Hyundai holds mini-auto show

By Kim Da-ye

Hyundai Motor Group is hosting its own mini motor show to help subcontractors study more than 100 domestic and imported vehicles at no cost.

The eighth R&D Motor Show is taking place at the automaker’s Namyang Technology Research Center in Gyeonggi Province between Oct. 5 and 8. Some 5,000 executives and employees of 445 subcontractors have been invited to attend.

The displayed fleet includes 25 Hyundai and Kia vehicles including the i40 and the K5 Hybrid as well as 80 from rival automakers.

Prior to the opening ceremony, engineers from Hyundai-Kia and subcontractors disassembled globally popular cars to study the latest automotive technology.

Hwang Chong-ha, a researcher at Yura Corporation, participated in taking apart a Nissan Leaf electric vehicle. He said, “Disassembling an imported vehicle is a great opportunity for us. It is usually difficult for a subcontractor to buy a whole imported car to merely study a part.”

Amid the society-wide call for conglomerates to seek growth in conjunction with small and medium enterprises, Hyundai Motor Group said that it will expand its technological support to the secondary and tertiary subcontractors.

The world’s fourth largest automaker said its 260-member team provided technological support to about 400 subcontractors in a total of 4,000 cases by September this year.

Hyundai-Kia also invites some 400 engineers from about 50 subcontractors each year to join in new vehicle development.

The automaker added that the company shares the troubleshooting process with subcontractors who often find it difficult to find the cause of a glitch because a car consists of various parts.

“According to an outsourced research, supporting trouble shooting processes for 26 major car parts saves 94.4 billion won a year by shortening the test period and reducing auto parts, material and test costs,” the automaker said in a statement.