Hyundai Motor Co. Executive Director Chung Euisun, in his New Year's address, predicted an extremely difficult period for the global automotive industry. Among the main threats, he named trade tensions, geopolitical conflicts, and increased competition. This is reported by Bloomberg, writes UNN.
Details
The company has already experienced significant financial losses due to the trade policy of the Donald Trump administration. The introduction of a 15% tariff on Korean-made cars cost Hyundai about $1.2 billion in the third quarter of last year alone. An additional challenge was an immigration raid at a plant in the United States, which will delay the construction of a new enterprise by at least several months.
This will be a year when the crisis factors we have long worried about become a reality
Catching up in artificial intelligence
Chung acknowledged that the company is currently lagging behind global leaders in artificial intelligence development and called for massive investments and partnerships.
If we look at reality coldly, leading global companies have already secured a dominant position in this field through investments worth hundreds of trillions of won, but the opportunities we have now are still not enough
Despite this, the head of Hyundai sees the company's advantage in combining AI with physical objects: "As the focus shifts towards physical artificial intelligence, the value of our moving objects, such as cars and robots, as well as the data from our manufacturing processes, will become increasingly rare. This is a powerful weapon, unique to us, that large technology companies cannot easily imitate."
Over the next five years, Hyundai plans to invest 125 trillion won in new technologies, including robotics and autonomous driving. In particular, the joint venture Motional is preparing for the commercial launch of Ioniq 5 robotaxis in Las Vegas by the end of 2026.
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