Before joining Hyundai in August, Boyle was vice president of linked trade at Visa, where among her functions was to expand in-car payment technology. Before that, she held several leadership positions in Fiat Chrysler and Ford Motor Co.. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How long do you think that it takes before EV becomes the standard?
A: Hyundai has made significant investments on our journey to electrification leadership. We plan to introduce about 12 battery electric versions by 2025. The overall group will probably have 23 eco-friendly vehicles globally and one million vehicles EV from 2025. And we want to fully electrify the car lineup and accounts for approximately 10% of the EV market by 2040.
Q: At CES you discussed the Urban Airport in the UK. Would you speak a bit about self driving and flying automobiles and the Urban Airport?
A: That is what we like to call”urban aviation vehicles” rather than flying cars. We have a joint venture together with Aptiv named Motional and we began testing fully driverless systems in 2020. Our vision for future cities also includes these items called”purpose vehicles.” All these are autonomous vehicles which may be used for freight, individuals, also ride-hailing with (completely ) autonomous driving. Where it gets to the urban mobility and the way in which they interact is that we wish to get, moving into the future, multi-modal options for people. That means you can come in into a”vertiport” (a kind of airport where aircraft land and take off vertically) on your urban air mobility vehicle, property there, and then take one of these purpose-built vehicles to a different place, then take it then from there into an e-bike or a e-scooter. We’ve got this vision for urban air mobility that is looking to commercialize those aircraft by 2028.
Q: How does robotics and Hyundai’s purchase of a vast majority stake in the robot-maker Boston Dynamics play into this?
A: We wish to own progress for humanity and become a smart mobility company. But we are also working on all kinds of applications for robotics. So it features wearable robotics technology in our assembly plants to aid with individuals that have to do repetitive tasks, wearable robots to the elderly and those with partial handicap, after which robotics that we are growing to our urban mobility vehicles that can use robotics to operate in off-road terrain.
Q: Are you adapting to this entire car buying experience going digital?
A: We are working together with our dealers to guarantee our traders have electronic retail options out there. We’ve seen our online transactions reach nearly 10% of our entire quantity. It’s likely to be something which continues and even develops. Post pandemic, post vaccine.
