Hyundai Mobis sees billions in US revenue growth from EVs

Detroit  — Nontraditional customers and new products for electric vehicles — that's how South Korean auto supply giant Hyundai Mobis intends to more than double its size in the North American supply chain.

With $29 billion in global sales to automakers last year, the world's sixth-largest auto supplier is embarking on a growth drive in North America, pitching some 30 new technologies to potential customers here in the next few years. It is using the Detroit auto show this month to broadcast its plan, marking the first time it has participated in the Detroit show.

In a year when many traditional automakers have cut back on their auto show presence, suppliers have turned up he volume. A sign for Japanese parts and systems giant Aisin dominated the front of the auto show hall, while some suppliers held press conferences among the automaker displays to herald new technologies.

Axel Maschka, Mobis executive vice president for global OE sales, used a show floor stage to proclaim that his company will achieve a 36 percent annual growth rate for the next few years as it rolls out such new EV-oriented offerings as skateboard chassis modules and a virtual-reality head-up display that allows drivers to see their correct lane illuminated as they drive. That feature should help vehicles find exit lanes more easily or isolate their correct path on multilane roads.

Maschka said another promising technology will be a new illuminated front end, capable of doing things such as displaying custom messages to tell a bystander which parked car is their waiting Uber ride.

The front end, like many systems linked to EVs and autonomous vehicles, relies on in-mold technologies within injection molded parts.

Another upcoming product is a rear-wheel-drive system that will allow a large electric vehicle to turn in a tighter radius than currently possible.

"The growing product plans for EVs are why we expect this huge growth rate," Maschka told Automotive News after his auto show press conference. "We're not like other global suppliers — we have no legacy in combustion engines. We have no exhaust systems, no transmissions, no fuel injectors. That's why we expect to grow faster than the others."

Mobis was created as the parts business for Hyundai in South Korea, and the Hyundai Motor Group remains its largest customer. It already had a wide portfolio of front end modules, headlights, brakes, pumpers, steering systems and more. But Mobis has been eagerly building a new base with the Detroit 3 and other international automakers who have North American operations.

The company is close to launching a plant in McCalla, Ala., to supply axles for EV production at a non-Korean automaker in the region. A version of its advanced virtual reality head-up display will go into an upcoming Detroit 3 vehicle. The company also has been supplying millions of complete chassis modules to Jeep.

Without pinning himself down to precise future sales numbers, Maschka said Mobis' non-Hyundai Motor Group business in North America currently amounts to roughly $1.6 billion. But new orders equal another $1.7 billion. And after a wave of 36-percent growth years, he said noncaptive sales would reach between $4 billion and $5 billion.

On top of that, Mobis' traditional customer Hyundai is itself scaling up its U.S. EV production. The automaker said it will invest $5.5 billion in a massive new production center in Georgia over the next three years in order to build EVs and batteries — a project that will likely lift Mobis sales even higher.

There will be a sizable cost to getting there in terms of manufacturing investment, he acknowledged.

"We're almost concerned over how to lift it," he said. "The investment necessary is very large." He would only specify a cost of "billions."

"One challenge will be Mr. Biden's Inflation Reduction Act," the executive said of the new federal law that stiffly tightens the rules on how an automaker can qualify for offering consumers $7,500 tax credits on EV purchases. The new rules may compel some Mobis customers to move up their timetables to launch more EVs. That will mean Mobis would need to scramble even faster to roll out its new EV product offerings.

"Pulling ahead things in the U.S. will mean I can't do all the things I want to do in other regions, given manpower and resources."