Listen to the audio version of the article
Hyundai confirms its desire to grow in the electric market and aims to do so thanks to an investment of over billions of dollars over the next three years. Hyundai Motor Group will invest 68 trillion won ($51 billion) and hire 80,000 new employees over three years on the development of new electric cars, production lines, battery technology, research and development and software defined vehicles. For the world‘s third largest manufacturer, which includes Hyundai, Kia, Genesis and Hyundai Mobis among other companies, the important investment underlines the objective of increasing its global presence in electric and connected cars.
The importance of software
As communicated by the group itself, over 26 billion dollars will be spent on divisions dedicated to research, development and new production lines for electric vehicles. Another 23 billion dollars will be allocated to two components fundamental to the success of electric mobility: batteries and software defined vehicles. But what does SDV mean? It means that the car and its functions are created and therefore defined by its software which becomes an operating system on which functions can be activated or not via apps even after purchase or for limited periods. All this translates into a real revolution in automotive hardware: a single central unit, a sort of mainboard, instead of dozens of control units with often similar microprocessors that perform a single task with a waste of resources. The majority of new hires, around 44,000, will be dedicated to electrification, the development of software defined vehicles and carbon neutrality.