What Chinese Car Companies Going Global Should Learn from Hyundai and Kia

Written by | Zhang Linyu

Edited by | Huang Dalu

Designed by | Zhen Youmei

Many global automakers have different realities in China and the rest of the world.

For example, Renault, a brand that has lost its presence in China, is thriving in Europe, much like Geely is in China.

Similarly, Hyundai and Kia have struggled in China for years, but in the US, Europe, and other markets, they have long been one of the major choices for local consumers when buying cars.

Hyundai Motor Group is undervalued in China, but this is also related to its own strategy and the broader environment. Today, as Chinese automakers go global, Hyundai and Kia could be a sample worth studying.

Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis target different consumers, retaining their own product and brand expressions while sharing the group's platforms, R&D, procurement, and manufacturing resources.

According to the sales announcements released by the two companies on July 1, 2026, in the first half of the year, Hyundai Motor Company including Genesis had a global sales volume of approximately 1.966 million vehicles; Kia had approximately 1.631 million vehicles, with a combined total of approximately 3.597 million vehicles. Among them, Hyundai Motor Company's sales decreased by 4.9% year-on-year, while Kia increased by 2.7%, setting a record for its first-half sales.

During the same period, Hyundai Motor Company's sales in South Korea were approximately 317,000 vehicles, and Kia's were approximately 296,000 vehicles. The Korean local market provides a stable business foundation for the group, but the larger sales volume comes from overseas.

Hyundai and Kia operate products and channels separately in the US, supply through manufacturing bases in the Czech Republic, Turkey, and Slovakia in Europe, and have established local production systems in India. The two brands share the group's technology and procurement resources while competing against different users.

The Hyundai and Kia we see in China obviously do not represent the whole picture of this group. However, global scale has not allowed the two companies to escape profit pressure.

In the second quarter of 2026, Hyundai Motor Company's revenue was 49.22 trillion Korean won, up 1.9% year-on-year; operating profit was 2.85 trillion Korean won, down 20.8% year-on-year, with an operating profit margin of 5.8%. Kia's revenue for the same period was 33.03 trillion Korean won, up 12.6% year-on-year; operating profit was 2.62 trillion Korean won, down 4.9% year-on-year, resulting in an operating profit margin of approximately 7.9%.

Kia's revenue growth and operating profit margin were higher than Hyundai Motor Company, but both companies faced declining operating profit despite revenue growth. Different brands and product combinations presented different operating results within the same group.

Global layout gave Hyundai and Kia multiple market pivots but did not eliminate the pressure brought by costs, products, and competition.

Their lack of development in China does not hinder the study of how they established global business and how they succeeded globally. But at the same time, this system also faces challenges in the new automotive era.

Hyundai and Kia Going Global

The reason for Hyundai going global was first that the South Korean market is too small.

Chinese car companies that do well in their local market may reach millions of vehicles in scale and complete iterations of technology relying on China's supply chain. Hyundai does not have such conditions.

Established in 1967, it began producing the Ford Cortina in 1968, exported the Pony to Ecuador in 1976, and entered the US with Excel in 1986. While learning to build cars, it had to find overseas buyers.

For latecomers to the automotive industry, platforms, molds, R&D, and factories are investments that need to be spread across a scale. Local demand in South Korea determines that if Hyundai wants to become a large automobile enterprise, it cannot wait until all capabilities are mature before considering overseas expansion.

The global market has been a constraint it has had to face since early on in establishing its industrial capabilities.

This makes the growth conditions for Chinese and Korean car companies different.

Chinese enterprises can rely on the huge domestic market to perfect products and accumulate scale before expanding overseas business. Hyundai needed to learn how to enter other people's markets much earlier, understanding price tolerance, aesthetics, roads, and consumption habits. This difference does not determine who is more advanced but influences how enterprises later allocate resources and power.

Hyundai initially also relied on low prices. But the US market quickly made it understand that low prices can bring the first purchase, but quality and service bring the second.

