Hyundai and Kia had strong performances in 2023, but their objectives are even bolder for 2024. This past year was kind to Hyundai as deliveries rose by 6.9 percent to 4,216,680 vehicles. Domestic sales went up by 10.6 percent to 688,884 units, while exports increased by 6.2 percent to 3,254,038 units compared to 2022.
The plan for Hyundai for 2024 is to move 4,243,000 cars by selling 704,000 vehicles within South Korea and 3,539,000 units in other markets. It's worth noting that the targets for 2024 include projected sales of luxury models with the Genesis badge.
Sister brand Kia also had a terrific 2023 when it set a global sales record after delivering 3,085,771 cars worldwide, a jump of 6.3 percent. Demand in Korea was up by 4.6 percent to 538,822 cars and by 6.7 percent to 2,516,383 units in overseas markets. Kia lists its "special purpose vehicle" sales separately, at 3,932 units, or 45.7 percent more than in 2022. One such car is the Niro Plus based on the previous-generation model and modified for taxi and ride-hailing duties.
If everything goes according to plan, Kia intends to ship 3.2 million vehicles globally: 530,000 in Korea, 2.63M in export markets, and 7,000 special purpose vehicles.
Neither Hyundai nor Kia is talking about future products, but the Tucson did get a mid-cycle facelift at home and is likely to go global in the next few months. A diminutive Casper EV might come to Europe where a Bayon facelift is being worked on. Yet another update for the compact i30 is in the works, and we should finally see the production-ready Ioniq 7.
Lest we forget the Santa Fe has been radically changed for 2024. China got the Mufasa because apparently there's no such thing as having too many crossovers. In India, there's a new Verna small sedan for those who haven't caught the SUV bug just yet.
Kia has also been keeping busy by giving the K5, Sorento, and Carnival a facelift while announcing EV3, EV4, and EV5 electric vehicles. Depending on market, there's a new K3 compact sedan, an updated Picanto, among other novelties. A Kia Forte-replacing sedan potentially called K4 is in the pipeline as well.
