Hyundai Motor Group’s new Innovation Centre in Singapore to feature landing port for eVTOL aircraft

Hyundai Motor Group has car­ried out a vir­tu­al ground­break­ing cer­e­mo­ny of its new Inno­va­tion Cen­ter in Sin­ga­pore, which will include a land­ing port for eVTOL air­craft.

Con­struc­tion of the 28,000m² build­ing — referred to as HMGICS — is expect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the end of 2022, and will be used for the Group’s future mobil­i­ty research and devel­op­ment.

The cen­tre will also fea­ture solar pan­els to pro­vide the site with clean renew­able ener­gy, and even­tu­al­ly use fuel cell as a pow­er sup­ply to help min­imise emis­sions from pow­er gen­er­a­tion.

Offi­cials from the Kore­an and Sin­ga­pore­an gov­ern­ments, as well as the Group, attend­ed the cer­e­mo­ny, includ­ing Sin­ga­pore Prime Min­is­ter Lee Hsien Loong; Kore­an Min­is­ter of Trade, Indus­try and Ener­gy Sung Yun-mo, and Hyundai Motor Group Exec­u­tive Vice Chair­man, Euisun Chung.

“HMGICS is a major step for­ward for Hyundai Motor. The facil­i­ty is the first of its kind in the world. It will pave the way for more Kore­an com­pa­nies to invest here, part­ner with local sup­pli­ers and SMEs, and col­lab­o­rate with our uni­ver­si­ties and research insti­tutes,” said Sin­ga­pore Prime Min­is­ter Lee Hsien Loong.

“Singapore’s goal is to have all our vehi­cles run on clean­er ener­gy by 2040, in line with our Paris Agree­ment com­mit­ments. We hope this will open up new growth areas for our econ­o­my, and cre­ate excit­ing jobs for Sin­ga­pore­ans.” 

Hyundai has already expressed seri­ous inter­est in the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, and is one of Uber’s OEM part­ners as the ride-hail­ing firm looks to launch its aer­i­al plat­form by 2023.

The auto­mo­tive giant revealed its air taxi con­cept — the SA‑1 — at CES 2020 in Las Vegas back in Jan­u­ary, and announced in Sep­tem­ber that it is plan­ning to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in Korea, by part­ner­ing with Incheon Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, Hyundai Engi­neer­ing and Corps, and KT Corp.

Through HMGICS, the Group will realise its vision for human-cen­tered mobil­i­ty val­ue chain inno­va­tion with three strate­gic direc­tions.

First, the Group will enhance the val­ue of work and the dig­ni­ty of work­ers through a human-cen­tered dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. HMGICS will devel­op inno­v­a­tive sys­tems that com­bine advanced tech­nolo­gies such as AI, ICT, and big data to allow for work envi­ron­ment where cre­ative poten­tials are ful­filled, and human val­ue is enhanced.

The group will then build a cus­tomer-cen­tred smart mobil­i­ty envi­ron­ment where prod­ucts are tai­lored to cus­tomer needs and mobil­i­ty ser­vices would enrich its cus­tomers’ lives.

Last­ly, the Group will con­tribute to the build­ing of Singapore’s Smart Nation as a respon­si­ble indus­try mem­ber in the smart ecosys­tem. HMGICS, locat­ed in the heart of Sin­ga­pore, will use eco-friend­ly ener­gy sources like solar and hydro­gen ener­gy to help achieve car­bon neu­tral­i­ty.

“Korea and Sin­ga­pore have coop­er­at­ed on mul­ti­ple fronts and the HMGICS rep­re­sents a new mile­stone in the con­tin­u­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between our two nations,” said Sung Yun-mo, Kore­an Min­is­ter of Trade, Indus­try and Ener­gy. “The key to this col­lab­o­ra­tion will lie in find­ing ways to bring togeth­er our respec­tive strengths.”

Hyundai Motor Group Exec­u­tive Vice Chair­man, Euisun Chung, added: “Hyundai Motor Group Inno­va­tion Cen­ter in Sin­ga­pore will strive for ‘Human-Cen­tered Val­ue Chain Inno­va­tion for a Mobil­i­ty Par­a­digm Shift.’ We will offer prod­ucts and ser­vices tai­lored to cus­tomers’ needs.

“I am con­fi­dent the inno­va­tions that spring from HMGICS will shape our future glob­al soci­ety for the bet­ter and con­tribute to the progress of human­i­ty.” 

The cen­tre will act as a test bed for a human-cen­tered intel­li­gent man­u­fac­tur­ing plat­form with small scale EV pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty on site. The facil­i­ty will utilise the lat­est ‘Indus­try 4.0’ smart tech­nolo­gies, such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), Inter­net of Things (IoT) and robot­ics.

It will also be home to the Group’s R&D experts from around the world, includ­ing mem­bers of the Hyundai CRADLE inno­va­tion hub and AI Research (AIR) Cen­ter.

Affil­i­ate com­pa­nies such as Hyundai Mobis, Hyundai Glo­vis, Hyundai Auto­ev­er, Hyundai WIA, Hyundai Rotem and Hyundai Tran­sys will also take part in HMGICS.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion will go beyond the Group and into the Sin­ga­pore­an inno­va­tion ecosys­tem. Uni­ver­si­ties, star­tups and research insti­tutes, includ­ing Nanyang Tech­no­log­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty — the first local aca­d­e­m­ic research part­ner — will be able to col­lab­o­rate through the open inno­va­tion lab.