Hyundai unveils future technology in Seoul

It’s not every day that you receive an invitation to visit the worlds fifth largest automotive manufacturer, so when the phone call came from Phillip Eustace at Hyundai Automotive New Zealand to visit Korea, we weren’t going to refuse.
Five Kiwi motoring journalists including myself enjoyed four days in Seoul where we toured Hyundai Motor Company’s Asan production facility which is one of the most highly automated plants in the world as well as being treated to an insider’s view of the Namyang Research and Development Centre.
The Asan produces 300,000 cars a year for global and domestic consumption, and 800,000 engines which includes the 2.4 litre four-cylinder Theta engine (known as the world engine) which is sold to Daimler-Chrysler and Mitsubishi for use in Chrysler, Jeep and Mitsubishi passenger cars. We enjoy this engine in the Sonata.
Selling engines to Mitsubishi has been a feather in the cap of the Hyundai Motor Company. Only three decades ago they were sourcing engines from the Japanese company for use in Hyundai models, now the boot is well and truly on the other foot.
The engineers at the Asan Engine Plant are justifiably proud of their facility and so they should be, it’s the cleanest most technically advanced facility I have ever seen.   
The Hyundai Grandeur and Sonata models are built at the Asan Plant using a level of automation that is awe inspiring, from the stamping of body panels to the welding of them, to painting of the car bodies and installation of interiors and windscreens.
This entire process is all done by machine under the watchful eye of the Asan factory employees who number 3000 in total. Watching the precision placement of the windscreen and rear screen by the robotic arms just had to be seen to be believed.
Security and quality control is paramount to the Hyundai Motor Corporation, we were only permitted to take photographs of the cars coming off the “OK” line before they were submitted to a quick shakedown drive prior to being shipped off to their new owners.
If 300,000 vehicles a year sounds impressive, the complete capacity of the huge Hyundai plant in Ulsan is 1,440,000 units. Adding the heavy vehicle production capacity of Jeonju plant makes 1.76 million units in total capacity.
Domestically the Sonata was Hyundai Motor Company’s best selling car in 2006 with 116,842 units, second was the Avante (Elantra) with 88,212 units and the Grandeur sold 84,861 units. Hyundai had 50 percent of the local market share in 2006 and the Hyundai-Kia Group combined total market share was 73.3 percent.
In comparison for 2006 Hyundai Motor Company exported 334,637 units of Elantra, 248,344 units of Sonata, 241,742 units of Accent, 235,688 units of Atoz, 229,297 units of Tucson and 189,179 units of Getz.
All this would not be possible without the considerable investment Hyundai Motor Company have poured into their R&D centre at Namyang, where we saw the engine and power train facilities, the climatic wind tunnel facilities, as well as the multi million dollar crash test centre.
Unfortunately cameras and camera cell phones were not permitted and rightly so with semi disguised prototype vehicles running around the multi hectare facility. Hyundai also benchmark their cars and engines against their competition, their PR Manager Oles Gadacz freely admitted that the company buy other cars and engines for their engineers to pull apart and compare. 
During our tour we were able to quickly look inside a new rear drive Hyundai Genesis V8 executive saloon which was being launched at the New York Motorshow the following day. A security guard quickly ushered those who weren’t quick enough away before they got too close.
Fortunately we arrived on a day when the Hyundai Engineers were doing an airbag sensor development crash test on a brand new Hyundai FD hatchback, which they rolled into the wall at 16 kph to ensure the airbags did not unnecessarily deploy.
It was quite spooky watching a car eerily roll forward into a deformable barrier head on, but to the delight of the engineers, the airbags did not deploy which shows how finely calibrated the active safety systems are in a Hyundai. What was more impressive was how the frontal impact was absorbed by the bumper and bonnet of the FD but the other body panels were completely unharmed.
Then it was out to the test track to sample a new Hyundai FD hatchback with a 1.6 litre turbo diesel engine, a TQ Minivan with a 2.5 litre CRD diesel engine, and a Hybrid petrol electric Accent…oh yes and a 3.3 litre Grandeur that one of our guides was using.
The TQ and FD proved that Hyundai’s diesel technology is up there with the best from European manufacturers, the Hybrid Accent with CVT transmission was okay and thanks to two journalists the poor Grandeur ended the session with smoking brake pads.
Then on our last day in Seoul, we were treated to the visual spectacular that is the Korean Motor Show, where the stars of the day were the Hyundai concept cars Veloster and Qarma Q plus the new TQ Passenger Van and the FD hatchback and wagon. You can see a photo pictorial of these on pages 8 and 9 in this issue.  n
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