In 1998, Hyundai Motor America introduced a coverage plan for 1999 model new cars, including a limited 10-year or 100,000-mile powertrain warranty. This was a concrete action to establish credit.

Within the scope covered by warranty terms, it transferred the reliability risks consumers worried about back to the manufacturer and required manufacturing, repair, and quality management to catch up. Whether a strange brand can stand, it needs to make consumers believe that someone is still responsible for problems that occur after buying the car.

The 1998 acquisition of Kia was another important node for Hyundai to establish today's global system. The two brands gradually expanded the sharing of platforms and procurement while retaining their own design and market expressions.

In 2005, the Hyundai Alabama plant went into production, and Kia subsequently established a production base in Georgia. Hyundai and Kia gradually changed from import brands to become local employers, purchasers, and investors, establishing long-term relationships with suppliers, dealers, and local governments.

Hyundai's Palisade and Kia's Telluride等大型 SUVs respond to family travel needs, hybrid models respond to usage costs, and Genesis bears the task of brand upward mobility. Two mass-market brands plus a luxury brand allow the group to compete between different prices and needs.

Hyundai and Kia in the US are not just Korean models with a few more configurations added. Local needs entered product definition, and car buying finance, leasing, and services entered the daily lives of consumers.

India took another path.

Hyundai established business in India in 1996, launched the Santro in 1998, and began local production, gradually expanding from small cars to compact SUVs. Price, space, fuel consumption, and maintenance convenience constitute the more realistic car buying judgment for local families.

Kia later entered India, establishing business through local production and products such as SUVs and MPVs. The two brands forming different product combinations in the same market also further increased India's weight in the group's global layout.

Hyundai India disclosed in its performance exchange in February 2026 that the localization level has reached 84%. As local procurement and manufacturing capabilities continue to deepen, India concurrently takes on the role of sales market, manufacturing base, and regional export center, supplying to the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and other Asia-Pacific markets.

Europe had different requirements.

Hyundai established local R&D capabilities and supplied through Czech and Turkish factories, while Kia formed a manufacturing pivot in Slovakia. Body forms, driving feel, safety, and emission requirements need to be solved in the development stage. Channels, repair, and parts supply familiar to consumers determine whether products can be operated continuously after launch.

Localization in Brazil even went directly into the power system.

The Hyundai Brazil plant put into production in 2012 and the HB20 developed for the local market need to adapt to the ethanol fuel system, purchasing power, and usage environment. The Middle East and Africa rely more on distribution partners to establish coverage, then deepen assembly and procurement according to demand and policy. The Asia-Pacific market's demand for multi-person travel provided product space for MPVs and SUVs different from Europe.

These markets were not treated by Hyundai and Kia as different sales addresses for the same set of models.

South Korean local provides R&D, platform, and manufacturing foundations, with each region forming its own product combinations, supply chains, and business relationships. The group shares resources, brands face consumers separately, and regional business handles local needs.

The change Hyundai and Kia completed is that different markets gradually entered the enterprise, participating in deciding what this group produces, how it is produced, and how it serves users.

Undervalued Design

The role of design is often obscured by the impression of cost-performance ratio.

In the past, when people talked about Korean cars, the first thing that came to mind was value for money.

Today, Hyundai's IONIQ 5 pixel lights and Kia's EV9 geometric contours are all turning brands into recognizable product languages. Hyundai and Kia absorb global design talent and gradually form their own expressions. The experience of South Korean consumer electronics, home furnishings, retail, and cultural industries facing global consumers also provides a background for understanding such aesthetic expressions.

For automobiles, culture can be reflected in proportions, materials, colors, spaces, and interfaces, and does not need to become a prominent traditional symbol every time. The place Hyundai and Kia are worth studying is how to make people from different cultural backgrounds understand their designs while willing to pay for them.

After sharing platforms and technologies, the two brands still need to retain their respective appearances. Technical synergies can spread costs, but design and product positioning need to give consumers different reasons to choose.

