To maintain development while navigating political unrest and economic uncertainty in the United States, South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group will increase its domestic investment by 19% to a record 24.3 trillion won ($16.65 billion) in 2025.
Regarding worldwide auto sales, the group—which comprises Hyundai Motor and Kia—comes in third place, behind Volkswagen and Toyota.
Research and development for next-generation products, electrification, software-defined cars, hydrogen fuel-powered items, and other technologies will account for 11.5 trillion won of its planned investment.
According to a statement from the group, it would also invest 12 trillion won in regular projects like increasing the production of new models and electric vehicles and roughly 800 billion won in strategic projects like autonomous driving.
As part of this, the firm intends to construct a plant for its novel “hypercasting” electric vehicle manufacturing technology at its Ulsan production site.
Tesla’s “gigacasting” technique, which streamlines production and reduces costs by using big single parts to create large portions of automobiles, is being adopted by Hyundai and other manufacturers.
“Hyundai Motor Group is making the largest investment ever in South Korea this year because it believes that continuous and stable investments are essential to overcome the crisis and secure future growth engines in the face of growing uncertainties,” the company stated without going into detail about the situation.
Euisun Chung, the executive chair of Hyundai Motor Group, recently mentioned global conflict and recession as external dangers. In early trading, Hyundai Motor and Kia shares were up 2.3% and 3.8%, respectively, before reversing gains to settle down 0.2% and up 2.3%. The overall market ended the day up 0.03%.
Following a decline in 2024 and falling short of their goals, Hyundai and Kia announced last week that they wanted to increase their combined global sales by 2% to 7.39 million vehicles in 2025.
Domestically, political unpredictability following President Yoon Suk Yeol’s imposition of martial law and subsequent impeachment caused consumer sentiment to plummet in December to its lowest level since the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020.
President-elect Donald Trump of the United States has declared his intention to impose universal 10% taxes on imported products.
To make its cars eligible for tax benefits under the previous government, which Donald Trump has stated he will eliminate, Hyundai Motor began manufacture at a facility in the US state of Georgia last year.
In November 2024, the carmaker appointed Jose Munoz, its global chief operating officer and US chief, as co-CEO, making him the first foreigner to hold that position at a significant South Korean corporation. Company observers attributed the appointment to the manufacturer’s need to navigate potential obstacles posed by the new Trump administration.