, which normally reports on one record after another, took a strong hit in the first three months of the year. And Hyundai expects the trend to continue, as the “competition among automakers” intensifies, “raising related cost burden… while global macroeconomic uncertainty is also growing. We expect challenging business conditions to continue going forward”, Hyundai said in a statement.
Sales of hybrid cars, on the other hand, are up 17 per cent globally, Reuters reports. That explains the new strategy.
“While we are currently seeing growing hybrid car demand, Hyundai needs to carefully factor in how long this trend would last and its competitiveness against rivals such as Toyota”, Shin Yoon chul, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities, told the news agency.
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