Der Kauf eines Elektroautos ist eine „Frage des Vertrauens“, sagt Hyundai Europe CEO
„Wenn du das zweitliebste Fahrzeug für den Kunden bist, bist du das erste, das er nicht kauft", sagte Xavier Martinet, CEO von Hyundai Motor Europe, gegenüber The Big Question.
LESEN SIE MEHR : http://de.euronews.com/2025/10/06/der-kauf-eines-elektroautos-ist-eine-frage-des-vertrauens-sagt-hyundai-europe-ceo
00:00If you're the second preferred vehicle from the customer, you're the first one to not buy.
00:03We can see it as a treasure, but we can also see it as an opportunity.
00:11Welcome to The Big Question, the series from Euronews where we speak to some of the biggest names in business.
00:17I'm Hannah Brown and today I'm joined by Xavier Martinet, CEO and President of Hyundai Europe.
00:22Thank you very much for joining me today, Xavier.
00:24Can you just tell me a little bit about where you currently sit in the European market?
00:28If you look at personal cars, we're at 4% market share in Europe, we're ranked number 10 on the market.
00:34When you look back in time, 10, 15 years ago, we're at half this market share, so Hyundai has been growing over time.
00:40And there's a lot of challenges right now in the car industry, everywhere in the world, in Europe in particular.
00:45So we can see it as a threat, we can also see it as an opportunity to try to build the deal a little bit more in the coming years.
00:52And where do you see the real opportunities for growth for Hyundai in Europe?
00:56Europe is fundamental for us.
00:57You know, some markets were really top five, and some markets were way behind that.
01:02But the two stuff, for example, is an icon on the CSUV segment.
01:06Hyundai is also doing a great job.
01:08There are some other segments, like these segments into which we are not performing as well.
01:11From the private buyer point of view, people buying their cars one by one, we're doing a pretty decent job.
01:15We're at 4.5% market share.
01:18But when we look at the B2B segment, which is like fleets, we're up so good.
01:22We're up 3.3%.
01:23So again, it's room for improvements.
01:26There's potential to be seized in many different areas in Europe.
01:29We need to develop products that are taking European customers' needs, lifestyles, demands.
01:34And when we do have global products, we need to calibrate them because you don't drive on the German autobahn like you drive in an interstate in the U.S.
01:42So I mean, we need to be able to somewhere really adjust and fine tune the vehicle characteristics so that vehicles satisfy the customers wherever they drive.
02:02What trends are you seeing among your customers?
02:03A quarter of our sales are coming from battery vehicles and plug-in hybrid.
02:08We have roughly 30% coming from hybrid and then the rest is coming from, let's say, internal combustion engines.
02:14It's in line with the market evolution.
02:16EV adoption is there, but not at the speed that was planned by everybody a few years back.
02:20So if you look into what experts were saying three years ago, for example, they were saying by 2025, there should be a 30% EV mix.
02:27In Europe, we're at 17.5% in terms of markets right now, total industry volume.
02:33And hybrids are really the ones taking the votes from the customers today.
02:36So we need to continue developing our strategy with these two legs.
02:39There's this EV leg and there's just a hybrid leg for the future.
02:42And you've announced production on a new car in the Ioniq family to start early next year.
02:48Can you just tell me a little bit about where that fits within your product range?
02:51This vehicle was really built for Europe.
02:54It was designed for European customers.
02:57It was developed with the engineering center for European customers.
03:00And that shows really how important Europe is for Hyundai.
03:03I mean, it's the whole strategy that we've been launching quite some time ago.
03:07We need to cover all the segments of the market with EVs.
03:10Because right now what we see, for example, is that the EV mix is actually higher for fleet customers.
03:15But retail buyers right now have a lower mix of EV.
03:18They still want to buy the old ones also because either they don't find the car they want or the price is too high.
03:23And this is why for us targeting this lower part of the segment with strong EV propositions is what's fundamental.
03:30And it's one of the challenges that we have with EVs is that they're more expensive than, let's say, internal combustion engine vehicles.
03:34So again, it's important that we have the right balance between, again, the specifications of the vehicle.
03:40You have the right range, you have the right charging speed, you have the right equipment in the vehicle until a price that's compatible with purchasing power of European customers in this segment.
