Interview with Park Min-woo, head of Hyundai Motor and Kia's AVP division
'Hyundai has both hardware and software capabilities'
Two-track strategy of global collaboration and in-house technology development
Tech vision to be shared at Silicon Valley forum in September
Park Min-woo, president and head of Hyundai Motor and Kia's Advanced Vehicle Platform division, has identified execution as the decisive factor in the future mobility market. His message: it is not enough for Hyundai Motor Group to simply be first to develop autonomous driving software — what matters more is bringing stable, trustworthy products to market and scaling them.
"The future will be determined not by who develops the technology first, but by who can expand into the market faster and more reliably with products that anyone can use with confidence," Park said in an interview Hyundai Motor Group released Wednesday. "Advanced research alone is not enough. What matters is raising the technology to a level that real customers can trust."
Park is a globally recognized autonomous driving expert who was a core early member of Tesla's Autopilot development team and later led the autonomous driving perception technology division at Nvidia. He joined Hyundai Motor and Kia as head of the AVP division and as CEO of 42dot earlier this year.
Park said Hyundai Motor Group is pursuing an "execution-first" approach to internalizing autonomous driving software, aiming to raise both the speed of commercialization and the level of reliability. In parallel, the group plans to secure commercialization experience and validation capabilities through external partnerships while strengthening its own autonomous driving technology and software-defined vehicle development capabilities.
"We will use the vast driving data accumulated through partnerships to continuously advance Hyundai Motor Group's end-to-end autonomous driving model," Park said. "The ultimate goal is to secure safety and reliability through our own technology."
Hyundai Motor Group is working to standardize autonomous driving sensors and build a "data union" framework that brings together Hyundai Motor, Kia, 42dot and Motional. Park also identified robotics as a future growth pillar, saying technology "must go beyond proving feasibility — it must become the best technology that actually helps people, through commercialization and large-scale mass production."
He also said organic collaboration among hardware, software, research and development, and mass production teams is central to competitiveness in the software-defined vehicle era. "After intense debate, once a decision is made, the entire organization must have the maturity to move forward as one team," he said.
The interview was arranged ahead of the HMG Tech Talent Forum 2026, scheduled for Sept. 17-18 local time in San Jose, California, to introduce the technology philosophy and future vision of the forum's key speakers.
eyre@heraldcorp.com
