Both Hyundai and Kia are banking on strong EV launches to bolster their 2021 sales figures.
Hyundai Motor Co and its affiliate Kia Motor Corps have recently announced its forecast for an 11.5% growth in its global vehicle sales in the coming 12 months. This comes ahead of news that both automakers have experienced a dip in sales last year, for the second year in a row.
At the end of 2020, both Hyundai and Kia have posted a decade-low combined sales figure of 6.35 million vehicles. Mainly attributed to the coronavirus pandemic that ravaged the auto industry last year, this dismal combined sales result was 12% off the 7.08 million sales initially targeted for 2020. It was also more than 20% off a sales peak reached in 2015.
While both auto giants have routinely failed to meet their sales predictions for the past six years already, the scale of the drop in sales, while expected, has lead both car manufacturers to significantly revise down their sales targets for this year ahead to a more modest degree. Hyundai targets for a global sales figure of 4.16 million units in 2021, while Kia aims to sell 2.92 million cars over the same time period.
In working to this somewhat realistic goal, both South Korean automakers are betting big on the EV sector of the auto market for 2021. Hyundai is preparing to launch its first dedicated battery electric car, the IONIQ 5, sometime in the middle of this year.
Kia too is also set to launch its own dedicated EV in 2021. This is in accordance with their ambitious Plan S brand transformation strategy, which will see the automaker introducing at least 7 additional fully-electric models into its lineup by the year 2027.
Having said all that though, it remains to be seen whether these ambitious plans put into effect by these South Korean auto giants to revitalise its sales figures will actually come into fruition. Especially with many countries having recently announced various stages of lockdown once again, the road ahead in the international auto industry looks to be still a rather rocky one in 2021.