When batteries, motors, chips, and screens are increasingly easy to obtain, product differences will not naturally disappear, but relying solely on configuration tables to build advantages will become more and more difficult. Design, usability, and overall experience will affect whether a brand can escape price competition.

Of course, Hyundai and Kia did not invent globalization. Toyota completed much of the work on this path earlier.

In 1984, Toyota and General Motors established NUMMI, i.e., New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., accumulated experience in organizing production and handling labor relations in the US, and then expanded its own manufacturing system. The IMV, i.e., Innovative International Multi-purpose Vehicle project, launched in 2004, incorporated bases such as Thailand, Indonesia, South Africa, and Argentina into common platforms and transnational division of labor, allowing a country's factory to serve multiple markets.

The advantage Toyota established was reliability, production management, repair networks, and long-term usage costs. As a later entrant, Hyundai and Kia needed to make up for quality while closing the brand gap through design, configuration, and price combinations.

They both value local operations, but Hyundai and Kia's experience is closer to the situation Chinese car companies are facing today: products already have competitiveness, why do consumers still unwilling to switch brands?

This is also where this sample is most valuable when comparing Chery, Geely, and BYD.

Chery entered emerging markets earlier, relying on high cost-performance products, local dealers, and co-assembly to expand coverage, then deepening manufacturing and brand investment. This path has similarities with Hyundai and Kia.

The next test is to convert the expansion speed brought by different partners into stable quality, spare parts, and service standards. The more countries, brands, and models, the higher the difficulty of channel management.

Geely relies more on capital shareholding or acquisition and technical cooperation.

Volvo and the cooperation with Renault in Brazil brought different forms of brand, R&D, factory, and regional relationships, and also brought Chinese technology into the existing global network. It needs to solve how brand autonomy and platform sharing get along, and whether complex equity and cooperation relationships can truly improve efficiency.

BYD relies on synergies between batteries, electric drive, entire vehicles, and plug-in hybrid technologies to push the scale and cost advantages formed in the Chinese market overseas.

The Thailand factory places local sales and regional exports together, reflecting the idea of a production network. The next test is, after increasing investment in overseas factory construction, local procurement, and channel services, how much cost advantage BYD can still maintain, and whether it can convert product competitiveness into dealer profits and users' long-term trust. Repair efficiency, spare parts supply, and used car residual value all need to be accumulated through continuous operation.

The experience Hyundai and Kia provide is that the assessment of going global must ultimately fall on local operations. Whether cars sold after entering channels are sold to users, whether dealers can make money, how long spare parts take to arrive, and whether financing costs are acceptable explain business quality more than announcing entering how many countries.

Localization also requires power to follow responsibility.

If a region is to be responsible for sales and profits, it must be able to influence product definition, configuration, launch rhythm, and partner selection. The headquarters retains platforms, quality, and safety standards, and local teams need the ability to respond to the market.

New Automotive Era

China is changing the value structure of automobiles. New energy platforms, batteries, smart cockpits, assisted driving, and rapid updates have formed a high-intensity innovation environment.

New functions and product concepts can quickly enter a large number of models, being verified, improved, or eliminated in real competition.

Chinese car companies have thus obtained a high upper limit for product experience. But a smart car that is highly mature in China may not be able to completely retain this experience in other markets.

Maps, accounts, music, payments, cloud services, and AI applications need to be reconnected; data permissions, privacy settings, and proactive recommendations need to be redesigned. A service that can be completed by voice in the country, overseas, may not have corresponding service providers, or may need to re-obtain user authorization. Whether local users need it also cannot be presumed in advance.

Past localization mainly revolved around regulations, chassis, power, and language. Today, it is increasingly deepening into the automobile's software structure and business relationships. The deeper China's digital ecosystem is integrated, the more parts may need to be re-developed and coordinated when migrating overseas.

