Hyundai Motor aims high for online small EV sales in Japan

TOKYO – Hyundai Motor Co. will accelerate its penetration into Japan, a market it has been struggling to crack for decades, with small-size electric vehicles, said its Chief Executive Chang Jae-hoon on Monday.

The South Korean carmaker is scheduled to launch an electric model of Casper, its smallest sport utility vehicle, in Japan in the first half of this year. It will sell them mostly on online platforms there.

“It's not easy to penetrate the Japanese market, but we'll continue to sell high-quality electric vehicles online,” Chang said in a presentation at Global Management Dialogue 2024, a forum hosted by Nikkei and Swiss business school IMD.

Hyundai made inroads into Japan in 2001 but gave up its passenger car business there in 2009 due to weak sales. In 2022, it announced its re-entry into the neighboring country, stepping up online marketing.

To facilitate online car sales, Hyundai in 2023 agreed to team up with Culture Convenience Club (CCC) to operate online and offline platforms -- Tsutaya and Tsutaya Books -- in Japan. CCC boasts big data based on 120 million customers accumulated through its video rental business and bookstores.

Its partnership with CCC is expected to boost online communication with would-be Japanese EV buyers and beef up data-driven marketing amid personalization trends.

Chang said its continuous communication with Japanese consumers has resulted in sales growth.

With the Casper Electric, Hyundai will be selling three EV models in Japan, including the IONIQ 5 crossover and the Kona Electric, which are already available in the market.

Casper is leading online car sales in South Korea.

EV LINEUP

Hyundai Motor Group, including Kia Corp., aims to build the EV lineup with 21 models by 2030 and sell a total of 2 million EVs by that year, Chang said at the event.

Hyundai will also expand its lineup with extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), targeting key export markets such as North America and China to overcome a slowdown in EV demand. EREVs can travel at least 900 kilometers on a full charge.

“China's proportion of our business has hit a trough of 6%. We’ll launch EVs in China from next year,” Chang told The Korea Economic Daily on the sidelines of the Nikkei forum.

The EVs to be rolled out in China will not only be sold to domestic customers but also be shipped to other countries.

Regarding Hyundai Motor India’s stock market listing last week, he said the company will invest more than the $3.3 billion it raised through the IPO in its Indian operation.

Write to Il-Gue Kim at black0419@hankyung.com
 

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.