Heena Sharma Blog

Hyundai Motor plans to invest about 61.1 trillion won ($51.81 billion) between 2020 and 2025, about one-third of the expenditure focused on electric and autonomous vehicles, the company said on Wednesday. The South Korean carmaker unveiled a " Strategy 2025 " roadmap that envisaged annual average spending of 10 trillion won, higher than previous years, and up from a 2018 figure of 6.1 trillion won. Hyundai will devote about 20 trillion won of the total investment, spread across six years, to future technologies, it added. It also set an ambitious deadline of 2025 to place itself among the world's top three makers of battery and fuel cell vehicles, with annual sales of 670,000 electric vehicles, including 560,000 battery-based cars. Hyundai shares were up 2 per cent by 01:36 GMT after the announcement, which included a plan to buy back 259.6 billion won worth of common shares. Read More

South Korean auto major Hyundai Tuesday launched its full-electric SUV Kona in India priced at Rs 25.3 lakh, and sought government support for electric vehicles (EVs) for personal usage, not just for fleets. The company, which is present in the country through its wholly-owned subsidiary Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL), is also planning to develop a mass market EV for India to add to its newly launched full-electric SUV Kona. "We have seen some positive development in the form of tax incentives on purchase of EVs as provided in the Budget, but we think more can be done by the government to accelerate adoption of EVs in India," HMIL MD and CEO S S Kim told PTI in an interview. He said currently EVs are extremely expensive which require economies of scale to make them affordable for mass adoption. Referring to the FAME II scheme, which provides incentives to four-wheeler EVs only for fleets and public transportation, Kim said, "Our desire is that such incenti...