Hyundai Motor Co is to spend 20 trillion won (US$17 billion) over the next six years on new technology to help make the switch to electric and autonomous vehicles.
Announcing its strategic plan to 2025, the South Korean company pledged to spend almost half the new money on electrification.
Autonomous driving would soak up 1.6 trillion won of the total, Hyundai said yesterday.
Photo: AFP
The investment forms part of a surge in spending at Hyundai, which like rivals worldwide faces an expensive future of lower-emissions, battery-powered vehicles.
Competitors, such as Volkswagen AG, have also pledged tens of billions of US dollars in investments in electrification.
If successful, the plan should create a more profitable business with a global market share of 5 percent in 2025, up from 4 percent last year, Hyundai said.
Yet most traditional automakers are heading in the same direction and all-electric rivals, such as Tesla Inc, have a technological head start. That suggests competitive pressures are not likely to subside in the next era.
German automakers are set to invest US$45 billion in electric vehicles (EVs) over the next three years, while General Motors Co is pushing ahead with a plan to sell 20 EV models by 2023.
The transformation would come at a price.
About 27.9 trillion won of costs, the equivalent of US$23 billion, would be stripped out of the company in the next three years alone, Hyundai said.
That’s part of the sacrifice being made at automakers across the world as the industry tackles a tectonic shift in vehicle technology. At the same time, trade-row tariffs hang over decades-old supply chains that serve a dwindling market.
All told, automakers are eliminating more than 80,000 jobs during the coming years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News.
Although the cuts are concentrated in Germany, the US and the UK, faster-growing economies have not been immune and are seeing automakers scale back operations there.
The industry would produce 88.8 million cars and light trucks this year, an almost 6 percent drop from last year, according to researcher IHS Markit.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
RSS