Hyundai Motor Chief Executive Officer José Muñoz has unveiled the biggest product push in the automaker’s history, announcing more than 100 model launches and refreshes to challenge Toyota Motor in the hot US hybrid market and defend against low-cost Chinese rivals in the rest of the world.
The plan, launched at Hyundai’s CEO Investor Day in Seoul on Wednesday, will see South Korea’s biggest automaker enter 18 new segments, including a midsize pickup, light commercial vehicles and body-on-frame vehicles.
In all, 58 of the new and updated models will be allocated to the US — Hyundai’s biggest market — while 41 will be introduced in Europe, 26 in India and 22 in China, with some regional overlaps.
The lineup overhaul comes as Hyundai seeks to diversify its powertrain offerings — balancing electric vehicles with an expanded range of hybrids and extended-range electric vehicles — amid softening global demand for pure EVs.
Offering a broader range of hybrids in the US will help protect market share, with consumers flocking to gas-electric cars amid high fuel prices.
In the rest of the world, it needs to head off competition from Chinese EV makers such as BYD and Geely Automobile, which are flooding markets from South America to Southeast Asia and Europe with cut-price vehicles.
Of the 100 planned models, seven will arrive in just the next eight months, including an all-new Tucson midsize sport utility vehicle and Tucson hybrid, an all-new Ioniq 3 compact EV, and the first-ever Santa Fe extended-range EV, which targets more than 600 miles (966 kilometers) of total range and runs on a new battery that charges 40% faster than previous cells. It will be built at the company’s Alabama plant.
Capacity Boost
Overall, Hyundai plans to add nearly 1.3 million units of global capacity by 2030, including 500,000 in North America, 320,000 in India — a key manufacturing hub — and 200,000 in Korea.
In North America, it expects to offer more than 10 hybrid models by 2030, with hybrids accounting for almost half of regional sales, and boost local parts sourcing to 80% from 60%.
That will help it reduce the impact of President Donald Trump’s auto tariffs.
Its luxury Genesis brand plans to introduce its first hybrid with the GV80 SUV, along with its first extended-range EV early next year with a target range of more than 640 miles.
Genesis aims to boost annual sales to 350,000 vehicles by 2030.
Hyundai also confirmed the Robot Metaplant Application Center, where its Boston Dynamics unit’s Atlas humanoid robot is trained and analyzed, opened at the carmaker’s Georgia plant in June.
The facility will expand 10-fold by at the end of the year, with more than 10,000 hours of robot learning data, ahead of a planned start of production in 2028 with 30,000 units of annual capacity.
Hyundai and its affiliate Kia have used previous Investor Days, which have also been held in the US and India, to outline their mid-to-long-term product strategies and future technology roadmaps, including autonomous driving and robotics.
At last year’s Investor Day, Hyundai announced plans to release 18 hybrids by 2030.
At its event in April, Kia said it will introduce eight hybrid models in the US by 2030 including a midsize truck, begin using humanoid robots in its US plants from 2029, and complete its first software-defined vehicle by the end of 2027.
Wednesday’s event comes as Hyundai has been recalibrating production capacity at its core manufacturing hubs, including its Georgia facility initially designed to build EVs, to ensure it can pivot between electric and hybrid variants in line with market conditions and trade environments.
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