Hyundai Motor Company

• 1. Introduction

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  Hyundai Motor Company entered the United States market on the 20th of February 1986 with a single model, the Excel, and promptly set a record no other foreign car brand had matched: the highest first-year sales of any automaker new to the country. That year alone, 168,882 Excels found buyers. It seemed like a triumph. Within a few years, those same cars had become the punchline of an industry joke. Hyundai, some said, stood for "Hope you understand nothing's driveable and inexpensive." Dealerships were earning more from repairs than from sales. The reputation collapse was real, and it was severe.

  How a company rebounds from being a national joke to ranking as the world's third-largest carmaker is the question this documentary will answer. But the story of Hyundai is not simply a turnaround tale. It is a story that begins in 1947 Seoul, reaches into the Mojave Desert of California, climbs into the cab of a hydrogen-powered Swiss truck, and stretches toward a flying taxi prototype undergoing ground testing as recently as early 2025.

• 2. The Founding Family

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  Chung Ju-yung, who lived from 1915 to 2001, founded the Hyundai Engineering and Construction Company in 1947, two decades before Hyundai Motor Company itself appeared. When he and his brother Chung Se-yung established the automaker in 1967, South Korea had almost no independent car industry to speak of. Their first vehicle, the Cortina, was released in 1968 in cooperation with Ford Motor Company, but Chung Ju-yung had larger ambitions than assembling someone else's design.

  To build a car that was truly Korean, Hyundai hired George Turnbull in February 1974. Turnbull had been the managing director of Austin Morris at British Leyland, and he came with a mandate to build a team. He recruited five specialists: body designer Kenneth Barnett, engineers John Simpson and Edward Chapman, chassis engineer John Crosthwaite (previously of BRM), and chief development engineer Peter Slater. The result of their work was the Pony, released in 1975. Its styling came from Giorgio Giugiaro of Italdesign, and its powertrain from Japan's Mitsubishi Motors. South Korea had its first domestically produced car.

  Exports followed quickly: first to Ecuador, then to the Benelux countries. By 1982, Hyundai had entered the British market, selling 2,993 cars in its first year there. In 1984, the Pony began moving to Canada, where it would eventually top the market's sales charts, despite being ineligible for the United States due to emissions standards. The one millionth Hyundai rolled off the line in 1985.

• 3. Collapse and Comeback

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  The Excel's reliability failures in the late 1980s forced a hard reckoning. Hyundai's response was methodical: the company began investing heavily in quality, design, manufacturing, and long-term research. Starting with the 1992 model year, Hyundai offered free maintenance for the first two years or 24,000 miles on all new cars sold in the United States. It then added a 10-year or 100,000-mile powertrain warranty, known as the Hyundai Advantage.

  By 2004, the data told a different story. J.D. Power and Associates ranked Hyundai second in North America for initial quality, tied with Honda at 102 problems per 1,000 vehicles. Only Toyota ranked higher. In J.D. Power's 2006 Initial Quality Survey, Hyundai placed third overall, behind only Porsche and Lexus. The same year, Hyundai Motor Company recorded $57.2 billion in sales in South Korea, making it the country's second-largest corporation after Samsung. Worldwide sales in 2005 reached 2,533,695 units, an 11 percent increase over the previous year.

  In 2004, a new manufacturing facility, Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama, opened in Montgomery at a cost of $1.7 billion and employed more than 3,000 workers. Production had started in May 2005. That same year, Hyundai moved its American Technical Center to a 200,000-square-foot, $117 million headquarters in Superior Township, Michigan, near Ann Arbor.

  Then, in April 2006, Chung Mong-koo was arrested and charged with embezzling 100 billion South Korean won, equivalent to about $106 million at the time. Hyundai vice chairman and CEO Kim Dong-jin assumed leadership. It was a public crisis at a moment of genuine momentum. The company absorbed it and kept building.

• 4. Design as Strategy

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  Hyundai's Fluidic Sculpture philosophy, described as heavily inspired by nature, appeared in the early 2000s. To give it an institutional home in Europe, Hyundai hired Thomas Burkle in 2006 as head of its design center in Russelsheim, Germany. Burkle had designed the BMW 3 Series (E46) and the BMW 6 Series (E63).

  In 2014, the company deepened its engineering ambitions by hiring Albert Biermann, formerly Vice President of Engineering at BMW M, to direct chassis development. Hyundai stated its goal plainly: "The company intends to become a technical leader in ride and handling, producing vehicles that lead their respective segments for driver engagement."

  The next major design direction, called Sensuous Sportiness, was unveiled at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show through the Le Fil Rouge concept car. The philosophy earned Design Management Institute's Design Value Award in 2020. Hyundai's grille language from this era was first introduced in production form with the 2022 NX4 Generation Tucson.

  In 2024, the company revealed yet another design language, called Art of Steel, showcased through its Intium hydrogen fuel cell electric concept vehicle. In 2025, Hyundai unveiled the Concept THREE under this philosophy, featuring sharper lines. The design lineage from Biermann's chassis mandate to the Art of Steel concept represents a two-decade arc of deliberate repositioning that the company has backed with both personnel and infrastructure.

• 5. Research and the Proving Ground

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  Hyundai runs six research and development centers: three in South Korea, and one each in Germany, Japan, and India. A seventh center in California focuses specifically on designs for the United States market.

  The California operation began with the Hyundai Design Center in Fountain Valley, established in 1990. In 2003, it relocated to a new $30 million facility in Irvine and was renamed the Hyundai Kia Motors Design and Technical Center. Two years later, Hyundai America Technical Center opened its 200,000-square-foot headquarters in Superior Township, Michigan.

