Hyundai and Kia Motors have decided to speed up the production of popular cars such as Santa Fe and Soul, which will be launched next year, and to delay production of cars with uncertain demand and reduce production.

According to the industry on November 7, Kia Motors has set Soul`s follow-up production to mid-October, two months ahead of schedule. Hyundai Motor also caught the production phase of the follow-up to Santa Fe in early February of next year. It would have been 10 days earlier than the middle of February.

The fact that Hyundai and Kia Motors accelerated the production of new cars next year seems to have shifted to the atmosphere as soon as new models of well-selling cars are introduced as the difficulties inside and outside Korea are increasing. Hyundai and Kia sold 367,344 units and 2,246,667 units respectively by October this year. Compared to the same period last year, they decreased by 5.6% and 6.6%, respectively. To date, sales have reached 5,911,611, and it is actually an industry observation that it will be difficult to achieve sales target of 8.25 million units this year (508,000 units for Hyundai and 3.17 million units for Kia). "If we fail to achieve our sales goal this year, we will fail for three consecutive years since 2015," an automobile industry official said.

The car that will be launched early next year is the `Million Sellers`, which has been proven at home and abroad. Santa Fe was the first domestic sports utility car (SUV) to reach a cumulative domestic sales of 1 million units in 16 years after it launched last year. Soul has exceeded 1 million units of exports in June 2015, eight years after its launch in 2008, and is already a million-seller in the overseas market. Although 1924 units were sold domestically in September this year, exports reached 120,030 units.

On the other hand, the company will postpone the release of unquoted cars. Small SUVs to replace existing accents will be postponed from year-end 2018 to next year. The annual production volume will also decrease slightly from the initial 90,000 units.

Meanwhile, the current Santa Fe and Soul are released in April 2012 and October 2013, respectively. Hyundai • Kia Motors is gradually shortening this period, as most car makers offer completely new cars every six to seven years.

By Kim Yong Hyuk mj@


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