South Korea Gets Aggressive With EV Incentives, Infrastructure

South Korea is now the fifth largest auto manufacturing company in the world. Its domestic automakers produced 1.8 million vehicles in the first 5 months of 2016. Over 60% of them were exported to foreign markets. Korea’s two largest manufacturers, Hyundai and Kia, make many hybrid and EV cars, but sell few of them domestically. The Korean public has little interest in such cars.

“The lack of domestic e-car infrastructure has been an impediment to e-car development and production in South Korea, but that will change from now,” Lee Won-joo, director of the Automobile Aerospace Division, told Bloomberg Business News Asia. That may soon change. South Korea is about to embark on an aggressive push to make electric and plug-in cars more palatable to local customers.

The plan includes development of an EV battery with energy density high enough to more than double the travel distance on a charge to 400 kilometers or nearly 250 miles. By 2020, high speed charging stations will become available at an average of one within a two-kilometer radius in the capital city of Seoul, with a population of 10 million. In addition, 30,000 slow charging stations will be strategically located at about 4,000 apartment complexes nationwide by 2020.

EV buyers will get other inducements, too. Starting this year, the tax paid at the time of purchasing an EV will be reduced. Drivers will also see cuts in insurance premiums, expressway tolls, and parking fees. The standard one time government subsidy available to EV buyers was increased to $12,100 from $10,400 as of July 8.

According to Global EV Outlook 2016 released by the International Energy Agency, market share for EVs in South Korea was a paltry 0.2% in 2015. That makes it among the lowest in comparison with 15 other members of the Electric Vehicles Initiative international governmental forum. The government estimates that the current and future policy programs will help increase the EV market share in South Korea to 0.5%in 2017 and 5.3% in 2020.

Cars manufactured in South Korea account for 8.5% of the global market. The government would like for Korean made EV sales to equal 8.5% of the global market for plug-in hybrid and electric cars within a few years. Both Hyundai and Kia are about to introduce hybrid, plug-in hybrid versions of their latest cars to global customers later this year.

Hyundai Plug-In Hybrid Planned For Next Year

Hyundai and its corporate cousin Kia are planning to launch a pair of plug-in hybrid cars according to the Korean Car Blog, fueling rumors that a new Prius fighter is coming from the brand. Is it finally happening?
The evidence is flimsy, but it’s there according to the KBC, which quotes Hyundai R&D vice chairman Yang Woong-Chul as saying;

“We will roll out a plug-in hybrid model of Sonata and K5 next year. Since we will use locally made engines, inverters and batteries, we expect them to have strong price competitiveness.”

So far though that’s all we’ve got aside from a few other scattered mentions of a potential plug-in hybrid. Back in 2009 the Hyundai Blue-Will concept was the company’s first entry into the hybrid car market, and in 2010 came the Sonata Hybrid (for the 2011 model year). Since then though the only other electrified vehicle has been the Kia Soul EV, a car with limited availability and appeal at the moment.

A plug-in hybrid, however, is both cheaper and more versatile than your run-of-the-mill EV, and Hyundai/Kia already struck a battery deal with fellow South Korean company SK Innovation. While Hyundai is late to the game, they’ve become a force to reckon with in the automotive world and have given other carmakers something to look out for. A lower cost plug-in hybrid could shake things up if priced right.

However, Hyundai has expressed a keen interest in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles over EVs as a replacement for gasoline, which could be fueling their trepidation when it comes to plug-in vehicles. With the brand split over which way to go, can it deliver the kind of plug-in car it needs to be competitive in a growing marketplace?

GM will make next electric car in Korea; expected to be bigger than Spark EV

GM reportedly will produce next-generation electric vehicles in South Korea, alongside the Chevrolet SparkEV (pictured), due to arrive in American showrooms by summer, and later this year in Europe. The Spark EV also will be available for fleets in Canada.

GM Korea honcho Sergio Rocha told journalists at the Seoul Auto Show, now underway, that the new electric will be an entirely new design and will be a bit larger than the current Spark. Also, it will be an EV-specific design, not a gas-to-electric model, and GM's first dedicated EV since the bullet-shaped EV1, whose demise was well-documented in the 2006 film Who Killed the Electric Car? GM has vaguely mentioned plans for two other new EVs, one with a 100-mile range, another with 200. Stay tuned to find out which one will be produced first. Whichever it is, the lithium-ion batteries will be from LG Chem, according toReuters.

GM Korea makes more than 40 percent of Chevrolet's smaller models at its Bupyeong plant, including Aveo, which is no longer sold in the US, and Malibu, which is.



Source: Autoblog Green