Hyundai Motor Company today presented its vision for a hydrogen-powered, software-driven transformation beyond mobility applications at CES 2024. The company held its Media Day at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas to highlight its future blueprint for a hydrogen energy ecosystem and a vision for software and artificial intelligence (AI).
“At Hyundai, we believe that science and humanity are two sides of the same coin; that advanced technology should also make people’s lives better,” said Jay Chang, President and CEO of Hyundai Motor Company. “Clean hydrogen should be for everyone, powering everything, and available everywhere.”
An innovative solution for hydrogen production, storage, transportation and utilization
Hyundai Motor Group has already announced a commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, substantiated by a clear RE100 roadmap to use 100 percent renewable energy in its overseas factories by 2045 and in every Group entity by 2050. Hydrogen energy will play a prominent role in achieving those objectives.
For nearly half of the company’s existence, Hyundai has been at the forefront of the hydrogen momentum, achieving many firsts, including the world’s first mass-produced fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). It now has the world’s highest market share in hydrogen-powered vehicle sales.
Hydrogen plays a crucial role in Hyundai’s sustainability roadmap as it is a clean energy source, with water being its only byproduct when used as fuel. It also enables the maximization of renewable energy utilization worldwide due to its advantages in storage and distribution. Hyundai sees hydrogen as the path to a sustainable future, as it is both clean and accessible.
Hyundai’s hydrogen solutions go beyond passenger cars, trucks and buses to include trams, special equipment, vessels, power generators and advanced air mobility. The company is driving the energy transition as a major hydrogen off-taker.
Hyundai isn’t alone in its commitment to hydrogen energy. In June 2023, the U.S. published its National Clean Hydrogen Strategy and Roadmap for accelerating the production, processing, delivery, storage and use of clean hydrogen. In December at COP28, the International Hydrogen Trade Forum and the Hydrogen Council launched a suite of flagship initiatives to accelerate the commercialization of hydrogen to transition away from fossil fuels.
To further emphasize its commitment to hydrogen, Hyundai highlighted the expansion of HTWO from a fuel cell system brand into Hyundai Motor Group’s hydrogen value chain business brand. HTWO now encompasses the Group’s businesses and affiliates, enabling each stage of the entire clean hydrogen value chain, from production and storage to transportation and utilization. HTWO represents ‘Hydrogen’ and ‘Humanity,’ the two main pillars of Hyundai’s fuel cell business.
Hyundai’s new identity as a sustainability player builds upon its core identity as an automobile company. One of the company’s aims is to contribute to the establishment of a hydrogen society by encouraging hydrogen off-takes. Through the HTWO brand, Hyundai Motor Group projects that it will off-take 3 million tonnes of hydrogen per year by 2035, powering businesses, such as clean logistics, green steel production and power generation.
During the presentation, Chang Hwan Kim, Senior Vice President and Head of Hydrogen Fuel Cell and Battery Development, explained that Hyundai is also developing megawatt-scale polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzer manufacturing capabilities for green hydrogen production, which is expected to commercialize within the next few years. Hyundai, through sharing components of fuel cell systems, plans to achieve a competitive price compared to existing PEM technologies. While the current market price of PEM electrolyzers is about 1.5 times higher than that of alkaline electrolyzers, the company is confident the price will drop below the alkaline electrolyzers through component sharing.
Furthermore, the Group is concentrating on resource circulation hydrogen production technology that aims to transform environmental pollutants into clean hydrogen. The resource circulation technology that Hyundai focuses on includes two approaches: Waste-to-Hydrogen (W2H) and Plastic-to-Hydrogen (P2H). W2H involves the fermentation of organic waste, such as food, sludge and livestock manure, to generate biogas. This biogas is then treated to capture carbon dioxide and produce hydrogen. P2H, on the other hand, involves melting waste plastics that cannot be recycled, gasifying the molten plastics and producing hydrogen by removing unnecessary elements.
SDx: Building a user-centered mobility ecosystem by defining vehicles, fleets and transportation systems with software and AI
Hyundai is undergoing a software-driven transformation led by the entire Group. As a provider of smart mobility solutions, Hyundai recognizes the importance of software and AI in creating a user-centric mobility ecosystem. At CES, the company announced its ‘Software-defined Everything’ (SDx) strategy, which aims to transform all moving devices, fleets and ecosystems into valuable assets through advanced software and AI.
Through its SDx strategy, the Group seeks to develop a mobility ecosystem that meets the needs of users anytime and anywhere. To achieve this, the Group is transitioning everything into a software-defined approach, from vehicle development to building the entire mobility ecosystem. It believes software and AI are enablers of achieving this vision.
The Group’s strategy begins with developing ‘software-defined vehicle’ (SDV). This means to incorporate software development methods to automotive development which means to decouple hardware and software to enable independent updates and advancement of each. The network and controllers are designed within the SDV framework, enhancing development agility and efficiency. This increases the flexibility and scalability of the vehicle development system, enabling faster updates of user-centric features and continuous improvement of device.
To enhance the user experience, the Group plans to develop a new infotainment system that supports a vehicle app market. They will also provide software development kits (SDKs) for developers to create killer apps. Additionally, the Group aims to integrate its own large language model (LLM) into their AI assistant and navigation system. This integration will enable more natural and convenient user interaction and experience with enhanced user safety.
As SDVs become more common and standardized, management of large-scale fleets will become easier and more efficient. Beyond individual vehicles, the Group is expanding its software solutions to include software-defined fleets for businesses. These solutions offer customized fleet management services, real-time data analytics and user-friendly administrative interfaces, allowing B2B customers to operate vehicles more efficiently and address real-time issues. The Group will offer vehicle data, advanced fleet management services, data analytics and valuable insights to B2B customers of different hardware and software requirements, all without the need for separate telematics devices.
As vehicles, fleets and mobility in general gets defined and developed by software, they will then get AI-defined. The Group envisions vehicles evolving into ‘AI machines’ that continuously learn to better serve customers and transforming vehicles into AI machines that continuously learn to better serve customers and deploy optimized machine learning operations (MLOps). Transforming vehicles into AI machines will enable the Group to automate maintaining and updates of vehicle, simplify or eliminate tedious tasks, provide transparent data, prevent and promptly address potential issues, personalize user experiences and accelerate the enhancement of services and solutions to deliver added value for users. This will contribute to stable and efficient operation of not only devices, but also mobility, logistics, and overall urban operating system.
The ultimate goal is to create a concept called ‘Cloud Transportation’ where software, AI-defined devices and mobility come together to create a mobility ecosystem where transportation is easily accessible to everyone. This concept, referred to as ‘transportation-as-a-service,’ allows users to freely access transportation and mobility services as needed. Everyone, along with devices and city infrastructure, will be interconnected within an ecosystem, enabling on-demand access to transportation and automatically increasing the intelligence of mobility solutions over time. The Group is currently operating various advanced mobility services, such as demand-responsive transport and self-driving taxis, and collecting data to further advance SDV technology, including autonomous driving, to establish a foundation for Cloud Transportation.
In his closing remarks, President Song highlighted the Group’s ongoing dedication to user convenience and safety, which have been core values since its inception. The Group’s software-development philosophy of ‘Service-defined, safety-designed’ reflects its mission to provide hassle-free mobility experiences with reliable and secure devices. By leveraging software and AI, the Group aims to develop services and solutions that meet users’ needs responsively, while also taking responsibility for ensuring safety throughout all aspects of mobility, including device stability, data protection and cybersecurity.