03:51So it's a delicate balance.
03:52And right now there's a lot of great offers on the market.
03:55So you need to generate some kind of emotion that makes people want to buy your car.
03:59And I usually say that if you're the second preferred vehicle from a customer, you're the first one they're not buying.
04:03And on that note about pricing, do you think that EVs currently, not just Hyundai, the whole market, do you think they are really affordable for the average European?
04:12Well, they're more expensive than ICE.
04:13Obviously, there's a price gap between the two because there's a cost coming with the technology.
04:17And so, yes, they're more expensive in terms of retail price that we're selling our cars at.
04:22At the same time, the total cost of ownership has to include also the fact that electricity costs you less than fuel that you're putting in a vehicle.
04:28You have to include also the fact that maintenance costs much less because you have less moving parts in an EV that you do have in a traditional vehicle.
04:36So when people discover EVs, they realize how quiet the car is, how easy it is actually to use.
04:42They realize that the running costs are actually much lower than what they were used to before.
04:46When people buy an EV, they rarely go back.
04:49So the vehicles that you're currently self-producing in Korea, if you shifted more of that production to Europe, you'd avoid the EU import tariffs.
04:57And do you think that would really help your ability to be competitive in the market?
05:01We have two plants serving Europe.
05:03We have the one in the Czech Republic, which has a capacity of 330,000 units per year.
05:08We have the one in Turkey with a capacity of like 230,000 units per year, roughly.
05:13So the Czech plant was historically also EV ready.
05:16I mean, we've been producing the Kona EV in the Nozavice plant for several years.
05:21We're just investing right now to make the Turkish plant also EV ready.
05:24Last year, 79% of the vehicles were sold in the region were coming from these two plants.
05:30This year, we should be around 70% because we lost the Insta coming from Korea.
05:34And the success is really much increasing the share of, let's say, production coming from Korea.
05:39I mean, it sounds easy to switch production from one plant to another, but it's always more complex than that.
05:44Because it's a factory, but then you have the ecosystem with the suppliers all around.
05:47Never say never, but for the moment, there's no third plant plan for Europe on the table.
05:52The key thing is really finding the right products that are really the ones made for Europe with the right volumes.
05:57Because, again, you need to generate the economics that justify the investment.
06:01We've started building EVs in Europe with Kona, for example.
06:03Kona EVs are, let's say, a historical success story in Europe.
06:07Hopefully, the production version of Concept3 will also be the next success story of EVs in Europe.
06:13Finally, talk to me about hydrogen-powered cars.
06:15And when you look at the potential of hydrogen vehicles in Europe, you're like, ah, potential is not really present.
06:20It's true.
06:20But at the same time, we're not just developing one car.
06:23We're developing a car, bus, truck.
06:27And when you look at our plant in Savannah, Georgia, in the U.S., we're also producing our own hydrogen.
06:32So at the end of the day, you're not talking about one car, you're talking about an ecosystem.
06:35It's something that we definitely want to continue investing on.
06:37EVs are one great way to electrify the car park.
06:41But we also have some questions about access to raw materials and rare earth materials.
06:45And will these tensions on the access to raw materials really change?
06:48Not so sure.
06:49So, again, it's quite interesting to develop some kind of alternative that one day might become quite interesting
06:55or might become quite valuable, actually, as a complement.
06:59So we're not opposing the two.
07:01We're just saying it's good to have different solutions to decarbonize the car industries.
07:06And what right now do you think are the barriers?
07:09The infrastructure.
07:10We don't have that many charging stations.
07:12And again, the charging stations for hydrogen costs a lot more than the electricity.
07:15Again, it's why we don't see these technologies as opposing technologies, but they might complement each other.
07:21So that's why we've announced that by 2027, when we talk to European customers,
07:26every single Hyundai model in Europe will have at least like a hybrid powertrain or a plug-in hybrid powertrain
07:35or a full EV powertrain or a hydrogen powertrain.
07:39And I think it's really like one of the interesting propositions that Hyundai is making to customers in Europe.
07:45Brilliant.
07:45Well, thank you so much for your time today.
07:47And thank you for joining me on The Big Question.
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