Hyundai Motor Group Accelerates AI Transformation Across Its Business, Prepares for Physical AI Era
Hyundai Motor Group says AI is now embedded across its business, with over 30,000 employees using its H Chat Pro platform and AI tools cutting crash-research time by 90% as it gears up for the Physical AI era.
- 30,000+
- ~80%
- KRW 5.24 billion (~$3.9 million)
- 35 min → ~5 min
What Happened
Hyundai Motor Group held its AX Achievement Showcase, "Beyond AI, Transforming the Way We Work," at its Seoul headquarters on August 12, presenting the digital transformation (DX) and AI transformation (AX) journey, key achievements, and future plans. The Group said it has been preparing the foundation for AI transformation through digital transformation since 2019, and is now accelerating enterprise-wide AI adoption across R&D, manufacturing, service operations, and customer channels. Speakers detailed AI applications that are already delivering measurable productivity gains across the company.
“As the mobility industry rapidly evolves from a manufacturing-centered industry to one where data and software capabilities define competitiveness, the Group has proactively advanced its digital transformation efforts since 2019. Building on accumulated data and a digitally enabled working environment, the Group is now accelerating AI transformation across the organization.”
The transformation began at the executive level. In 2018, Executive Chair Euisun Chung said the Group would become "a company more IT-like than IT companies themselves." In 2022, the Group deployed JIRA, Dooray, Confluence, and Microsoft 365 to standardize collaboration and knowledge-sharing across the enterprise. R&D teams working on autonomous driving and hydrogen, previously barred from external collaboration tools by security rules, were able to adopt SaaS solutions after government guidelines were established. The Group also set up the Global One Data Pipeline to connect data from research, production, quality, and sales, letting information flow across the value chain and creating a foundation for AI-driven decision-making.
Executive Chair Euisun Chung declares the Group will become "a company more IT-like than IT companies themselves."
Digital transformation (DX) efforts begin.
The Group deploys JIRA, Dooray, Confluence, and Microsoft 365, and builds the Global One Data Pipeline.
H Chat Pro, the proprietary generative AI platform, is made available to all general employees.
H Chat Pro surpasses 30,000 active users, about 80% of Hyundai and Kia general employees.
H Chat Pro, the Group's proprietary generative AI platform, gives employees secure access to external AI models including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. As of July 2026, it had surpassed 30,000 active users — approximately 80 percent of Hyundai Motor and Kia's general employee population. Employees use it for document creation, information retrieval, data analysis, and software development, and some with no software background are now building custom AI agents for their own tasks. The Group also runs AX education programs for employees, including senior leadership, and encourages sharing AI utilization experiences through internal communities and collaborative forums.
- Crash Safety AI Assistant: helps engineers search and compare crash-test data, cutting time spent finding cases and reviewing materials by approximately 90 percent.
- AI Automation Recognition Service: uses vision AI to read VINs on production lines, deployed across approximately 70 manufacturing processes in Korea, the US, Europe, India, and Asia-Pacific, saving a
- Transfer Cart Sequencing Optimization Technology: uses reinforcement learning to route parts carts, reducing unnecessary production downtime by approximately 86 percent.
- E-FOREST: POLARIS: a manufacturing-specialized AI platform that lets engineers build, test, and deploy AI agents for quality, scheduling, equipment maintenance, and logistics.
- Maintenance Support AI Service: an LLM-based tool at overseas service centers that cuts maintenance response time by approximately 42 percent.
- Customer Review Response Automation Solution: for Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis, cuts average review processing from 35 minutes to about 5 minutes; full automation planned from September 2026.
The Group says it views AI transformation as a change in organizational culture and ways of working, enabled by its execution-oriented culture that emphasizes rapid adoption of new technologies. It plans to expand innovation into the emerging field of Physical AI, combining AI with the physical world across vehicles, robotics, manufacturing, and service operations. Moving forward, it says it will continue driving workplace innovation through data and AI and translate these capabilities into greater customer value.
Why this matters
For a beginner, this shows how a major automaker is shifting from building cars to competing on data and software. The results affect thousands of employees — about 80% of Hyundai and Kia's general workforce already uses the internal AI platform — and its global production sites in Korea, the US, Europe, India, and Asia-Pacific. The company's push into 'Physical AI' signals that AI will increasingly control physical machines, from robots to vehicles.
Terms in This Story
- Physical AI
- AI that operates in or interacts with the physical world, such as robotics, vehicles, and manufacturing systems.
- Generative AI
- AI models that create new content—text, images, or code—based on patterns learned from training data.
- Reinforcement learning
- A machine-learning method where an AI learns to make decisions by trying actions and receiving rewards or penalties.
- Large language model (LLM)
- A type of AI trained on vast amounts of text to understand and generate human-like language.
Summarised from the linked release; details can be imperfect — always verify against the original source.