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Hyundai looking to add plant in Mexico

Mexico is rapidly becoming the go-to place for North American auto production, and companies including Toyota, General Motors, and Audi are all building new plants, expanding or shifting some production there. Now, Hyundai is investigating joining them in the future. "I'm sure that over the years we'll see production of Hyundai products in Mexico," Pedro Albarran, managing director for the automaker in Mexico, said to Bloomberg. Albarran indicates that a likely location for such a factory might be the state of Nuevo Leon, where Kia also has a forthcoming $1 billion plant. The site would be an ideal location near suppliers. It's probably going to be a while before any of Hyundai's models start coming out of Mexico. According to Bloomberg, the automaker wants to wait to make a final decision until sales there reach around 50,000 annual units, and that benchmark isn't expected until 2018. While Kia's plant is slated to have a capacity around 300,000 vehicles a year when it opens in 2016, Albarran thinks Hyundai might start smaller at just over 100,000 annual examples. Some of those would likely include subcompact models for the Mexican market. The Korean automaker was rumored to be looking into a factory south of the border as far back as 2013.

Hyundai analyzes 12 trends that will shape the world of 2030

Hyundai announced this year the start of Project Ioniq, its attempt at figuring out what the world of 2030 will be like. Of course the project would also use that information to determine how that world will affect the transportation industry. And it happens to share its name with the company's newest eco-friendly model. The first part of Project Ioniq is under way with the Ioniq Lab. This lab will be run by Dr. Soon Jong Lee, a professor at Seoul National University. Lee is also in charge of the Korea Future Design and Research Institute, and ten researchers and ten consultant experts will assist him on the project. Phase one has now yielded what Hyundai sees as 12 "megatrends" that will affect how the world changes and develops in 2030. This will in turn affect what people are looking for as far as transportation and mobility, and may inform what technologies and segments Hyundai invests in the future. The 12 megatrends are as follows: Hyper-connected Society Hyper-aging Society Eco-ism Multi-Layered Mash-up Context-awareness-based Individualization High Concept Society Decentralization of Power Anxiety and Chaos Sharing Society Co-evolution Mega-urbanization Neo-frontierism The team has detailed descriptions of each megatrend, and they are interesting, but we'll try to sum up all twelve of them for you here. If you want to check out all the details, be sure to check out the press release at this link. Overall, we're looking at a world where there are many more old people, and a large majority of the population will live in urban areas. Not everyone will live in urban areas, and some people may have new living opportunities because of advancements in aerospace and aquatic engineering. It will be a much more diverse world as well that we will be even more connected with, sharing information more and more. This will make understanding what people share and how they do so vital. Society will also start sharing everything much more, something akin to Uber and ZipCar today, but expanded. Companies will be looking to combine technologies and collaborate more to be involved in a wider array of businesses. The environment as well as cyber crimes and terrorism will remain ever-present issues. We will also see the development of significantly more capable robots and artificial intelligence.

Hyundai testing Sprinter-style commercial van

Commercial vehicle sales are a key component to the success of many automakers, and in its persistent drive to become one of the largest in the world, it's a segment Hyundai can't very well ignore. But while it offers the i800 and H-series vans overseas, it hasn't offered anything bigger than a Tucson or Santa Fe in North America since the demise of the Entourage and Veracruz. That could all change in the near future, however, if these latest spy shots are anything to go by.
Pictured undergoing testing in Europe, this Hyundai commercial van prototype looks to be about the size of a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter or Ram ProMaster. There's little we can tell from these disguised spy shots at the moment, other than to note that this Hyundai is big and has small wheels, in typical European van style. We can't even tell if this is front-, rear- or all-wheel drive.
Of course, we have no indication at this point whether the van pictured here will make the transatlantic voyage to American showrooms. But with Mercedes having led the Euro van charge with the aforementioned Sprinter, and with the likes of Ford, Ram and Nissan all following suit, it seems possible. However, between the upgrades to service departments often necessary to accommodate such large vehicles and the sales retraining necessary to court commercial truck customers, doing so wouldn't simply be a plug-and-play operation - it would undoubtedly take a great deal of effort and money.