Hyundai Motor closed the internal combustion engine development center at its Namyang R&D Science and Technology Center (STC) in the south of Seoul (South Korea) in mid-December. The NTC itself has begun to be reorganized, business publication Business Korea reported, citing sources in the company.
The ICE division of the Powertrain Team has been transformed into the Electrification Development Team (electrification development group), that is, it will develop power plants for electric vehicles. At the same time, the company created the Battery Development Center, a center for the development of battery technology - this division will develop new high-performance traction batteries.
Hyundai Motor also minimized the bureaucracy at the Namyang Research Institute - for each new car project, instead of two Project Management Team and Integrated Product Development Team, there will be a single group of managers, which will reduce the time to bring the project to the mass production stage.
From the information of Business Korea, it does not follow that Hyundai Motor will abandon the production of internal combustion engines, but it turns out that the Korean auto giant has put an end to the projects of gasoline and diesel engines of the next generations.
Hyundai Motor has not officially commented on Business Korea's information.
According to Motor1, the reorganization of the STC coincided with major personnel decisions - in December, Albert Biermann and Peter Schreyer left Hyundai Motor. The first was the head of the research and development center, the second was the vice president of design. In addition, Hyundai Motor recently opened 200 new vacancies for engineers, more than 1/3 of which are at Namyang Research Institute.
Hyundai Motor stopped developing new internal combustion engines
