Hyundai Australia boss admits 'terrible' EV sales amid Chinese competition

The Australian

12 hours ago

Hyundai's new Australian boss says the brand has 'ground to make up' after doing a 'terrible job' selling electric cars in Australia.
Don Romano took over as Hyundai's Australian chief executive in March after a stint in Canada, where the brand has a strong share of electric vehicle sales.
But in Australia, Hyundai's EV performance is less impressive.
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The critically acclaimed Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6 duo attracted just over 500 combined sales in the first six months of the year, placing them well behind rivals such as the Tesla Model Y (10,431) and Model 3 (3715), BYD Sealion 7 (3756) and Seal (1609), Kia EV5 (2765), MG4 (2268), Geely EX5 (1845) and Polestar 4 (676).
'We have ground to make up,' Romano says.
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'We do a terrible job with our EVs … we are not doing the job we should be.
'Our market share of electric vehicles is extremely low relative to our market share of total vehicles and the only explanation for that is that we haven't put enough focus on it because I can see other electric car companies that are … doing a much better job with their EVs than they do with their ICE [internal combustion engine vehicles].
'We're the opposite.'
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Romano believes Hyundai's previous managers made mistakes, including a decision to bypass the brand's dealer network to sell cars such as the Ioniq 5 directly to customers.
'We went around our dealers,' Romano says.
'So, we have a job to do to get our dealers back in the game and to let them know that no, we are going through our dealer body and that you are an important part of the distribution process.'
Romano's experience in North America differs from Australia. In the US and Canada, General Motors has the largest EV share behind Tesla.
But here, Chinese brands such as BYD have an enormous role to play in the market, making competition tough for Hyundai.
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Hyundai's cheapest Inster EV starts from about $43,000 drive-away, roughly $10,000 more than the BYD Dolphin. The Ioniq 5 SUV is about $15,000 more than BYD's Sealion 7, and the Ioniq 6 sedan starts $27,000 upstream from the equivalent BYD Seal.
'The real issue when you talk about competitiveness is probably when you look at Chinese EVs, and the question I'd have is 'how long can they sustain that low price' when we're all using the same materials and the same equipment?',' he says.
'Eventually, when you look at the same systems that are used to build these cars and the same equipment and the same material, eventually, it comes to an equilibrium where we're all having on the same cost factor that we're going to have to all live with.
'And then the pricing really just comes down to what it takes to distribute the cars and market the cars. So I don't think any change in our competitive pricing is something that is a long-term issue. I think we're going to ultimately all be in the same bandwidth on a car-by-car basis.
'I don't know how they do it other than, you know, I read the same things you do about government intervention and support …
'It's one big world that we all live in and we're all going to be living in the same economic environment, so whatever advantage one country has over another, and I've seen this happen in my 40 years, where it used to be cheaper to build in one country than another, and then suddenly it's just as expensive, I think that's ultimately going to happen.
'Whether that's in my lifetime or not, that I can't answer. But for right now it appears they have it.' Life
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