Hyundai and Kia See Green Car Sales Boom As Korean Government Supports Them

Everybody could use a little bit of help every now and then. Hyundai and Kia have grown immensely over the past few decades, going from strength to strength as their product line-ups have grown and become streamlined, but on the whole moving towards a positive future. But some things require a little bit of a leap - and in the case of these two Korean car makers, they may not have been around long enough to prepare for this eventuality.

But thankfully, the Korean government - more specifically, the Ministry of Environment - is helping these two companies with their growth within their domestic market. With a massive budget of 680 billion won (RM 2.5 trillion), electric vehicles and hybrids are expected to grow in number even more than the 10% increase year-on-year between January and November. A total of 257,861 units were sold during this period, consisting of 52,370 electric vehicles, 25,967 plug-in hybrid vehicles, 798 fuel cell electric vehicles, and 178,726 hybrid vehicles.

Next year, this big budget is going to go towards increasing the number of fuel cell electric vehicle sales to 4,000 units, as well as building 30 charging stations, while subsidies for electric vehicles have gone up to 42,000 units from 20,000 units, along with a proposed 1,200 high speed charging stations to be built. It's an ambitious, solid plan that plays a double role in bolstering their national automakers and promoting the use of cleaner automobiles.

This level of performance is not necessarily achievable in other countries or regions as it depends heavily on the aforementioned support from the government. All companies struggle - after all, hybrid and electric vehicles are vastly more expensive than their conventional counterparts, which makes them a difficult purchase proposition unless a customer is comfortable making decisions based largely on lifestyle and environmental choices. That being said, Hyundai and Kia are pushing for 38 green car models, 14 of which will be electric vehicles, by 2025.