China's intelligent advantage needs to be realized overseas through another set of organizational capabilities. How many functions are added should be determined by local needs; to what extent users hope the system is proactive also needs research. Cannot directly equate the high configuration density of the Chinese market with high satisfaction in all markets.

Hyundai and Kia have long faced multiple markets and accumulated experience in handling regional differences. This experience may help them adapt to different digital ecosystems.

But whether they already possess a good enough software architecture, development efficiency, and application experience is another problem still to be tested.

Assisted driving will further increase the difficulty.

Non-motor vehicles in Shanghai, roundabouts in Paris, and parking yield in US suburbs involve different road environments and driving habits formed over the long term. Completing a large number of verifications in China does not mean overseas local verification can be skipped.

Whether data can be collected, where it is stored, and how it is used for training are also affected by rules in different regions. Automobile platforms can be as unified as possible, but the data closed loop needs to possess regional capabilities. For Chinese car companies, this increases the cost of globalization; for Hyundai and Kia, sales scattered around the world will not automatically convert to usable assisted driving data.

Hyundai and Kia's failure in China serves as a reminder that global capabilities accumulated in the past also have boundaries.

Beijing Hyundai once broke through an annual sales volume of one million vehicles in 2013, and Kia also once had a much higher market presence in China than today. Local factories, joint venture partners, and channels were once complete, but when Chinese brands continued to advance in quality, design, SUVs, and new energy, the original reasons for purchasing for Korean brands gradually weakened. External shocks around 2017 exacerbated the decline, but were not enough to explain the long-term slump thereafter.

Manufacturing has been localized, but technology choices and product deployment still need to keep up with changes in the Chinese market. When consumers start evaluating cars with cockpits, assisted driving, and update speeds, past fuel vehicle credit cannot automatically become the attraction of new products.

Therefore, China's significance to Hyundai Motor Group cannot be just restoring sales volume. It also needs to re-enter the innovation system here.

Hyundai has begun introducing the technical capabilities of Chinese partners. In the China strategy announced in 2026, it includes collaborating with Momenta to develop assisted driving systems and introducing the Doubao Large Language Model in the smart cockpit. Whether these cooperations can improve product experience still needs to be verified by mass production performance and continuous updates. Source: Hyundai Motor China Strategy Explanation

Toyota adopting Momenta technology on China models, Nissan and Mazda also promoting new energy products through Chinese teams or partners, all show that China's significance to global automakers is extending from sales markets to the input end of technical and product capabilities.

Hyundai and Kia's Chinese joint venture companies also have new roles.

Yueda Kia's Yancheng factory has become part of the global export network, but manufacturing export is just one layer. China's supply chain and R&D speed can also support product development, then enter other markets through the group's regulations, quality, and brand systems.

Beijing Hyundai ELEXIO has begun moving overseas along this path. This electric SUV was produced by Beijing Hyundai, launched first in the Chinese market in October 2025, and then entered the Australian market, a product under Hyundai's "Made in China, For China, Going Global" strategy.

But after ELEXIO's launch in China, sales were low, and the situation has not yet opened up. China development and manufacturing, using group channels to enter overseas, show the product has connected to the global network; whether it has enough competitiveness still needs to be answered by the market.

ELEXIO's test therefore has two layers: In China, it needs to re-establish consumers' reasons to choose Hyundai electric vehicles; overseas, it needs to prove that after local adaptation, this set of products can obtain continuous sales and reasonable profits. The slump in the Chinese market cannot directly predict overseas results, but equally cannot be covered up by overseas deployment news.

This requires global companies to have the ability to judge which Chinese innovations can be migrated, which need adjustment, and which are only suitable for China. Discovering and verifying innovation in China, then making it adapt to users in different countries is the capability Hyundai Motor Group needs to further establish.

Whether it can complete this step will directly affect how Hyundai and Kia respond to the overseas challenges of Chinese car companies.

New Competition in Global Markets

Competition in Europe has fallen on pure electric, plug-in hybrid, price, and software experience simultaneously.

