Hyundai Motor Corp announced recently their plans to build more fuel efficient vehicles that can match up with their Japanese counterparts in order to stay competitive. Good Luck to them. The car industry is perpetually in an innovate or die mode and competition has always been stiff
Its quite amazing really how the Korean market was able to match up with their Japanese rivals. We’ve seen this first in the home appliance industry with Samsung toppling Sony’s hold and prestige on the home appliance segment. Now it’s interesting to watch if a Korean car brand will actually be able to take the lead from the Japanese car companies. Considering that the Japanese car industry is a corner stone in the Japanese economy which also cements in leadership in the world market.
Either way, its us the consumers and the planet that wins when the race to build the most fuel efficient cars starts to heat up.
Their plans are:
- Cars that can average 35 mpg in 2015. Hyundai’s average is 28.6 mpg, which is slightly lower than Toyota’s 29 mpg and Honda’s 28.7
- Investing aggresively in fuel-cell research.
- Diesel engine development with displacements between 1.1 to 3-liters.
- Devoting funds to engineering staff. Their Namyang research labs, employs about 2,000 engineers working on gas-electric hybrids, fuel-cell engines, flex-fuel vehicles and clean diesel powertrains.
- They will release a hybrid compact model of their Elantra in Korea. This version of the Elantra will use lithium-ion polymer batteries and a combustion engine that is powered by propane.
[source]
Category: Automotive
