Hyundai to eschew electric cars

It seems Hyundai has decided that electric cars are a dead-end, so they will not develop any more EVs but will concentrate on hybrids and hydrogen fuel cells.

We were beginning to think that we were a lone voice in the wilderness crying about the futility of the headline dive in to developing electric cars. But we’re not – Hyundai has decided to eschew electric car development.

Hyundai has declared that in future they are to concentrate on hybrid car development (which we still feel offers a negative cost/benefit advantage for cheaper cars) and hydrogen fuel cells – of which we approve enormously.

Hyundai Motors head of R&D – Yang Woong-Chul – said that he believed electric cars had no chance of replacing ICE cars in any meaningful way, and he trotted out all our oft-repeated arguments against EVS – poor range, poor battery technology, high cost and no infrastructure.

So instead of wasting billions of Won on producing expensive electric cars with little practical application, Hyundai will instead concentrate on developing plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell cars.

This time last year Hyundai revealed the  Hyundai BlueOn in South Korea with lots of talk about how it was the future of small cars. Our comment at the time was to call that ‘Poppycock’, and to criticise Hyundai for the same tokenism on electric cars as other car makers.

Thankfully, Hyundai has had the balls to admit the truth on EVs, and will instead concentrate on cars with a real future, like the ix35 FCEV and the Hyundai Blue² Concept they revealed at the Seoul Motor Show in March.

Mind you, Hyundai will still have a toe in the electric car waters as sister company Kia are to continue developing electric cars for the time being.

But we’re sure Kia will wake up and smell the roses before too long.