Hyundai and Kia's respective electric vehicle products expanded the group's market coverage and allowed the two brands to compete for users with different designs and models. But owning electric vehicle products does not mean the market is already held. Chinese brands are still making up for production and channels, while Hyundai and Kia need to face competition on costs and experience.

Competition in South America and Southeast Asia is more direct.

Chinese car companies bring battery and plug-in hybrid advantages to the local area, also building factories, channels, and service systems. Plug-in hybrids especially may change some markets where public charging facilities are insufficient: for consumers with daily charging conditions, they do not need to wait for public charging networks to be fully mature to obtain daily electric driving experiences. How much usage costs can be reduced depends on local gasoline and electricity prices and actual charging and driving situations.

Hyundai and Kia need to judge how long fuel vehicles and regular hybrids can support, and at what speed pure electric, plug-in hybrid, and extended range should enter. Investing too slowly will lose users, while too quickly may bear idle capacity. The Middle East and Africa cannot be processed generally; purchasing power, energy prices, and infrastructure differences vary greatly between the Gulf and other markets.

The US and India provide different degrees of buffer.

US access restrictions, India's investment environment and local industry relationships all increase the difficulty for Chinese car companies to enter directly. But Hyundai and Kia still have to face Toyota, US local enterprises, and India's Maruti Suzuki, Tata, and Mahindra. Policies can influence the time competition occurs but cannot solve cost, product, and demand problems for enterprises.

Both companies' product and investment choices have already reflected this judgment.

Hyundai Motor Company continues to expand capacity in North America and India, strengthen hybrids, and plans to launch its first batch of extended range models starting from the first half of 2027. Kia, in addition to expanding pure electric and hybrid products, takes PBV dedicated vehicle business as a new growth direction. The group's common technical foundation is being used for product arrangements of different brands and markets. Source: Hyundai Motor 2026 Investor Day Announcement, Kia 2026 Investor Day Announcement

What is truly difficult is that multiple technology routes require money and also require organizations to undertake.

Fuel, hybrid, pure electric, and extended range are all invested in simultaneously, old and new factories need coordination, and software, autonomous driving, and robots are vying for R&D resources. The group is promoting Pleos cockpits and software-defined cars. With related systems entering mass production, development, verification, and continuous update efficiency will accept the test of actual use.

Processes that helped it establish global scale in the past may also increase time and costs in new competitions. The more regional businesses there are, the more important unified architecture is; the greater market differences, the more important local autonomy is. How to divide work between the two is something global automotive companies must repeatedly adjust in the future.

Hyundai Motor Company set a sales target of 5.55 million vehicles and an operating profit margin target of over 9% for 2030; Kia set a sales target of 4.13 million vehicles and a 10% operating profit margin target. The combined sales volume targets of the two companies are approximately 9.68 million vehicles. Achieving these targets requires improving product structure, costs, and capacity utilization simultaneously. Source: Hyundai Motor Target, Kia Target

If Chinese competitors continuously improve cost-performance ratios, and Hyundai and Kia can only increase discounts, scale targets and profit targets will constrain each other. Sharing technology and procurement can spread investment but cannot replace each brand establishing a purchase reason in the local market.

Hyundai and Kia have previously proven they are good at absorbing external capabilities and putting these capabilities into their own global systems. The next step, they still need to prove whether they can create new product experiences faster. The task for Chinese car companies is to make the already formed innovative capabilities continue to hold in different regulations, cultures, and digital ecosystems.

Therefore, what Hyundai Motor Group is most worth Chinese car companies learning is how to let an enterprise growing from a local base continue to operate in many countries, letting local users be willing to buy, use for a long time, and choose it again. This capability needs to be implemented in products, factories, suppliers, channels, and every after-sales service.

And the new exam question China gives is, when the technical and experience standards of automobiles are increasingly formed in China, can it bring these changes into the global system in time.

Hyundai and Kia have already proven how to become a global car company, next they still need to prove how to continue to do well as this group after cars are redefined.