  Also in 2004, Hyundai America Technical Center completed construction of a proving ground in California City, set in the Mojave Desert. The 4,300-acre site includes a 6.4-mile oval track, a Vehicle Dynamics Area, a vehicle-handling course inside the oval, a paved hill road, and several special surface roads. A 30,000-square-foot complex with offices and indoor testing areas sits on the premises. The facility cost $50 million to build.

  On the intellectual property side, Hyundai ranked fourth in the world in the 2021 WIPO review of industrial design registrations, with 141 designs published under the Hague System during 2020. That was up from seventh place the previous year, when the company had 57 registrations. The jump reflects an acceleration that aligned with the company's EV and fuel cell push.

• 6. Electric and Hydrogen Futures

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  Hyundai's experiments with alternative propulsion began earlier than most listeners would guess. In 1991, the company developed its first pure electric car, the Sonata Electric Vehicle. By March 1992, field trials of flexible-fuel vehicles were running on Seoul streets, covering more than 30,000 miles through at least November 1993.

  Hyundai began mass-producing hybrid electric vehicles in 2008. The 2011 Sonata Hybrid debuted at the Los Angeles International Auto Show in November 2008, with U.S. sales beginning in February 2011. In 2016, Hyundai revealed the Ioniq five-door liftback, the first automobile to be offered simultaneously in hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and all-electric variants with no standard combustion-only version.

  In August 2020, Hyundai elevated Ioniq to a full standalone brand, its second after Genesis. Built on the Electric Global Modular Platform (E-GMP), the platform bundles battery, motor, transmission, and inverter into a single system. Hyundai said this raised the motor's maximum speed by up to 70 percent compared to existing motors. The platform is rated to handle power output up to 600 hp. The Ioniq 5's 800-volt charging system can bring the battery from 10 to 80 percent in 18 minutes; a five-minute charge adds 100 km of range under WLTP standards.

  On the hydrogen side, Hyundai launched the Nexo crossover SUV in March 2018. In 2020, it delivered the Xcient Fuel Cell truck to customers in Switzerland: the world's first production hydrogen fuel cell truck. The 34-ton vehicle carries a 190 kW fuel cell, a 73 kW battery pack, seven hydrogen tanks, a top speed of 85 km/h, a range of about 400 km, and a refueling time of 8-20 minutes. Hyundai chose Switzerland partly because the country does not levy road tax on zero-emission trucks. By October 2020, domestic South Korean sales of the Nexo had exceeded 10,000 vehicles.

  In May 2023, Hyundai established a joint venture with LG Energy Solution to manufacture electric vehicle batteries in the United States. In October 2024, the company signed a 610-gigawatt-hour power purchase agreement with SK E&S and other partners as part of its renewable energy transition.

• 7. Controversies and Accountability

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  After a 2012 investigation, the EPA found that 35 percent of all 2011-2013 Hyundai and Kia vehicles had inflated fuel economy numbers, in some cases by as much as six miles per gallon. In 2014, the U.S. government issued $350 million in penalties. Hyundai also agreed to pay $395 million in 2013 to resolve claims from vehicle owners, and a further $41.2 million to cover the investigative costs of 33 U.S. state attorneys general. A reimbursement program for affected owners was launched.

  In April 2013, Hyundai Motors UK released a commercial depicting a man attempting to commit suicide inside an ix35 vehicle. The ad was pulled, and Hyundai issued a formal apology.

  Starting in October 2022, Hyundai vehicles in North America became heavily targeted for theft after a TikTok video demonstrated how to start models manufactured from 2016 to 2021 without a key. These vehicles lacked immobilizers because they were not equipped with optional key fobs and push-button starts. Hyundai introduced a free anti-theft software patch beginning the 14th of February 2023, with all eligible vehicles patched by the 23rd of June 2023. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that the trend led to eight fatalities. Hyundai and Kia agreed to pay about $200 million to settle a U.S. class-action lawsuit, including up to $145 million for car owners' out-of-pocket losses. A federal judge rejected the settlement, announced on the 18th of May 2023.

  In 2022, a Reuters report revealed that Hyundai and its parts suppliers in the U.S. were illegally employing child labor, including workers as young as 12, primarily refugees from Central America. Subsidiaries including Hyundai Glovis and SMART, along with suppliers SL, Hwashin, and AJIN, were implicated. In response, Hyundai announced plans to divest its controlling stake in SMART. The cases that followed resulted in fines and sanctions against multiple suppliers.

• 8. What Comes Next

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  Hyundai's Supernal subsidiary, established in the United States in 2020, is building toward urban air mobility. The subsidiary's name is said to mean both "Best Quality" and "Heavenly." On the 8th of November 2023, Hyundai announced plans to build a U.S. plant to produce flying taxis. As of February 2025, a full-scale technology demonstrator was undergoing ground testing, using wingtip tilting rotors and four propellers fixed on booms that connect a wing to a structure named after the Rockwell OV-10 Bronco tail. Supernal's headquarters are in Washington, D.C., its research and development facility is in Fremont, California, and its engineering headquarters is in Irvine, California.

  On the ground, in November 2024, Hyundai announced that Jose Munoz, its Global Chief Operating Officer, would become global co-CEO beginning the 1st of January 2025. Munoz is the first foreigner to hold such a senior executive post at a major South Korean conglomerate. The promotion was attributed to his strategies in pushing for record sales across the North American region.

  As of November 2024, Hyundai was the world's third-largest carmaker by production, behind Toyota and Volkswagen, with vehicles sold in 193 countries through 5,000 dealerships and showrooms. The company's Ulsan plant in South Korea, the second-largest automobile manufacturing facility in the world, has an annual production capacity of 1.6 million units. The flying taxi prototype testing in Fremont may be the clearest signal of where Hyundai intends to be a decade from now.